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
