Over the past couple of months I have been writing about “Deliberate Practice”. I have taken most of my information from both Geoff Colvin’s book “Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” and from my own experiences as an athlete, coach, and instructor. The book is fantastic! It has given me scientific proof backing my long held theory that “natural talent” doesn’t exist and that anyone can achieve any level of performance they desire to reach. Over the course of the previous 6 posts on “Deliberate Practice I have given you ideas as to how to make your practice sessions more effective and “Deliberate”. In this post I want to explain why practicing deliberately will enable you to reach any level of performance you desire to reach and how some of the world’s top prodigies are nothing more than people who have been practicing deliberately longer than their contemporaries.
In Colvin’s book he refers to the “ten year rule”. Simply stated, the ten year rule is that few performers in any endeavor achieve any level of greatness prior to deliberately practicing for 10 years. These “overnight successes”, the people who burst onto the scene and seemly come out of nowhere and appear to have natural ability for what they are doing have been deliberately practicing for 10 or more years. The interesting thing is that this 10 year rule is ageless. What I mean is, the clock starts once you start practicing deliberately and has no bearing on your age when you begin your intense level of practice. For example a 15 year old kid can have the same level of mastery over their skill as a 25 year old man. If that 15 year old starts practicing deliberately when they are 5 years old they will posses the same skill level as the 25 year old who may have started practicing deliberately at the age of 15. But, because we live in a world that assumes the 25 year old should be better because of experience and the fact that they have been performing the skill longer we assume that a 15 year old who is as proficient as a 25 year old has “natural” talent. However the years of deliberate practice remain the same.
Think about what most of us do. Most athletes, if they ever do decide to practice deliberately never do so until their high school or college years. Most athletes just play until at some point they decide that they want to make a run at playing in college or professionally. So even though they may have been playing for 10 or more years they usually have only been deliberately practicing for 1 year or less. Believe it or not in my experience, most of the major league players I know never practice deliberately. The superstars do but everyone else just goes through the motions. Which only further lends credibility to the “natural talent” theory since most professional athletes or anyone for that matter would never admit that they didn’t work hard enough. Plus we all think that major league players know what they are doing and that they know how to practice. The sad reality is that most athletes, even at the major league level, never engage in deliberate practice. This can be for a variety of reasons and isn’t limited to laziness but usually lack of knowledge of how to practice properly or the proper techniques needed to perform the skill correctly. I think of my own career and at 31 years old I feel as though I could step into the major leagues right now and not only contribute but be one of the better hitters in Major League Baseball. This feeling of confidence has only happened recently and some could argue that I have reached this level of mastery at an age that most athletes come into their prime. The problem I have with that argument is that I have only been practicing deliberately for about 7 years. As most of you know I have been hitting off a tee everyday of my life since the age of 12. In those 19 years of practice I was unaware of how to practice properly and what the proper mechanics of hitting were until about 6-7 years ago when I finally began to figure it out (though I will be the first on to admit that I still have a lot to learn). I have no doubt that if I were to have began deliberately practicing at 12 years old that I would have achieved the same level of physical mastery at the age of 19. Think about that! If I had the same level of mastery over my swing at 19 as I do at 31 not only would I have been a very high draft pick but also would have been considered a “natural”. Somewhat ironic if you consider that my high school and college coaches and teammates would have told you that I was anything but a natural.
You might think that there are examples all over the world of people with natural talent. However, if you listen to them being interviewed and you do some research into their past you will find examples of deliberate practice all the time. From Pujols, to Bonds, to Manny, to Roy Halladay, each guy practices and works differently then their peers. Some of you may have seen the youtube video of Susan Boyle. She is the 47 year old British woman who was on “Britian’s got Talent”. All though she didn’t look like a great singer and has never (until recently) received any notoriety for her singing, she astonished the judges with her amazing talent. If you haven’t seen it I recommend you check it out. Anyway, when you do a little research into her past you find that she has been singing since she was a child. She grew up in a house where her parents sang and singing was a big part of the families’ life. Just because we had never heard of her we all think that she is a “natural”. However, it turns out she (whether she knew it or not) had been deliberately practicing for over 30 years!
To take this point even further let’s take a look at two of the people that were studied in Colvin’s book, Wolfgang Mozart and Tiger Woods. What follows will be excerpts from Colvin’s book, “Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everyone Else”.
Mozart
“Mozart’s father was of course Leopold Mozart, a famous composer and performer in his own right. He was also a domineering parent who started his son on a program of intensive training in composition and performing at age three. Leopold was well qualified for his role as little Wolfgang’s teacher by more than his own eminence; he was deeply interested in how music was taught to children. While Leopold was only so-so as a musician he was highly accomplished as a pedagogue. His authoritative book on violin instruction, published the same year Woldgang was born, remained influential for decades.
So from the earliest age, Wolfgang was receiving heavy instruction from an expert teacher who lived with him. Of course his early compositions seem remarkable, but they raise some provocative questions. It’s interesting to note that the manuscripts are not in the boy’s own hand; Leopold always “corrected” them before anyone saw them. It seems noteworthy also that Leopold stopped composing at just the time he began teaching Wolfgang.”
“Mozart’s first work regarded today as a masterpiece, with its status confirmed by the number of recordings available, is his Piano Concerto No. 9, composed when he was twenty-one. That’s certainly an early age, but we must remember that by then Wolfgang had been through eighteen years of extremely hard, expert training.”
Tiger
“Tiger is born into the home of an expert golfer and confessed “golf addict” who loves to teach and is eager to begin teaching his new son as soon as possible.”
“Earl gives Tiger his first metal club, a putter, at the age of seven months. He sets up Tiger’s high chair in the garage, where earl is hitting balls into a net, and Tiger watches for hours on end. “It was like a movie being run over and over and over for his view.” Earl wrote. Earl develops new techniques for teaching the grip and the putting stroke to a student who cannot yet talk. Before Tiger is two, they are at the golf course playing and practicing regularly.”
“Amid all that has been written about his legend, a couple of facts are especially worth noting. First is the age at which he initially achieved outstanding performance at a level of play involving regular international competition. Let’s call it age nineteen, when he was a member of the U.S. Team in Walker Cup play (though he did not win his match). At that point he had been practicing golf with tremendous intensity, first under his father and after age four under professional teachers, for seventeen years.”
My hope is that from reading the above two examples you realize that natural talent doesn’t exist. I hope that you can see that your level of performance, your level of greatness is entirely under your control. You are completely unlimited in what you can accomplish both on and off the field. Look yourself in the mirror, evaluate how you are practicing and make the changes necessary to make sure you are practicing more deliberately. I have seen it work in my own life and in the lives of some of the athletes that I work with. Once you make the switch from regular practice to deliberate practice I know that you will be amazed at your increase in performance. If playing college or professional baseball is your dream then deliberate practice is the way to get there. Don’t waist another minute spinning your wheels. Make sure there is a purpose to everything thing you do. Mindless repetition might produce small gains in performance but deliberate practice will unlock your unlimited potential. Don’t be one of those people who makes the excuse “I just didn’t have enough talent”. Begin practicing deliberately and create your talent.
