How do we get good? The development of skill in sport. Deliberate practice - 8.1 Flashcards
skill acquisition - what pathway?
Early specialisation
- DeliberatePractice
- Ericsson et al.
Early engagement
- Single sport deliberate practice and play
- Ford et al.
- Late specialisation / Early diversification
- Deliberate play
- Cote et al.
Galton (1869) on limits on modifiability of performance
“So long as he is a novice, he perhaps flatters himself there is hardly an assignable limit to the education of muscles; but the daily gain is soon discovered to diminish, and at last it vanishes altogether. … There is a definite limit to the muscular powers of every man, which he cannot by any education or exertion overpass”.
limits on modifiability
How many consecutive push-ups can someone perform without pause?
College athletes can do around 25.
Non-stop push-up records:
- 6,006 Charles Linster (USA) 05-Oct-1965
- 10,507 Minoru Yoshida (JAP) Oct-1980
can we agree that experience will help?
Even child prodigies’ improve with practice
Improvement goes beyond period of peak physical maturity
True across diverse skill domains – E.g. Working memory
the myth of ‘talent’
10,000 hour rule to become and expert
Deliberate Practice
Anders Ericsson
Expertise is accomplished via motivation, concentration, and willingness to work (through deliberate practice)
Innate talent is relatively unimportant when compared to their attained abilities and skills
There is no objective evidence for high initial level of performance without any relevant experience and practice nor abrupt improvement of reproducible performance when regularly tested (Ericsson, p. 25)
deliberate practice
Distinguish between activities invented with primary purpose of attaining and improving skills versus other types of everyday activities for which learning may be an indirect result!
“individualized training activities especially designed by a coach or teacher to improve specific aspects of an individual’s performance through repetition and successive refinement.
To receive maximal benefit from feedback, individuals have to monitor their training with full concentration, which is effortful and limits the duration of daily training”.
(Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996)
Practice that is always effortful but not inherently enjoyable (Ericsson, K.A. & Charness, N. 1994)
– Sport context - practice is effortful but also enjoyable (Starkes, J.L. et al. 1996)
Requires maximum concentration and exertion during training conditions
Approximately 10 years of deliberate practice is needed to achieve expertise (Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.T., & Tesch-
Roemer, C. 1993)
Ericsson: level of performance is determined by the amount of time spent performing a “well defined task with an appropriate level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and correction of errors”.
Need to continually modify levels of task difficulty so that it matches current performance levels
– Prevent plateaus (arrested development)
– Perpetuate adaptation to higher levels of training stress – lead to higher levels of performance
Ericsson
Individual performance differences can be accounted for by the amount and type of practice performed.
– 10,000 hours of
– deliberate practice
Monotonic assumption
– 1st hour makes as much difference as 9999th hour
five elements of deliberate practice
- Activity specifically designed to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help.
- Activity that can be repeated a lot – over and over and over again.
- Feedback on results is continuously available.
- It’s highly demanding mentally.
– Chess, business, sports - It isn’t much fun.
Hans Selye: general adaptation syndrome
Normal functioning ~ Homeostasis
3 stage response to stress
1. Shock
– Must adapt to training stress
2. Adaptation
– Re-attains homestasis 3. Staleness
– +ve Adaptations are no longer made
Periodisation (balance of training & recovery is important for Ericsson’s theory of deliberate practice
what activities make up deliberate practice in sport
We need to ‘stress the system’
Ericsson et al. (1993)
see slides
professionals and best experts accumulated 10,000 hours
all groups - repeated amount of practice increases monotonically from when they start to the age of 20
need to start young and practice a lot
20 hrs per week for 13 yr old tennis players!
24-30 hr per week for swimmers by age of 11!
Runners at national level practice 4.9 times per week; regional and local levels train 4.2 and 3.2 times per week!
10 year - 10000 hours
How much practice is this??
20 hr/week x 50 weeks / year = 1000 hr/ year
How many hours practice in a typical week?
– Technical Training-3 practices x2 hours = 6 hours
– Physical Training–4 sessions x 1hour = 4 hours
– Total = 10 hours
– Other practice??? (Is it deliberate practice?)
Is deliberate practice achievable in sport?
Quality vs Quantity
– What should these activities be?
what should we do?
How do we find the appropriate ‘challenge point’?
Intrinsic motivation is key
– “the currency of skill acquisition”
– Need to persevere
– Autonomy?
Read Eddie Jones’ comments (P26-28) in Baker & Cobley chapter (Developing Sport Expertise)
– Lack of creativity bred by constant drilling
– Game-based approach is useful
put theory into practice - quality training
Review your own training design habits:
– Monitor training effort
– Balance between meaningful strenuous training and active / complete rest
- What was the overall purpose of the week of training?
- How did individual training sessions fit together over the
week? - What is the link between current week and preceding and following weeks?
- How does this fit into your yearly plan for your athlete’s
development? - How could this week of training have been improved?
Baker and Young (2014)
Three types of constraint:
- Motivation
– To improve performance (not enjoyment) - Resources
– Finances
– Parents time etc. - Effort
– Attention in training
– Balance between effortful training and rest
Remaining questions:
1. Does practice need to be deliberate?
– Play / competition ?
2. Are 10,000 hours a good estimate?
3. How does someone regulate involvement over this time?
4. Is time spent in DP sufficient to explain expertise?
Future…
- Better theoretical models
- Better study designs
Macnamara et al. (2014)
conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued
how is sport different to music/chess?
- Enjoyment of deliberate practice
- Genetic advantages are relevant
- Are 10,000 hours necessary?
- enjoyment - Starkes et al. (1996)
Ice-skaters (national and junior national teams) and wrestlers (club and international)
In an attempt to determine which activities constituted deliberate practice, a number of activities were divided into four groups;
- Practice alone,
- practice with others,
- activities related to wrestling / figure skating, and
- everyday activities not related to wrestling / figure skating.
Contrary to the framework, wrestlers and figure skaters enjoyed engaging in the activities that they considered to be highly relevant to performance in their specific domains.
Conforming with the framework, however, was a strong positive correlation between relevance, and effort or concentration required.
– Mat work, ice time ~ practicing the violin
– Working with coach / mentor ~ violin lessons
- genetic component
No scientific limits making it impossible for any individual to become an elite athlete with practice (????)
sports science response
80% of height variance is genetic – 300,000 genes just
to account for 45% of this variance
Only 28% of variance in dart performance is due to practice!
Retrospective studies are ‘useless’ to prove practice is sufficient to cause success
Prospective studies show that ability to improve VO2max has genetic component
Tucker and Collins (2012)
Training & genetic factors are
important:
1. Individual performance thresholds determined by genetic make-up
2. Training = process by which genetic potential is realised
see slides for diagrams
- 10000 hours
Accumulation of Practice: Ice hockey 6 – 20 years of age
Total = 3072 hours
11 more years to reach 10,000 hours
Soberlak and Cote
(see slides)
issues in applying DP idea to sport
Training is fun!
All forms of training might be DP
– Long, slow distance runs for endurance athletes (not effortful)
– Mo Farah runs at least 10 miles every day!
What is content of DP (not just ‘how long’)
– How can coaches / athletes ensure that their practice is quality
Do we need 10 years? Can expertise be fast-tracked?
– Is early specialisation (always) good???
concerns
Burnout from early specialisation?
Less ‘play’ nowadays (street soccer)
Too much structured practice and competition at an early age
Only focuses on the elite performers
– Young footballers often experience depression and anxiety after being let go from an academy
– This can lead to drug or alcohol abuse
cost-benefit: skill development
Abilities, mind, and body are developmental and maturational
Discovering natural talents
Predicting final performance from initial performance
Fundamental motor skills base for future participation
Successful with more athletic skills (Clark & Metcalf, 2002)
Repertoire of skills transferred from one activity to another (Berry, Abernethy & Cote, 2008)
Practice content versus practice quantity (Baker, Cote & Abernethy, 2003; Brylinsky, 2010)
Implicit learning and deliberate play
cost v benefit: social development
Societal emphasis on specialization
Better coaches work with more talented players
– Better coaching = better skill instruction
Social Concerns
– Lack of a social life (lost childhood)
– Develop of social skills (social isolation)
Lack of FUN and Interest
– Fake injuries to get out of the sport (“crying out” to stop)
Next lecture…looks at a model of early DIVERSIFICATION
why is early pathway assumed ‘good’?
Roots of early Sport Specialization & Barriers to Educated and Informed Decisions
Societal & Economic
– Popular media/Perceptions from the ‘East’
Family and Parental
– “In two short generations, parents went from being lucky and proud to being the creators of child athletes” (Coakley, 2010)
Talent and Skill Development
– 10yearrule
– Initial ability~Final ability
how deliberate practice applies to you
- Natural ability is no excuse.
- How you practice matters most.
– Constantly challenge yourself.
– Put in the hours on the important tasks (read / write) - How long you persevere determines your limits.
– Periodisation to limit fatigue (both mental and physical). - Motivation becomes the real constraint on expertise.
– Practice isn’t always fun. It’s an investment into improving yourself, your skills and your future.
