“We were looking for exceptional kids, and what we found were exceptional conditions.” In 1985 Benjamin Bloom studied young experts in art, sport, and science to find out what made these individuals exceptional and what they did to enhance their talents. Bloom’s purpose was to find out what set talented youth apart from their peers,… Read More »
Treating young athletes as if they were adults is one of the longest-running problems in youth sports. Cutting athletes from teams, traveling to numerous, large, full-weekend competitions, and getting caught up in the megawatt hoopla that usually accompanies such events subjects youngsters to pressures and training they’re not ready for and from which the majority… Read More »
Which of the young soccer players running up and down the field every Saturday morning will become future stars? No one can tell. But it’s a good bet that some of them are already performing well above the level of their peers and are considered as top prospects for future stardom. These athletes already seem… Read More »
Ever since the publication of The Making of an Expert in 2007 Anders Ericsson has been credited, or blamed depending on how you look at it, for creating the so-called “10,000 hour rule.” The rule states that to be good at something, really good, requires about 10,000 hours of practice, that such devotion to an endeavor will… Read More »
It is unusual when knowledge and the opportunity to use it exist together. In 1984 I was coaching in Brunei, a small country on the western coast of Borneo. Part of my job was creating a national age group swimming program where athletes could eventually progress from lessons to competition, thus building a base of… Read More »
Several elements of talent development — sport specialization, the 10,000 hour rule, and deliberate practice — get talked about a lot. If you’re familiar with what these terms mean and how they relate to each other then you know that there is a problem with the numbers. The 10,000 hour rule is a convenient metaphor that illustrates… Read More »