Talented Practice

10000 Hours or 9.6years?

A habit of mine is to read several books over the same period of time, a few pages of one and a few more pages of the other. This extends to magazines and other forms of literature. More often than not I’ll read the same book a few times over the course of a couple of years or longer. People have said to me that I am a hoarder but my collection of literature – books, magazines, printed-out internet articles and the like – are precious to me and I often attain new joy, knowledge  and even inspiration by going back and reading a piece that I had long forgotten about. Rare are the times where I will actually read just one book; maybe my attention span is lacking or something.

At the moment I’m busy with Jon O’ Hanlon’s Can Anyone Here Sing, John Simpson’s A Mad World My Masters (for the third or fourth time) and Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. I had originally intended on buying Gladwell’s previous work Outliers, but for some reason decided on What the Dog Saw instead. I’m not sure why though, as I’ve been wanting read Outliers for some time now given all the hype about the 10 000 hour rule and the like, which is apparently one of themes of the book.

From what I have heard and read, the “10 000 hour Rule” outlines the amount of time necessary for greatness in a person’s chosen field, be it business, sport etc. Gladwell uses examples such as Bill Gates and The Beatles to illustrate that a large part of their success can be attributed to the copious amount of groundwork and practice put it, roughly 10 000 hours’ worth.

Like I said, I have yet to read the book, but seriously? All you have to do to rival Tiger Woods is to practice your golfing technique for 10 000 hours? Maybe I am missing the point here and I need to read the book but the old adage of “practice makes perfect” does not necessarily result in perfect - far from it in fact. This also applies to the modified mantra of “practice of perfect makes perfect”. If that were the case in endurance sports, then the legions of the overtrained would be standing on the podium every week whilst the true talents would be relegated to afterthoughts. Obsessive-compulsive would outlast intuition and the cookie-cutter approach to sporting excellence would be set in stone. Perfecting the S-stroke would guarantee a 49 minute split for a 3800 metre ocean swim.

What about influencing factors like:

• Beginner's Luck
• Natural Talent
• Drive
• Intuition
• Proper Coaching
• Mentorship
• Being in the Right Place at the Right Time (like Eddie Murphy)
• Opportunity 

A great example of the last term Opportunity would be a friend of mine, who is a brilliant all round sportsman. A national-level golfer in his teens, he captained the same provincial team that David Frost was part of during his matric year. Once high school was finished, Frost and my buddy went to the army to begin their compulsory two years national service. Frost, whilst also at a national-level in his teens, quickly rose to the next level and soon turned professional after an extended stint in the USA. He may have already had way over 10 000 hours of practice before even making that under-19 provincial squad. Or he may have had way less accumulated hours and far more drive (excuse the pun), determination to succeed and above all else natural talent. My buddy chose a different path, continuing to play golf at top club level but also began to dabble in other sports, including posting some impressive standard marathon times and beginning a successful retail career. Not that he has any regrets though. Today, he lives a happy life with his wife and two kids, is one of the foremost running shoe experts in the country and regularly embarrasses cyclists half his age on the climbs around Cape Town.

A recent new-release is David Epstein’s book The Sporting Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. This would be a great read and I’m busy reading through a couple of interviews that the author has done with various media sites. Apparently this books is a sort of antithesis to the “10 000 Hour Rule” and includes in depth scientific studies, anecdotal evidence and perspectives from a multitude of coaches and athletes worldwide.  

Interview 1 - link

Interview 2 - link

As I alluded to earlier, I am a “multi-reader” so it might take some time to get through these pieces but I did listen to a great podcast with Epstein on Competitor Radio the other day. Epstein competed in middle distance running during his high school and college years and it was there that his interest in sporting performance and individual limitations began to grow. One thing that he noticed at high school was the seeming laziness of some of the Jamaican sprinters, who would often not even pitch up for practice, only to decimate the opposition come race time. Or the fact that, whilst in college, he performed better in the middle distances with a substantially lower weekly mileage (less than 60km/week) as opposed to some of his teammates and competitors who regularly trained in excess of 120km/week with, similar and in some cases better results. This highlighted to him that what works for one person may not necessarily work for another.

It is examples such as these that cause me to have trouble accepting mantras like “The 10 000 Hour Rule” or “Practice Makes Perfect”. In sporting terms at least, there are so many other variables that can influence the outcome of an individual’s quest for peak performance. It is like the scores of wannabe-ironmen and women that adorn our roads these days. Whilst there is nothing wrong with pursuing a goal like completing an ultra-distance triathlon, the problem comes when a person tries to emulate the training schedules of others and applies such quantitative notions as accumulated hours per week into their already busy lives. It is as if there is only one way to achieve optimal athletic performance. If one takes 10 000 hours at face value, this would roughly translate into 500 weeks (or 9.6 years!) of training 20 hours per week before proficiency is attained. Why 20 hours you may say? That figure seems to be the accepted norm by many amateur athletes that I have spoken to preparing for events such as ironman triathlons and weeklong MTB stage races. One template fits all, apparently.

To get back to the whole talent versus work-ethic debate, what about the often-used terminology that is “wasted talent”? Stories of teenage “wunderkids” not living up to the potential expected of them are certainly dime-a-dozen. Many of these “phenoms” are exposed to essentials such as proper coaching and training facilities from an early age yet don’t have the will or desire to succeed. Maybe they just get bored, especially after thousands of hours of practice.

Other “talents” forge their own paths to greatness through sheer hard work and persistence only to not make the final step into the big time of their respective sports. There are many reasons for their seemingly stumbling at the final hurdle. Yet their journey pays off in other aspects later on in their lives, often unearthing untapped skills that are complemented beautifully by their previous years of sacrifice and determination in their chosen sport. And that could even be interpreted as truly overcoming the final hurdle to their true vocations.

The above photograph shows four of talented cyclists from South Africa. The setting is at a prestigious stage race in Germany circa 1994 where these fellows were “cutting their teeth” against well-funded and supported European national and professional teams. All four of these guys had innate potential and ability that should have seen them plying their trade on top professional teams. But various factors meant that they did not achieve the success that their collective ability suggested.

It is almost two decades later and all four of the guys photographed have left their mark and have been highly successful in pursuits related to the sport of cycling, but not as professional riders for top international teams. Rather they have found their true métiers in other spheres of the sport lending credence to the term “unearthing hidden talent”. Two of them, Douglas Ryder and Malcolm Lange, are the respective founders and owners of their own  professional cycling teams. Mark Blewett has his own bicycle brand and Nic White is a successful retailer in the bicycle industry, runs a cycling academy and leads a popular annual mountain bike tour to Lesotho. Their experiences as battling amateurs and later as neo-professionals in the big, bad world of international cycling certainly stood them in good stead for their current roles. While they were most likely unaware of this “educational” process whilst in the gutter on some road in Belgium in the midst of an echelon, it is indeed funny how things work out.

Organizing a pro team, motivating your riders, identifying new talent, negotiating contacts with riders, pursuing potential sponsors, knowledge of the European continent, having your start money stolen by your soigneur, the network of contacts built up during their riding careers – these are but a few of the skills and experiences that they would have learnt as aspirant professionals and are now of great value to themselves and the members of their organizations.

For more about three of the four guys in the photo and their early careers, go to the following 2010 interviews:

Douglas Ryder

Mark Blewett

Nic White 

In the Competitor Radio podcast mentioned earlier, David Epstein alludes to the benefits of group training amongst Kenyan athletes and the USA is coming out of its decade long slump in athletics by unconsciously mimicking this sort of team environment with initiatives like the Oregon Project. This sort of espirit de corps is often the key factor in achieving excellence in any endeavor, but is certainly not paramount to success. Some people perform better when part of a squad whilst others prefer the solitude of solo training in the comfort of their home surroundings. That South African cycling team I mentioned certainly benefited from the group environment in their formative years, as is evident by this extract from the Douglas Ryder interview link above: 

“There was a very successful group of us racing in Cape Town back then… we raced to win so we did really well. The Johannesburg-based amateurs were used to getting beaten by these guys’ week in and week out so they had a different mindset when racing. We raced to win and we loved to travel - every race was an adventure that brought us closer together as a team and we raced liked that.” 

So after all this rambling about two books that I have yet to read, I had better go and a copy of each. Maybe I have totally misunderstood their meaning – only time will tell I suppose. I look forward to seeing what each author has to say about some of the topics present in this blog post. Maybe I’ll have to abandon my “multi-reading” habit and give each book the attention it deserves.