practice artical
- Thread starter fasted71465
- Start date
The article basically seems to say that 10,000 hours of practice won't guarantee that you will be a chess or piano champion and that there may be some people who get there in 2,000 hours. In short, no surprise.
A very interesting read in this area is the book "The Sports Gene" which looks at a whole bunch of nature/nurture cases and seems not to have any axe to grind.
We'd have to see the full study, since they appear to be simply surveying participants regarding their practice time. The only clear way you can identify the merit of practice is to take sampling of students at the beginning of their journey and have them keep practice logs. Even then, there are so many other contributing factors.
I remember when Jon Jones was an up and comer in the UFC, the buzz was that he had only been fighting for 2 years and what a prodigious talent he is. A little digging shows a strong background in wrestling and numerous championships behind him. He may have only started learning stand up a two years prior, but the wrestling background would have given him a significant leg up against other rookies.
Accurate or not however, I don't think it's useful for a student to know that some people don't have to practice at all. It probably behooves every beginner to put as much time into the game as possible, because otherwise it's really a crap shoot. But with some of the greatest players of all time, I keep hearing that they were single minded practicers and hard workers (Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis come to mind).
"The Sports Gene" seems like a book I would be interested in. I am going to find it. I know by experience that practice and hitting a million balls hasn't gotten me near the level I would like.
I taught guitar for years and the biggest difference between my students who put a lot of effort into it and succeeded and those that practiced and plateaued was the successful guitarists pushed themselves to learn increasingly more difficult pieces and were not satisfied with anything less than perfection. The less successful guitarists would practice, but generally stayed in their comfort zone. And those that tried harder material were quick to say "close enough", satisfied with either playing choppy or substituting harder sequences for a variation that was already within their ability level.
You can probably apply this to any pursuit, where even though a student on the surface practice properly, they may leave something to be desired in their pursuit of perfection (or lack of). They also may not be aware how to go about improving their technique to a degree that might facilitate improvement either.
