Many people will now be aware or have heard of the 10,000 hour rule publicised by Malcolm Gladwell. The principle holds that 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” are needed to become world-class in any field whether it is in music, business, art or sport.
However, what many people are unaware of is that this rule has later been discredited on many counts and the original man behind the research Anders Ericsson has publicly bemoaned the context that Gladwell used it in his book ‘Outliers’.
As well as the 10,000 hour rule the media coverage of the road to success for Tiger Woods in golf and the Williams sisters in tennis who spent a large part of their childhood practising and specialising in one sport has been seen by many parents as the blueprint to success.
However, for the success of Woods and the Williams sisters there will have been thousands of failures attempting the above model that will have ended in failure – the only difference is that we do not know anything about it!
Long term athletic development requires far more components than just deliberate practice.
Two of the biggest issues evolving from the 10,000 hour rule are single sport specialisation and the push for early selection to elite sporting programmes.
Many parents now feel the need to get their child to 10,000 hours as soon as possible and to do this will ultimately mean focussing the vast majority of time and money playing and practising one sport. This can rob them of their childhood and many children do not find the sport they would have enjoyed the most and become the most successful at.
We have discussed on many occasions on this site the problem of single sport specialisation at an early age that can lead to problems such as burnout, injury, lack of motivation and also psychological issues yet parents cannot see beyond the initial short term success in helping their children achieve the best from their sport.
Sport should be a lifelong, long term investment for any child and any parent.
The fact still remains that although there may be exceptions many top level sportsmen and women sampled a variety of sports during their early years and only in their teenage years did they really begin to specialise and focus on one specific sport.
Outside of female gymnastics, figure skating, and diving, there are no definitive studies that directly tie early specialisation to a greater chance of long-term, high-level success.
Article courtesy of Gordon Maclelland from www.parentsinsport.co.uk
