Subject: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

I just finished The Talent Code, and it was fascinating on many levels. There are so many implications for any coach or teacher of anything....I can't begin to address them all, which is why it's such a valuable book. One of the many concepts that really hit home with me with me though was the concept of "deep practice" being uncomfortable rather than easy repetition of skills or drills. It reminded me of a few hockey books I've picked up in the last year....

After seeing his name in many books (including Tom's) and articles, I tracked down a copy of the out of print Road to Olympus by Anatoly Tarasov, the famous Red Army hockey coach. Tarasov describes how he made the speed and challenge of practices uncomfortable for his players so that game speed would seem like slow motion. In essence they were always in "deep practice" mode on the ice. The Red Army also had the "spark" ignited by national pride and being underdogs when they first came on the international hockey scene.

Herb Brooks did the same thing with the 1980 US Olympic team of "Miracle on Ice" fame. In the book Overspeed Training for Hockey, available for free HERE, trainer Jack Blather describes how the 1980 US team also practiced at speeds that pushed the envelope of comfort, with the goal of being able to match the Red Army team's conditioning level. Again, this sounds very much like the "deep practice" Coyle describes, and the spark was obviously ignited by the challenge and opportunity to represent the country on it's home turf.

Finally, after reading about Brazilian "Futsal" in Coyle's book and the skilled players it helps develop, I'm reminded of the emphasis Tom places on using small area games to teach the bigger game. The Futsal concept fascinates me too in that the smaller ball requires faster and more accurate skills to control and shoot/pass accurately....it's overspeed training for ball handling skills, and I'm left wondering what the hockey equivalent for this might be that could be used on the ice? Tennis ball hockey on ice is a good attempt at this but the bounce of the ball tends to minimize opportunities to handle and control the ball. Any suggestions or ideas?

I've only scratched the surface of the learning concepts presented in the book, but I'm curious what the rest of you think are implications on how we can coach hockey better or differently.

DMan

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

To teach a skill and to deep practice I guess we should slow down and break the skill in to chunks like the book says. I think that Coyle meant that kids felt uncomfortable because they practiced slowly and they had (and were demanded) to really concentrate on the practice (to fire the right circuits). But of course add speed when we're learning to give new impulses.

I think it's very important to train and build diverse set of basic skills to kids; agility, coordination, balance etc. (its myelin base to every hockey skill).

To me the most fascinating thing form the book and its website is the game reading and game sense studies and how it can be teached. And I believe that it's in this area where the overspeed training is helpful, But also all the games that you play. Diverse use on different games on and off ice gives to your player more options and (creative) solutions to different game situations.

Kai

D200 - 3 Cross Ice Games at once

Here is an idea of how to use the ice to play tournaments on one sheet. Incorporate one tournament per week. Two or three teams could share the ice and set up everything before so they don't waste time. I have included a diagram. Use hollow 4x4 boards, hose or rink dividers. Add rule modifications and keep score.

Use foam pads, wooden or thick hoses to divide the rink into three sections and 3 benches. Play 5-5 with 5-7 year olds and 4-4 with 9-10 year olds. A 60 minute ice time could be a 6 team round robin tournament of 10' games. 5 min. warm up and 1 min. between games to switch rinks. Cotinuous. After a goal take the puck out right away and go. Opposition can't pressure until one player crosses the mid line.

Another idea is to divide the rink into 4 areas.

The last 13 years I taught PE we got double classes with 48-60 kid's in a small gym with 3 badminton courts and 6 baskets. We would divide the students into 12 teams and make 6 areas. I added a line between the cross gym badminton courts to make 6 areas for badminton and volleyball and of course 2 groups would be under each basket. I also used a rope instead of nets so it was easy to remove for the 10 minute run at the start of each class. We would do skills in the small groups. (no one sitting out) and then play tournaments with modified rules. The kid's loved pe because it was fun and they also got very fit and learned the skills.
http://hockeycoachingabcs.com/filemgmt/index.php?id=43 is the link to a video of a volleyball and a bball class.

The hockey rink is a big place if coaches open their minds up and think of ways to use the space to teach both the individual and game playing skills.

I am going to upload it again as an example how to use space efficiently.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Thanks Kai & Tom,

I agree that breaking down or "chunking" a skill into small pieces, doing it slowly and properly, makes all the sense in the world, and the small area game tournament will be a regular feature for me this year. I did this once last year and it worked quite well.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but I'm still stuck on the brilliance of Brazilian "futsal." It has the benefits of a small area game AND increases skill development through modified equipment. It's like the nervous system overload that Tom talks about here:
http://hockeycoachingabcs.com/forum/getattachment.php?id=281
....inserted into a game teaching situation.

The Soviets and 1980 US team used weight vests during practice to increase leg strength, and the US team sometimes practiced with minimal equipment to get comfortable doing things at higher speeds. Futsal uses a smaller (heavier too, I think) ball which requires more exact skill. What can we do to push the skills that small area games teach even further?

Any thoughts?

Thanks again.

Discussions on "The Talent Code"

I think that we have to incorporate practices that are in a tournament format. Play games with modified rules. Overload the players by using a tennis ball, heaviy pucks, light pucks. Sometimes play soccer with a ball or using a puck.

It only takes the willingness to create a practice kit at each arena that has rink dividers, small nets, and various kinds of balls and pucks.

So instead of having the traditional skills practice and full ice games add one dimension. Teams combine every second practice and make 6 or 8 smaller teams and play 3 cross ice or 4 1/4 ice games. Play tournaments in small areas. Keep score. Then play the regular full ice games that they always play. (there is no way parents are ready to give these up)

I would love to get a curling rink and make two smaller rinks for youth hockey. In Calgary they have shut many curling rinks down. One close to me is now part of a school and the Big Four building used to be the largest curling rink in the world. 2 floors with 24 rinks on each level. Just think of how much U10 hockey could have been played there. Easily 5 rinks on each floor. It is also a great 3-3 size for any age.

Just some thoughts.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Few years ago I was at coaching seminar where we played a really funny SAG. you palyed with a partner shoulder to shoulder but just one stick per pair so that you would play lower hand on the stick and your partner would play witk upper hand. With the frre hand you
would hold on to you pair.

We have used tennis balls, we played Ultimate Frisbee on ice. 3 on 3 with 3 pucks ( or e.g.one puck, one tennis ball and one light puck) you're free to score both of the goals. Play just with you fore/back hand etc. Use themed games off-ice too with soccer, basketball and floorball etc.

Then we've used reaction drills where player has two or more options and the have to make quick pass (after deke or under pressure) to right player (e.g. one player plays stick on ice when rest of the target players play stick off the ice).


Kai

"The Talent Code" players goals

Not size, strength, iq, or any factor was as significant as the answer to the simple question, "How long do you intend to play the sport? (musical instrument, dance etc.)
1. one year.
2. until finished grade school.
3. until finished high school.
4. all my life.

These were broken into, a. short term commitment, b. medium, c. long term.

When someone VIEWS THEMSELVES as a researcher, athlete, musician or whatever then they engage in deep practice and benefit from the time spent practicing or studying. He found that someone with a long term view would benefit as much from 10 min. of practice as someone with a short term commitment got out of 90 min. of practice.

So you need the learner to be totally engaged in the activity along with excellent teaching.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Thanks Tom & Kai,

I appreciate the input and ideas. The correlation between intended length of involvement and rapid learning is very interesting. Not too many people are pushing hockey as a lifetime sport, but I agree it is and should be emphasized as one. I also found it interesting that many of the talent hotbeds were sparse, bare-bones kind of facilities rather than posh & specialized ones.

Here's an older but interesting article on hockey talent hot beds:
http://www.nhl.com/intheslot/read/impact/2003_04/january/top10_spots.html
Tom, some of your videos are from Turku aren't they? What is it that makes these places so much more productive?

DM

Turku

DM, I think Turku has a rich hockey tradition and TPS used to be the Canadiens of Finland. Juhani started a lot of youth development and his sports school hockey class had players like Kiprusoff and Koivu in it. After a long hiatus from the top of the league TPS won the Championship this season.
The top goalie coach is from TPS and Finland produces more goalies than anywhere else right now.

I was in Turku last month and there are lots of sports facilities that were well used as I drove and walked around.

So I think they have the tradition and the great coaching that is needed to be a hotbed.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Quote by: TomM

DM, I think Turku has a rich hockey tradition and TPS used to be the Canadiens of Finland. Juhani started a lot of youth development and his sports school hockey class had players like Kiprusoff and Koivu in it. After a long hiatus from the top of the league TPS won the Championship this season.
The top goalie coach is from TPS and Finland produces more goalies than anywhere else right now.

I was in Turku last month and there are lots of sports facilities that were well used as I drove and walked around.

So I think they have the tradition and the great coaching that is needed to be a hotbed.

And Yurzinov was the head coach of TPS at that time. 1992-1998
Here are few players that Yurzinov coached:
Saku Koivu (Canadiens, Ducks)
Aki Berg (Kings, Maple Leafs)
Fredrik Norrena (Blue Jackets)
Antti Aalto (Ducks)
Jani Hurme (Senators, Panthers, Ducks)
Sami Salo (Canucks, Senators)
Marko Kiprusoff (Canadiens, Islanders)
Miikka Kiprusoff (Flames, Sharks)
Petteri Nummelin (Blue Jackets, Wild)
Antero Niittymäki (Lighting, Flyers)

Yursi

Yursi is a great coach. Around 65 players that he coached went to the NHL. I did some seminars with him and Juuso while he was coaching TPS. They are great friends and played against each other for years in world championships and Olympics. In 93 Yursi had me run a practice with the TPS pro's with a focus on body checking. He came one week a month while I was in Salzburg and ran skill sessions in the mornings for all the players. I have posted a puck handling and a skating practice that he did.

(Yursinov played for the Soviet Union then coached for years as the assistant to Tikonov and was head coach of Dynamo. Players like Yashin, Kovalev and most Russian greats played for him. He then coached in Finland and Switzerland and the last years goes around and works with various clubs as a guest coach. He is about seventy now and a really pleasant and funny man who has a passion for the game.)

So it was a combination of great tradition and two coaches who have been inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame. Yursi coached the pro's and Juuso coached the hockey class for 2 sports schools. (Juuso also coached TPS and in Switzerland and Germany)

They both not only coach skills but how to Play the Game.

I have shared there techniques over the years with this website. Juuso and I started communicating with letters in the late 80's, then with faxes and then email and now email and skype. He would share the ideas that him and Yursi were discussing.

I like the direction coaching is starting to take. The focus is going away from strictly skill development using drill after drill to combining skill development with learning how to play using games and trasntion games in practice. So now we are starting to build the toolbox to put the tools in.

I just got home from teaching my last hockey on ice session of the year 13 kid's and 2 goalies. Here the kid's go to school until the end of June 200 days. Good bunch of kid's and some very good players.

Talent Code feature on Nightline

http://thetalentcode.com/nightline/ is the link to a good intro to the ideas in the Talent Code.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

A Gauge for Measuring Effective Practice

by Daniel Coyle


If you distilled all the new science about talent development into two words of advice, they would be “practice better.”

That’s it. Practice. Better.

Forget everything else about your genes, your potential — it’s all just noise. The most basic truth is that if you practice better, you’ll develop your talent — and you won’t develop your talent unless you practice better. Period.

For most of us, that’s precisely where we bump into a common problem: how? Specifically, which practice method to choose? Do we focus on repeating a skill we’ve got, or do we work on new skills? What kinds of drills work best? What’s the best way to spend the limited time we’ve got?

When it comes to figuring out how to practice better, we often feel like we’re standing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. There are lots of seemingly attractive choices. But how do we pick the ones that have the most nutrition, and avoid the ones that are empty calories?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’d like to use this blog as a test drive for a new gauge for comparing practice methods. I’m calling it the R.E.P.S. Gauge.

(Okay, acronyms are cheesy, I know. But they’ve been around for a long time because they work.)

R stands for Reaching/Repeating.

E stands for Engagment.

P stands for Purposefulness

S stands for Strong, Direct, Immediate Feedback.

The idea behind the gauge is simple: you should practice methods that contain these key elements, and avoid methods that don’t. Below, you’ll find a description of each element along with a sample choice to illustrate how it works.

Element 1: Reaching and Repeating. Does the practice have you operating on the edge of your ability, reaching and repeating? How many reaches are you making each minute? Each hour?

Scenario: a math teacher trying to teach multiplication tables to 30 students.

• Teacher A selects a single student to write the tables on the board.

• Teacher B creates a “game show” format where a math question is posed verbally to the entire class, then calls on a single student to answer.

Result: Teacher B chose the better option because it creates 30 reaches in the same amount of time. In Classroom A, only one student had to truly stretch — everybody else could lean back and observe. In Classroom B, however, every single member of the class has to stretch (picture the wires of their brains, reaching) in case their name is called. Not a small difference.

Element 2: Engagement. Is the practice immersive? Does it command your attention? Does it use emotion to propel you toward a goal?

Scenario: a violin student trying to perfect a short, tough passage in a song.

• Student A plays the passage 20 times.

• Student B tries to play the passage perfectly — with zero mistakes — five times in a row. If they make any mistake, the count goes back to zero and they start over.

Result: Student B made the better choice, because the method is more engaging. Playing a passage 20 times in a row is boring, a chore where you’re simply counting the reps until you’re done. But playing 5 perfectly, where any mistake sends you back to zero, is intensively engaging. It’s a juicy little game.

Element 3: Purposefulness. Does the task directly connect to the skill you want to build?

Scenario: a basketball team keeps losing games because they’re missing late free-throws.

• Team A practices free throws at the end of a practice, with each player shooting 50 free throws.

• Team B practices free throws during a scrimmage, so each player has to shoot them while exhausted, under pressure.

Result: Team B made the better choice, because their practice connects to the skill you want to build: the ability to make free throws under pressure, while exhausted. (No player ever gets to shoot 50 straight in a game.)

The fourth element: Strong, Direct, Immediate Feedback. In other words, the learner always knows how they’re doing — where they’re making mistakes, where they’re doing well — because the practice is telling them in real time. They don’t need anybody to explain that they need to do X or Y, because it’s clear as a bell.

Scenario: a high school student trying to improve her SAT score.

• Student A spends a Saturday taking a mock version of the entire SAT test, receiving results back one week later.

• Student B spends a Saturday taking a mini-version of each section, self-grading and reviewing each test in detail as soon as it’s completed.

Result: Student B made the better choice, because the feedback is direct and immediate. Learning immediately where she went wrong (and where she went right) will tend to stick, while learning about it in a week will have little effect.

The idea of this gauge is simple: practices that contain all four of these core elements (R.E.P.S.) are the ones you want to choose, because those are the ones that will produce the most progress in the shortest amount of time. Audit your practices and get rid of the methods that have fewer R.E.P.S. and replace them with methods that have lots.

The other takeaway here is that small, strategic changes in practice can produce huge benefits in learning. Making a little tweak to the learning space — for instance, teaching multiplication through a little juicy game that keeps 30 people on their toes — can have big effects on learning velocity. Spending time strategizing your practice is one of the most effective investments you can make in developing talent.

But as I said at the start, this idea is still in the experimental phase. What other elements should we consider including? How do you achieve your best practices? What else should we add here?


As a sidenote, this will be my last blog entry for a little while, as I’m going to take the summer to work on a couple of book projects. I will be checking in periodically, of course, and will start up again in earnest when the school year starts in August. Thanks for reading, for all your insightful and helpful comments, and for making this project so fun and worthwhile.


This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 6:22 am.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357

Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice?

By Michael Kruse, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, March 27, 2011




One wet, raw day last April, at the Broadmoor public golf course in Portland, Ore., Dan McLaughlin stood in the center of one of the greens. He wore running shoes, blue jeans and a yellow rubber raincoat. He wrapped his frozen fingers around a two-buck putter and hit one-foot putts, and he did that for two hours straight, stopped for a cup of hot, decaffeinated tea, then did it for two hours more. That's how this started.

On his 30th birthday, June 27, 2009, Dan had decided to quit his job to become a professional golfer.

He had almost no experience and even less interest in the sport.

What he really wanted to do was test the 10,000-hour theory he read about in the Malcolm Gladwell bestseller Outliers. That, Gladwell wrote, is the amount of time it takes to get really good at anything — "the magic number of greatness."

The idea appealed to Dan. His 9-to-5 job as a commercial photographer had become unfulfilling. He didn't want just to pay his bills. He wanted to make a change.

Could he stop being one thing and start being another? Could he, an average man, 5 feet 9 and 155 pounds, become a pro golfer, just by trying? Dan's not doing an experiment. He is the experiment.

The Dan Plan will take six hours a day, six days a week, for six years. He is keeping diligent records of his practice and progress. People who study expertise say no one has done quite what Dan is doing right now.

Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the Pacific Northwest. "If I could become a professional golfer," he said one afternoon, "the world is literally open to any options for anybody."

• • •

Dan is the youngest son of a family of high achievers. One of his grandfathers was a career IBM man. The other was a civil engineer. His father is an actuary. So is his brother. Actuaries calculate risk. They make statistical predictions about the future based on past performance. His brother graduated with high honors as a math major from Georgia Tech and then did it again in the divinity program at Boston University and now lives and works in New York City and is married with a young daughter. His sister is a dermatologist in Atlanta and a mother of four. She regularly runs marathons.

Dan? He's the only one of his siblings who wasn't confirmed in the Methodist church in which they grew up. He didn't understand why he had to do this just because everybody else was doing this. He was 12.

Within his immediate family, he said, "I'm definitely the one with the most wander in my heart."

He went to Fiji with no guidebook during a military coup in which he saw men with machine guns at the airport and men with machetes outside. He biked through Thailand and Cambodia. He lived for five months in Australia, where he worked as a waiter because he arrived in the country with no money.

In Portland, throughout his late 20s, he took pictures of dental equipment, which let him buy his own home but also left him with a dissatisfied feeling. There had to be something more.

He started saving money for graduate school. He didn't eat out or go to first-run movies and he rented out rooms in his house. He managed to save $100,000. When it came time to apply to grad school, though, that didn't feel right, either.

Shelves and shelves of self-help books are stocked in America with the canon of the quick fix. The 10,000-hour concept, though, is based on academic research into the idea that success is a choice — made, not born. At first glance, it feels like a very American idea — you can be anything you want to be — but it is an unsentimental view of the world. It helps to be tall in basketball, and it helps to start violin lessons at a young age, but what separates the few truly great from the many merely good is not talent or magic or luck. It's dedication and discipline.

The secret to success isn't a secret. It's work.

Dan played competitive tennis as a boy, and was good at it, and then quit. He ran one year of cross country in high school, and was good at it, and then quit. He wanted to run on his own. He followed his brother to Boston University for a year and was a physics and math major, and then quit. Instead, he traveled, alone. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in photojournalism and was a photographer for a newspaper in Chattanooga, Tenn., for a year, and then quit.

He has started five novels.

He took one piano lesson.

• • •

When Dan first told his family about The Dan Plan, his father thought: In 10,000 hours, you could become a doctor. He wondered what to tell his son. Don't quit the job you don't like? Don't gamble with your future? The actuary wanted to tell him those things. The father did not.

But Steve McLaughlin also didn't think his son would take this as far as he has. Neither did his mother. Neither did his brother or his sister or his girlfriend.

"Dan's always been an ideas guy," his brother, Matthew McLaughlin, said. "The fact that he would think of such a thing isn't surprising. But ideas are one thing. Execution is another. He would get frustrated and quit."

At this point, though, more than 1,000 hours and nearly a year into the plan, they're more than surprised. They're impressed.

"He's very driven," said his mother, Susan McLaughlin.

"He seems a little more confident and focused," his father said. "There's not a lot of wasted time."

"I used to think of him as very laid-back, sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants," his sister, Elizabeth Losken, said. "Ever since he started The Dan Plan, I'm seeing his personality is a lot more like mine than I thought possible. I definitely see a kindred spirit in him. I see him being a lot more dedicated to what he's doing."

Both his siblings are also something they didn't expect to be.

"There have been times," his sister said, "when I've been envious."

Said his brother: "I got out of high school, went to college, went to grad school, got a job . . ."

"I think it's the reason he's doing this," said Marijke Dixon, his live-in girlfriend in Portland. "He needs to succeed at something, but it can't be on their terms. I think he's trying to come to terms with it, his need to succeed, but in his own way."

"I think the takeaway for me," his brother said, "would be that you can be a lot more than you are, that there's a lot more room for excellence than we typically admit to ourselves."

• • •

The wind rustled the tops of the palms at the Treasure Bay golf course in Treasure Island. Dan took a practice swing. He took another.

He has three clubs in his bag, a putter, a chipper and a wedge. That's it. That's because of his coach.

Back when he first pitched his idea to Christopher Smith, a Nike-affiliated coach who has written a book about golf, Smith was not just uninterested. He was insulted. Golf is famously frustrating. Smith told Dan it was much harder than he thought. He told him to Google K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University, a psychology professor and a leading expert on expertise.

Dan Googled him. Then called him. Then read his scholarly work. Smith started to think Dan was more committed than he had originally thought. Perhaps Dan was an opportunity. How would he teach golf to a person who was relatively fit, clearly willing and totally untouched, with no bad habits to undo because there were no habits at all?

Dan persuaded Smith to coach him. He got Nike to give him some free shoes, clothes and clubs. He set up a Twitter account, a Facebook page and a blog at thedanplan.com. By now, on Dan's loose team of interested consultants are Smith, Ericsson, a personal trainer in Portland and a professor of kinesiology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Here's how they have Dan trying to learn golf: He couldn't putt from 3 feet until he was good enough at putting from 1 foot. He couldn't putt from 5 feet until he was good enough putting from 3 feet. He's working away from the hole. He didn't get off the green for five months. A putter was the only club in his bag.

Everybody asks him what he shoots for a round. He has no idea. His next drive will be his first.

In his month in Florida, he worked as far as 50 yards away from the hole. He might — might — have a full set of clubs a year from now.

At Treasure Bay, with the Intracoastal and the causeway in the distance, he whacked a sharp low shot into a fence. It skidded into some seashells and crabgrass. He sliced another ball into a lake. A startled duck jerked its head. He lofted a chip toward the hole and the ball rolled toward the cup. And past it. Too long.

To this point, Dan says, he has ended up liking golf more than he thought he would. It feels like a puzzle, he has found, always a challenge, never the same shot twice. It feels good, he says, to work and work and then to finally hit one the way he's supposed to hit it, just right.

He lofted another chip toward the hole.

And almost into it.

"Everybody hits bad shots," he said. "But it's how you recover from those bad shots that matters."

• • •

Late last month Dan drove a small rented Nissan up to Tallahassee for a conference at Florida State on performance and expertise. Ericsson was scheduled to speak. So was Dan. Ericsson invited him.

On the campus, in a classroom, Dan listened to smart people say interesting things about data compiled and experiments done.

Then it was his turn.

"I live in Portland, Oregon, and I'm 31 years old," he said at the start of his presentation.

He showed them his bag with three clubs. He put up PowerPoint graphs charting his gradual improvement in putting and chipping.

There are more than 27 million people in this country who play golf. There are 125 permanent spots on the PGA Tour. Smith has told Dan the odds of him earning one of those spots are astronomically long. He picked golf, Dan says, because he wanted something not impossible but close. He grants that there's a "99 percent chance I'm not going to become a PGA golfer." But that's not the point.

"Basically," he told the people at the conference, "what I'm trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put in the time.

"I'm testing human potential."

Everybody in the classroom clapped for Dan and his plan.

Outside, Ericsson said to Dan, "I'm so intrigued here by your commitment to do this."

People, of course, have become world-class after practicing 10,000 hours, in golf and tennis and violin or anything else. But never, not in anything, according to Ericsson, has anyone done it like this: to start at this age, with no experience, and to keep statistics from the beginning, and to be so self-reflective about it, and to last even this long. Dan, Ericsson says, is "like Columbus here, sailing out in new territory."

Ericsson asked Dan if he had any questions.

Questions?

Sometimes it feels like it's all he has.

How is he doing? What if all he's doing is getting really good at practicing golf and not at playing it? How will he know?

What will success look like?

Failure?

Back in St. Petersburg, he said, "I don't think it can fail, because it's not really about me or what ultimately happens with me. It's about blazing a new path and kind of trying to change the way people see life's possibilities."

On the drive to Tallahassee, he said, "If I put in those 10,000 hours, in my eyes, no matter the outcome, I will have been successful. Because I think I'll be much more in tune with my abilities."

On the drive back, he said, "One of the things I'm learning in this process is the ability to overcome frustrations, and that's a huge part of golf. That's a huge part of anything, I guess, right?"

Maybe he will become a pro golfer. Maybe he will become an excellent golfer. Maybe he will become an average golfer. Maybe he won't.

He's certain, though, that won't be the ultimate measure of success. Success, he has found, is in the sincerity of the pursuit.

"I like where I am in life right now," he said, eyes on the road ahead, 8,803 hours to go.

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.

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Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Eric,

I just started re-reading the Talent Code yesterday... now this really inspires me. That is one impressive article. Thanks! I will be sharing it with several of my colleagues.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

As the article says... he has a blog. www.thedanplan.com

I visited it last night and shot him an email to which he responded very quickly.

I think the results of his experiment has the potential to really change the way people look at things. For me, when I finished reading Talent Code, not only was I impressed with the content, I was mostly inspired. I felt like I could accomplish anything and my confidence soared. It was the same feeling that we, as coaches, try to instill in players daily.

I will be following The Dan Plan and sharing it with as many people as I know. I'm excited to see the results.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

I just checked his site. Very interesting! I will be following this closely. We had a great discussion about Dan this morning after our ice session. Eric, if you find any other articles, please post them. Thanks!

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' competitiveness has him poised to take the next step

By David Staples, Edmonton Journal June 19, 2011


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Strong+parenting+keeps+prospective+prize+line/4970854/story.html#ixzz1Pk5rWs5u

Keep in mind the principles of the Talent Code when you read this article...


RED DEER - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the best 18-year-old hockey player in Canada, sits in a Red Deer Boston Pizza eating jambalaya, drinking ice tea, and watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.

At a nearby table, two teenage girls melt into puddles of ecstatic admiration at the sight of Nugent-Hopkins. He appears not to notice.

The sharp focus on Nugent-Hopkins, dubbed “Hoppy” by his teammates and as “RNH” by the draftnicks and hockey fanatics who now track his every game and comment, is part of what Red Deer hockey folk jokingly refer to as the Hoparazzi. News reporters and fans have started to buzz around him in recent months as he has climbed the rankings to become the consensus top prospect in next week’s National Hockey League entry draft.

Nugent-Hopkins, the star centre of the Western Hockey League’s Red Deer Rebels, smiles when the subject of the Hoparazzi is raised, but makes little of the attention.

“It’s been good. It’s been fun. I just go in and try to have fun with it, just enjoy it. I don’t like to be cocky and I don’t like when hockey players get cocky and stuff. Some hockey players in the WHL are pretty cocky. I don’t like cocky people in general. I don’t like it when people are very arrogant.”

Cam Moon, who does play-by-play for Red Deer and also handles the team’s media relations, says the hoopla hasn’t changed Nugent-Hopkins. “It’s like it’s nothing. It does not change his personality, demeanour or anything about his day. He’s one of the guys who can do two different pretty big media availabilities on game day to no effect.”

In Canada, we do one thing better than anyone else in the world — churn out world-class hockey players. Nugent-Hopkins is the latest on the assembly line.

Forged in the cauldron of elite Canadian hockey schools, programs and leagues, it’s no surprise that Nugent-Hopkins is now coolly dealing with the pressures and privileges of his top prospect status.

He’s a typical, conventional 18-year-old. He likes playing Halo and listening to Dierks Bentley. He isn’t keen on Lady Gaga.

He’s different in that he has had an agent since he was 14.

He has already represented his country at an international event, a major tournament in Slovakia last summer. As a player, he has drawn comparisons to NHL stars Pavel Datsyuk and Matt Duchene, but the kid doesn’t carry himself like a star.

He is slender and wiry, not a Big Bobby Clobber of a hockey player and not a commanding presence. His manner is modest, but he confidently answers questions about himself. There’s no swagger about the kid, off the ice at least, but there is a calm and a maturity notable for his age and lofty position.

Two weeks ago, Oilers GM Steve Tambellini met for a few hours with John Batchelor, Nugent-Hopkins’ old bantam coach in Burnaby, B.C. Batchelor had once coached Tambellini’s own son at the Burnaby Winter Club, a hockey hothouse.

In the meeting, Tambellini had many questions about Nugent-Hopkins, who most expect the Oilers will take with the first overall pick. “As I said to Steve, if you’re looking for me to say something bad about the kid, you’re looking at the wrong guy, because he is everything you want in a player and in a human being.” Batchelor says. “You could walk into a room of 30 hockey players and you would not pick him out as the guy who is the stud. He doesn’t tell anybody. He does his talking on the ice.”

Nugent-Hopkins is the second of the two sons of Roger Hopkins, a coffee salesman, and Debbie Nugent, a nurse’s aide. Both his brother Adam, who is five years older, and Ryan, were always strong athletically, Roger says, walking at 10 months and running at age one.

But while Adam was a good athlete, Ryan always struck his father as being exceptional, both in terms of his gifts and his commitment. “If you saw Ryan play the outfield in baseball, you’d think he was Willie Mays. The guy is a gifted kid athletically and he’s good at whatever he’s done. On top of that, he’s got this understated drive. If you talk to Ryan, he doesn’t come across as a super aggressive guy. But he’s very, very competitive.”

Roger remembers going out and to hit a baseball to little Ryan. “He just loved doing it. He’d be diving one side, diving the other, over his head, and he’d wear me out. I’d say, ‘I’m going.’ He’d say ‘Oh gosh, you always quit dad.’ ”

As a child, Nugent-Hopkins watched clips of Maurice (Rocket) Richard Rocket’s play and admired his passion. “Every time he has the puck, his eyes are just huge and you can tell he has so much passion in playing. I felt a connection to him in that way. I get very into it. I’ve just always been a very competitive person in everything I’ve ever done.

“I always had a passion for the game. I always loved playing. It’s always been that one thing I’ve just loved doing.”

His parents divorced and the family never had much money, but they managed to join the private Burnaby Winter Club so Adam and Ryan could play elite hockey. There was an extra sheet of ice at the club, so when Adam was playing a game, Ryan would be out on his own, skating for a few hours.

Almost every night he would go down to the unfinished basement in his house to shoot pucks. On the wall, Roger taped targets. Ryan would try to hit them.

Roger would throw out pucks on the floor. Ryan’s task would be to keep his head and eyes up while stickhandling a golf ball around the pucks for 20 minutes.

Roger had all kinds of time and love for his boys, but he also had high standards, as the boys found out one night when Ryan was 12 or 13. “We were spending a lot of time, all of our money, effort and time, our heart and soul, because of their love for it,” Roger says of hockey. “But one night in particular neither of them had done what I thought was good. They just hadn’t put out, and I was always the guy who worked hard, so I wanted that from them. So I got in the car and I reamed them. I said, ‘If you think I’m spending the rest of my life where all we ever do is this and you’re not ready to put out, we’re quitting right now. Either you do it right or you get out of it.’ I was screaming at them.”

The message didn’t need to be repeated.

As Nugent-Hopkins puts it: “I try to be the hardest worker on the ice. That rubbed off from my parents.”

In 2008, Nugent Hopkins was drafted first overall in the WHL’s bantam draft by the Red Deer Rebels.

In his first year, he won the league’s rookie-of-the-year award, scoring 65 points in 67 games.

One setback came when he failed to make Canada’s Under-20 team last December, but he came back from that to increase his scoring at Red Deer, putting up 31 goals and 106 points in 67 games this season.

The challenge of balancing league games, practices, school, travel and tournaments has been good for his him, Roger says. He has matured a lot since he left home at age 15 to billet with a Red Deer family.

“He’s had a real grind and he’s learned how to cope with that,” Roger says. “The Western Hockey League humbles you.”

It’s not easy to play three games in four nights in four cities, get home on the team bus at 3 a.m. and go to school the next morning, Roger says. “You have to learn how to do that mentally.”

More recently, there have been daily requests for interviews, as well as a four-day trip to Toronto so NHL scouts could test his physical fitness and interview him.

At the same time, he has been trying to finish Grade 12. He spent this past week both training and brushing up on 1984, King Lear and Death of a Salesman for his English 30 exam. “Some parts are pretty boring,” he says of 1984, “like when the described everything about Big Brother over 50 pages.”

A month ago, his mom noticed on School-Zone that his mark had dipped below a passing grade, largely because he’d been so busy with the playoffs and road trips. “My mom called. She was not very happy. I just got some extra work and did it.”

He had brought his mark up to 60 heading into the final, he says.

He’s now focused on weight training to build up his body so he’s better able to play the NHL’s fierce checking game. He played last season at 160 to 165 pounds, but is up to 174. His goal is to play next year at 175 to 180 pounds.

In recent years, most top picks in the NHL draft have made the jump to the big league as 18-year-olds. Nugent-Hopkins also has that in mind. “I feel I could make the jump and that’s my goal for next year.”

To succeed in the NHL, he needs to be stronger and bigger, says Batchelor. “He’s probably not ready next year. I think he needs a little bit of maturation in his body. I think another year of junior would do him well.”

On the Boston Pizza TV screen, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas makes another big save.

How would he try to beat Thomas?

“I’d try to get him moving and go upstairs,” Nugent-Hopkins says. “He likes to go down when he gets across. I’d go side to side, either pass across or deke across.”

The Stanley Cup finals are far away from a Red Deer pizza place, but not for the ambitious Nugent-Hopkins. He was just in Boston, a guest of the NHL with other top prospects, where they met broadcaster Don Cherry and attended the first game of the finals.

“It’s pretty crazy to think I could be skating playing there,” Nugent-Hopkins says of the game on the TV screen. “It’s pretty cool to think about. Definitely.”

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Strong+parenting+keeps+prospective+prize+line/4970854/story.html#ixzz1Pk5OJ4Ws

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Math ability pre-destined: Study

Calgary Sun WENN.COM Friday, August 12, 2011


New research suggests that children who struggle with mathematics will always have problems with numbers.

Previous research has indicated that "number sense" is basic to humans but psychologists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have found a different explanation after an intensive study involving 200 four-year-olds.

The youngsters had to sit various tests and the results were compared to their language skills. Dr. Melissa Libertus, who led the study, says, "Previous studies testing older children left open the possibility that maths lessons determined number sense. In other words, some children looked like they had better number sense simply because they had better maths instruction.

"Unlike those studies, this one shows that the link between number sense and maths ability is already present before the beginning of formal maths instruction. One of the most important questions is whether we can train a child’s number sense to improving his future maths ability."
----

Not much published here about the study... would be interested to fond out more. However... In other words, some children looked like they had better number sense simply because they had better maths instruction." - So maybe coaching that inspires one to work harder / stick with math problems longer (ala Carol Dweck's findings) might be key to anything? IE: Find someone who supports your endevour and then sparks your passion... have a great coach who continues to inspire / challenge you?

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Interesting article about a new book coming out that should be on topic with the Talent Code and others....

http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/1041744--how-you-can-spot-the-next-wayne-gretkzy


How you can spot the next Wayne Gretkzy

Published On Thu Aug 18 2011Email Print
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Article

Wayne Gretzky, seen as a young hockey player in 1972, was legendary for his willingness to spend endless hours on the backyard rink.
CP FILE PHOTO
Joseph Hall
Sports Reporter

How do you spot the next Wayne Gretzky?

You might watch how the kid plays baseball. And soccer. And lacrosse.

A new book, co-authored by a York University researcher, suggests that a child’s general love of sports and motivation to play them may be the surest sign of potential talent and future success.

“Our research shows that there are two approaches (to achieving true talent),” says Joe Baker, an associate professor in kinesiology and health science at York.

“You can take the early specialization approach or you can take the diversification approach, which is play a lot of sports and gradually focus on one,” says Baker

Playing many sports, Baker says, is a sign of general athletic prowess and a source of useful skills for the one a youngster will eventually choose.

More important, however, it shows a love of sports that is an almost certain sign a child will be motivated to work hard at the one he’s eventually called to.

And motivation — more than any natural physical ability — is the indispensible component of talent, says Baker, whose book, Talent Identification and Development in Sport, is out this week.

“Motivation is the currency of skills acquisition,” Baker says.

“If I was looking for one thing to put my finger on and say this person is talented versus that person, motivation is where I would start.”

Even Gretzky, a hockey phenom at 4, was legendary for his willingness to spend endless hours on the backyard rink, Baker says

Thus, he says, coaches and development officials should abandon the traditional notion that talent is specific and innate — a bright and glaringly obvious gift — and look for other factors.

“We can’t dismiss the notion of (natural) talent,” Baker says.

“But the idea that we can point to someone and say, ‘That person has got it,’ well, it’s a lot more convoluted and nuanced than that.”

Even advanced genetics offers few clues to a child’s potential, says Baker, whose contributions to the book include a chapter on that subject.

Currently, he says, there is just a single gene, regulating tendon elasticity, that scientists can say with any certainty enhances athletic ability.

Even motivated and athletically eclectic children, however, are not even half way to achieving the kind of true talent that might send them to the Olympics or professional sports, Baker says.

Such children have merely reached an advanced level of potential talent, he says.

Baker says that nurturing that potential is, in most cases, the biggest portion of elite athletic prowess, which is grown and not given.

“We know exponentially more about (talent) development than we do about identification,” Baker says.

“You could make a very strong argument that we know absolutely nothing about identification and not bring very strong arguments against that.”

He points as an example to the Australian Olympic program, which has turned that relatively small country from an athletics doormat to an international powerhouse in the course of a generation.

And it’s not, Baker says, that the Australian people suddenly began producing more talented kids.

“That’s why we know you can’t divorce the talent part from the development part,” he says.

“We know that genetically they didn’t change in two to three decades.”

Rather, he says, the Aussie program identified kids with raw potential, brought in world class coaches and facilities and developed talent over time.

But former thrower and top Canadian track and field coach Bogdan Poprawski cautions against underestimating raw natural abilities.

“If you don’t have that (natural ability), nothing will happen,” says Poprawski who earned a PhD. in sports science and has taught courses on athlete selection criteria.

But Poprawski, who was head coach of the Canadian team at the 1997 world championships in Athens, says self-motivation is also a must.

While motivation is the key to talent, however, the book and Baker can put forward no theories on how it might be instilled in children.

“We just didn’t feel that the practical understanding of motivation was at the point where we could say, ‘Okay, here’s what you do to motivate kids,’” Baker says.

The book, Baker says, has a broad target audience and could be used as a scholarly manual and a coaching guide.

“It’s got enough scientific evidence so that it’s relevant for people studying at the university level but it’s got enough hands on information so that it’s also relevant for people working in the field.”

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Thanks for sharing Eric! This book sounds great... wish it was out NOW before I leave on holidays tomorrow. Hopefully it will be available as an e-book so I can download it to my Kindle...

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

http://www.fan590.com/ondemand/media.jsp?content=20110828_102914_8328


New book coming out. This is a link to the auther discussing Talent Identification and development. Very interesting

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Thanks for posting this link. Very interesting... as a father of two young children, it is interesting to see the similarities and differences between these two... they are my personal, real-life laboratory and I enjoy experimenting with them! I am going to try new things that I learn with them.

My boy is 41 months old, fairly independent and quite sensitive. He has an amazing vocabulary (started signing at 9 months and talking and walking at 12 months) and after two tries, seems to have picked up the essence of riding a bike without training wheels (after a year with a 'run bike' - no pedals).

My daughter, 14 months old, seems to be more cuddly but still independent and much tougher than her big brother (hypothesis: she sees her brother getting to try other stuff and wants to join in... she saw him riding the bicycle, so she walked over to her helmet, brought it over to grandpa and then tried to climb on the bike!)... we didn't do as much signing with her, or read to her as much (she started walking at 13 months, points and grunts at things she wants us to look at / get for her, but it sounds like she is trying to form words... she understands what we say because if we as her to do things, she does them.) She seems to be more competitive than my boy.

It is still early, but time will tell how they will develop... it will be a fun journey!

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/sportsconference2009:1741/videos/11864-developing-athletic-talent-the-utility-of-sport-science


Video Link on Development of Athletic Talent

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Forget 10,000 Hours. Try Hans’s 2-Minute Method.

Daniel Coyle, www.thetalentcode.com, October 10th, 2011


By now, most of you have heard of the Rule of 10,000 Hours, the finding that most world-class experts have spent a minimum of 10,000 hours intensively practicing their craft.

Likewise, many of you are probably familiar with the sensation known as the Rule of 10,000 Hours Wince. This occurs where you realize (whoa!) just how intimidatingly far you still have to go.

Counting hours is a bad idea. Not only because it’s difficult to accurately measure quality practice (the original studies have created a worthy debate, seen here), but also because it tends to lead us toward a royal bummer of a mindset. Developing talent is about enthusiasm and energy. Counting hours can turn us into drudges, marking our tally like a doomed prisoner marking the days on the cell wall. Besides, most of us aren’t trying to become world-class — we’re just trying to be better tomorrow than we are today. What to do?

One good idea was recently offered by one of my favorite people. His name is Hans Jensen, and he’s one of the world’s best music teachers (here’s his website). Hans looks exactly like you’d expect a mad scientist to look, if the mad scientist taught cello and liked to run marathons. His hair is always a little disheveled; his eyes are always wide open, and his mind is always churning with new ideas. Here’s his latest: I call it Hans’s 2-Minute Method.

It works like this:

Pick a specified target you want to perfect. It needs to be small and definable — a chunk, in the parlance. If it’s a tennis serve, target just the toss. If it’s a song, target just the toughest ten seconds. If it’s public speaking, target just the introduction.

Pick a time of day. (Morning works best.)

Be alone. This isn’t about a teacher or coach telling you what to do — it’s about you doing it, by yourself.

Work as urgently and intensively as humanly possible on that target skill for two minutes.

Stop. Walk away. And tomorrow, do it again.

This technique originated with one of Jensen’s students who was strapped for time, but who wanted to learn a complicated etude. “We were shocked at how well it went,” Jensen said. “The key was total focus and being ruthless about noticing and fixing every tiny mistake from the start.”

Why does it work?

It forces you to prioritize and strategize — to look critically at your skill and pick the elements that matter most.

It eliminates the sloppiness that often marks shallow practice.

It creates a daily habit.

It increases intensity. It’s hard to practice with 100 percent intensity for an hour. But for two minutes? That’s achievable.

I also like the 2-Minute Practice because it nudges us toward counting things that matter. Learning is a construction process. It’s possible to get a lot done in a short amount of time, because in the end, it’s not really about time — it’s about making intense, high-quality reaches toward a target.

This also makes me wonder — what other techniques might work like this? How else are you improving the quality of each minute? I’d love to hear about your mad-scientist experiments.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Ok no disrespect here. Just a healthy conversation. Thats my disclaimer

I hate to be this guy but I still feel the science is flawed.
There are a couple diseases that are caused from a lack of myelin.
Multiple sclerosis being the most serious. If we could grow it millions of people would benefit. Do we have an answer on that? My wife is a medical writer and she did a pharma training course on this diseases.

Having said that the value is in practice and how your practice. 10,000 hour rule. Which I think is what the 2nd half of the book is about, but I stopped reading with the myelin stuff

Im asking because I dont know. The video goes to the authors site. Is there any other info that supports this? Again just asking because I dont know.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Hi Aberdeen - I remember your previous comments about this book. I always enjoy a healthy conversation! I appreciate your wife's background. She is probably much more qualified than I!

Daniel Coyle is a writer. Not sure of his credentials, other than below:

Daniel Coyle is a contributing editor for Outside magazine and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Lance Armstrong’s War. He has written for Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Magazine, and Play (including this March 2007 cover story which sparked The Talent Code), and is a two-time National Magazine Award finalist. Coyle lives with his wife, Jen, and their four children in Homer, Alaska.

However, I am presuming he has done research talking to people about this. Hopefully, they have medical backgrounds.

I must admit, I never believe anything I read or hear without trying to find corroborating evidence. Unfortunately, there just isn't time to research everything!!!! Typically, everyone has their own level of comfort in accepting supposed facts as facts. Scientists have to be skeptics... "Correlation does not imply causation."

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.

The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Wikipedia

I really liked David Shenk's book, "The Genius in All of Us". The first half was his book. The second half is an exhaustive list of references. Nice to see he is being so detailed and transparent, but unless someone confirms all of his sources, who's to say what Shenk presents is true either? <SIGH> I guess what I am saying is that if a large number of 'experts' says it's true, probability would suggest it is. Else you might go crazy and become obsessed trying to find "the Truth". If you do, let Mulder and Scully (X-Files) know! (Mind you, wasn't it an accepted fact, presented by the 'experts' of the day, that the world was flat; and we should 'bleed' sick people to make them feel better?)...

Anyway, back to your question.

I think Coyle is saying that Myelin growth can be sparked through practice. I don't know 'how': Does it grow at a quicker rate? Does it grow to a greater volume (for lack of a better word... I don't know how you 'measure' myelin)? Can this growth occur in anyone - even someone who has finished growing? Can it be 'topped up' to previous levels, or increased to a larger size than before? I don't know...

I heard something last week on the news about the growth of myelin in experiments, but only caught the last part of it. Wouldn't it be great if they could 'grow' it and help MS sufferers?

Perhaps your wife can share some reasearch articles with us? If so, please post them. Healthy discussion will ensue...!

Here are some comments from his site that help provide insights about the book:

Brandon says:

January 8, 2011 at 1:27 am

Great book like everyone has said, but it actually made a huge change in my thinking. Everything is learned; social skills, sports skills, academics skills, it makes the world so much more open. I have two questions for the author.

1. The idea of greatness is personal correct? People have different levels of ability and greatness? Not everyone can be Federer, if they did the same training as him? Or anyone can anyone be Federer, if they had the same amounts of hours of deep practice?

2. There are some exceptions to the theory. Some professional athletes have not put in the same amount of hours? Some musician have a better ear for music which changes the learning curve for them? Some people never had a coach and were self taught? Or are these just urban legend?

3. Last one, some people learn golf skills faster than others and are more coachable. It is just a fact. I take two people with same amount of skill (zero) and one will learn faster? Do they know how to train better or is there talent involved with this scenario?
They are all basically the same question with a little variation. Let us know what you think.

Thanks


djcoyle says:

January 10, 2011 at 8:47 pm

Hey Brandon, Thanks a lot. And you are putting your finger on the Deepest Question — one that I’m sure I can’t answer fully. But here goes anyway.

There are basically three truths:

1) Not all of us can be Michelangelo/Federer/Mozart/etc.

2) We all share roughly the same path forward.

3) The brain is very large, and it grows.

Well, that’s sort of four points, but you get mine. Yes, there appear to be aptitudes — and yes, some people learn at different rates. And if you believe that genes are destiny, then it’s easy to get hypnotized by these early differences Because no matter who you are, you’ve got to put in the time/effort/motivation to get better. It’s the way we’re built.

“Natural talent” is code for “started earlier and practiced harder.” — I don’t recall where I read that, but there’s some truth in it.

juan2thepaab says:

January 24, 2011 at 9:37 pm

Just finished the book. Overall I enjoyed it. Here are some thoughts…

Something I feel that was not clear in the book was that the statement “once a skill circuit is insulated, you can’t un-insulate it (except through age or disease)” seems to contradict the “Rule Two: Repeat It” section where you explain that myelin is in a “constant cycle of breakdown and repair”, (e.g. “What’s the simplest way to diminish the skills of a superstar talent? Don’t let them practice for a month”). Could you clear this up?

Secondly, something I am personally curious about that I wish was covered is why development is not always gradual or linear. Sometimes student’s ability can plateau for an amount of time and then suddenly make a giant leap in their progress (from their own point of view, not just others’).

And lastly, I can’t help but notice the parallels between the book’s concepts and the much talked about parenting beliefs of Amy Chua. For example, “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work” sounds a lot like “the truth is, when you are starting out, you do not “play” tennis; you struggle and fight and pay attention and slowly get better”– although, Amy pushes it to the extreme by not letting her kids go to the bathroom until they’ve got it perfect, or threatening to deprive them of dinner if they don’t practice.

That’s my two cents. Thanks for the great book on a very valuable topic!

-----

Now regarding the 10,000 hour rule. John the Colombian and I were debating this last week: Who came up with this? I can't find anyone attributed to the origin of this. However, Gladwell, Coyle, et al have all mentioned this... as has Canadian Sport For Life, USA Hockey, etc. Lots of people reference it. But what is it's origin? How does one quantify this and if you can, is this quantification legit / true? How did whomever arrive at it? I almost think it has become a popularized way of saying that "the more you practice, the better you will become" in an offhand, dismissive fashion. Add some numbers and voila, a marketing ploy. (How to Lie With Statistics.) Seems to make sense to me... but why was the needle (allegedly) pointed to 10,000 hours?

I suggest you read the entire book. (I myself should probably re-read it... but I have about 30 other books calling my name first! I will add it to my list...) You don't have to suspend your belief - a healthy skepticism is what causes one to ask questions and cause change! - but it might help paint a clearer picture for you - of what Coyle is trying to say.

Ultimately, I too would like to hear more definitive things about myelin. If anyone can help, please chime in and share it. If I can find more stuff about this, I will post it.

-----

This site looks interesting... http://axonpotential.com/about/

Not sure what to make of it yet.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Thanks Dean, gonna take me a little to get through that info. So in the mean time let me ask you this. Because you have tons of experience and knowledge. Do you believe in the 10,000 hour rule?

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Aberdeen.

What do you think about the 10,000 hour claim?

Myself, I possess healthy skepticism in most things. I like to think I possess more of a 'scientist mindset' but when time to research everything becomes an issue, I reserve judgement and use my "Uncommon Sense"!

It seems to make sense to me that if you want to get better at something, the more time you spend in deliberate practice, the better you will become. We learn by doing; we learn quicker if it is under game-like situations (implicit learning). But 10,000 hours... I don't know. Sounds like an arbitrarily assigned 'big number' to impress upon the masses that it doesn't happen overnight!

That's why I believe we are de-training using traditional hockey practices... I watched more last night at a local Bantam AAA and Minor Midget AAA (15 year-olds). <SIGH> Now you got me going. I might have to post something about these practices under my Game Intelligence forum. Stay tuned...

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Guys,

I'll jump in...

I've been following this topic quite a bit since reading the topic. I'll start by saying that I'm a huge fan of the book. After reading it I felt as if I could achieve anything if I put in enough deliberate practice. It completely changed the way I approached new things for the better.

I am definitely not a scientist, so I have no idea about myelin and how it works or even if it has any affect on the accumulation of skill. But I will say, that it's the best placebo out there. Google "Tiger Woods Myelin" and see how many results there are. He believes it is the key to success. I'm not saying that is why he is good, but it helps to create a Mindset that promotes development. You should check out Carol Dwecks' book "Mindset" in which she talks about the difference between those who believe in improving through practice and those who don't have that belief. If the thought that myelin makes you better through deliberate practice makes you practice better, then I'm going to keep believing.

That doesn't mean that I think it's the "law" on Talent Development though. I have since read and watched multiple videos on the subject, some of which I have posted here.

It appears that others (researchers) have found athletes that have achieved the "Elite" status without actually achieving 10,000 hours. They claim that this debunks the theory, etc.

I think the best thing to come from the book will be a heightened interest on the subject and more and more people will begin to research it. I would imagine that lots of information will continue to come out and I'm excited to continue to follow it.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Now regarding the 10,000 hour rule. John the Colombian and I were debating this last week: Who came up with this? I can't find anyone attributed to the origin of this.

Dr. K. Anders Ericsson

One of the core observation of Ericsson’s research is that expert performance seems to take a minimum of 10 years or 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice,’ progressively more challenging, and expert coaching, even with people labelled by others as ‘prodigies’ (see Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer 1993). As Ericsson, Prietula and Cokely (2007) describe, repetition is not enough:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/05/20/talent-a-difference-that-makes-a-difference/


Myelin research by R. Douglas Fields

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2007/03/02/sports/1194817108368/the-brains-behind-talent.html

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

I hate to be this guy but I still feel the science is flawed.
There are a couple diseases that are caused from a lack of myelin.
Multiple sclerosis being the most serious. If we could grow it millions of people would benefit. Do we have an answer on that? My wife is a medical writer and she did a pharma training course on this diseases.

It's a disease, that degenerates the myelin. Maybe it's degenerating faster than it can generate?

From Wikipedia
More specifically, MS destroys oligodendrocytes, the cells responsible for creating and maintaining a fatty layer—known as the myelin sheath—which helps the neurons carry electrical signals.[4] MS results in a thinning or complete loss of myelin and, as the disease advances, the cutting (transection) of the neuron's extensions or axons. When the myelin is lost, a neuron can no longer effectively conduct electrical signals.[4] A repair process, called remyelination, takes place in early phases of the disease, but the oligodendrocytes cannot completely rebuild the cell's myelin sheath.[29] Repeated attacks lead to successively fewer effective remyelinations, until a scar-like plaque is built up around the damaged axons.[29] Different lesion patterns have been described.[30]

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Ahh, You Da Man Kai! Thanks!

I forgot about Ericsson. I have a couple of his books sitting here... still waiting to be read. They are on the list!

Looking forward to checking out your links and attachments too.

Good thought about MS - the myelin could be deteriorating faster than it can regenerate.

How goes the battle with your team this year? I know you haven't posted much... busy with work and as a dad, but I am hoping things are good!!

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Leafs sniper Kessel is all about ‘getting pucks on net’

James Mirtle, Globe and Mail, October 18, 2011


Everyone in the building knew it was coming.

Jean-Sébastien Giguère talked openly about being ready for it before the game. Phil Kessel’s teammates noted how they wanted to get him the puck to make it possible.

And the Air Canada Centre crowd went wild every time he did, even when he appeared well out of scoring position.

Somehow, however, even with all eyes on him and the opposition doing everything it could to stop him, Kessel found a way to dipsy-doodle through the neutral zone and flick a seeing-eye wrist shot past Giguère for the opening goal in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ 3-2 loss on Monday.

While for many players there wouldn’t have been a chance, Kessel found the back of the net in an instant.

The goal was Kessel’s sixth in four games to open the year, putting him into the NHL scoring lead, and it looked remarkably like so many others.

He has scored 104 goals – tied for 10th most – dating back to and including his break-out 36-goal season as a 21-year-old in 2008-09 with the Boston Bruins.

Of those ahead of him, all but Sidney Crosby are taller and more physically imposing than Kessel, who at 6-foot, 200 pounds is just under the size of an average NHL forward.

The others, including big men like Rick Nash and Corey Perry, generate their goals in a variety of ways, including crashing the net, picking a corner or banging in a one-timer.

Kessel, meanwhile, has his one trick and does it really, really well.

It’s that flick of a wrist.

The talent

Linemate Tyler Bozak compares what Kessel does to a golfer. And one in particular.

“It’s not the biggest guys that are going to hit it the farthest,” Bozak said. “You look at Bubba Watson and he’s got a different style of swing than everyone else and he hits it farther than everyone else. And he’s a skinny guy.

“Phil just has that. I don’t know how he does it honestly. I can’t shoot like that. You can’t duplicate something like that.”

It is, in other words, a natural talent, not an acquired one and it’s hard to explain. It’s also why Kessel has been scoring the same way since he was getting a goal a game as a teenager.

The technique

But what exactly is Kessel doing with that unique ability? If it’s not brute strength, is it his aim?

“He just has such a quick release,” teammate Matt Frattin said. “He catches the goalie off guard. Like Giguère. A nice little quick snapper from the slot.”

“He just does it in stride,” linemate Joffrey Lupul added. “He doesn’t stop and give the goalie a chance to set. I try to do it – I’m not obviously as good as Phil. A lot of guys can’t really do it at all.”

The other key is Kessel looks for a way to simply get his shots past defenders rather than picking a corner of the net. Often – like on Monday – he scores with a body or two in front of him and finds a way to get the shot through.

“Whatever lane the defenceman gives him, that’s where he’s shooting,” Lupul said.

The shot total

When Kessel talks about a particular hot or cold streak, it’s never about how he’s shooting the puck – which really doesn’t change.

It’s about getting chances. And getting a lot of them.

“In most games, he gets the most shots out of any guy,” Bozak said.

Kessel generates just under four shots on goal a game, which puts him among the league leaders every season, but he really only scores on 10 to 12 per cent of them. Those shot totals, however, are what he considers vital to producing a lot of goals, more than where they come from.

That’s why Kessel is fond of saying – “they’re just going in” – when he’s on a roll like he is right now.

Frattin said when he asked Kessel for advice on getting his first NHL goal, it was all centred on putting as many “pucks on the net” as possible.

“A goalie makes mistakes, too,” Frattin said of the philosophy. “They’re human beings. Just catch them off guard and they might make that one mistake for you.”

As for where Kessel likes to shoot from, his centreman says he isn’t picky.

“Everywhere,” Bozak said.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

More about "The Dan Plan"... http://thedanplan.com/

WHAT IS THE DAN PLAN?

It’s a project in transformation. An experiment in potential and possibilities. Through 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice,” Dan, who currently has minimal golf experience, plans on becoming a professional golfer. But the plan isn’t really about golf: through this process, Dan hopes to prove to himself and others that it’s never too late to start a new pursuit in life.

WHO IS DAN?

Dan is an average man by most standards. When The Dan Plan began, he was a 30-year-old commercial photographer with no previous experience as a competitive athlete, nor was he in particularly good physical condition. Dan is slightly under average height and weight, had never played a full 18 holes of golf, and had only been to a driving range a handful of times. He was not even sure if he was a left-or right-handed golfer. Dan currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

WHY?

Through his journey Dan hopes to inspire others to start exploring the possibilities life affords them. Though his isn’t an easy endeavor and is quite possibly impossible, if it inspires even one person to quit their day job and find happiness in their own plan, then the Dan Plan is a success.

THE DETAILS

On April 5th, 2010, Dan quit his day job as a commercial photographer and began The Dan Plan. Logging in 30-plus hours a week he will hit the 10,000 hour milestone by October of 2016. During this time, Dan plans to develop his skills through deliberate practice, eventually winning amateur events and obtaining his PGA Tour card through a successful appearance in the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School, or “Q-School”.

THE THEORY

Talent has little to do with success. According to research conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, “Elite performers engage in ‘deliberate practice’–an effortful activity designed to improve target performance.” Dr. Ericsson's studies, made popular through Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers and Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, have found that in order to excel in a field, roughly 10,000 hours of "stretching yourself beyond what you can currently do" is required. "I think you're the right astronaut for this mission," Dr. Ericsson said about The Dan Plan.

BE PART OF THE DAN PLAN

Every step of Dan’s journey from novice to professional golfer will be documented. He will rely on a support network created through social media sites (Facebook, Twitter) and his website at thedanplan.com. Supporters can watch video footage, check out photos, offer advice and view The Dan Plan stopwatch as it counts down his 10,000 hours of training.

The Team:
Dan McLaughlin, Golfer in Training | Christopher Smith, PGA, Golf Instruction | Shawn Dailey, Strength Trainer | Kelsey Sullivan, Nutritionist | Jeremy Dunham, cinematography | Peter Lasser, Webisode Producer |

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Youth Soccer Training & Development: Myelin and Training - The Scientific Concept in Skill Development with Wayne Harrison

Wayne Harrison is a former professional player and has been a highly qualified professional coach for many years. He has held the position of Academy Director at Blackpool Professional Football Club in England and at Al Ain Professional Football Club in the UAE.

Wayne Harrison spent 9 years in Minnesota developing Eden Prairie Soccer Club with his specialized training. Harrison has held the UEFA “A” License since 1996 and holds the NSCAA Premier Diploma. He has also earned a degree in Sports Psychology and Applied Physiology. Coupled with this, he has published eleven books on Soccer Coaching and Player Development. In this article, Harrison explains the scientific background to his method.

A previous article introduced Awareness Training and explained how it helps players develop skills more rapidly than traditional training methods. In this article I want to explain the scientific background to Awareness Training and how the approach speeds up and improves decision making and the thought processes in soccer.

In my experience, there are three key ingredients for successful skill acquisition and development. They are:

Wayne Harrison's newest book on soccer is now available on AMAZON

This is the first book on this system of play; the 4-2-3-1 which is the most popular system now.

Deep Practice
Ignition, and
Master Coaching

These three elements work together within your brain to create myelin. Myelin is the neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movement, thoughts and decisions.

What is Myelin and why is it important to skill development?

Inside the brain information is transmitted through neurons. Human skill is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse from the brain to the body through these neurons. Myelin is the insulation that wraps around the nerve fibers in our brains and increases signal strength, speed and accuracy. Myelin is produced by a person thinking about and analyzing skill situations themselves.

All human skills are created by linking the nerve fibers in your brain that send signals to your muscles. Myelin plays an important role by serving as an insulator for these nerve fibers. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, “The purpose of the myelin sheath is to allow impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along the nerve cells” (NLM/NIH: MedlinePlus).

It has been shown that the more insulation – or more myelin – wrapped around those fibers, the stronger and faster the signal becomes as fewer of these electrical impulses leak out. Therefore, skill can now be redefined as “myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals.” The two – skill development and myelin – are married together.

Myelin acts like an elastic band around the nerve fibers squeezing them and forcing the signal through faster. In football (soccer), with each repetition, myelin responds by wrapping layers around the nerve fibers, speeding up and improving decision making and thought processes. With each additional layer of myelin added, the player increases the ability to process the football specific skill required.

Everyone has myelin and everyone can improve themselves through its production. The more myelin produced; the thicker the sheath, the faster the message; the quicker thinking the player becomes.

How do the “three ingredients” work to help create myelin and improve performance?

Deep Practice

For his book Talent Code, Daniel Coyle searched out what he calls “hotbeds of talent” around the world, including a soccer field in São Paolo, Brazil. Through his research, he developed a theory of what he calls “Deep Practice” that helps produce amazing success. This means “training on the edge of your capabilities.” Training in this dynamic capacity leads to mistakes being made, which increases the speed of skill acquisition. Players learn through making errors/mistakes and then correcting them. This method produces results 10 times faster than regular practice.

As deep practice is occurring, the player is wrapping even more myelin around each circuit and increasing skill. Simply put: mistakes lead to better skill acquisition. Deep practice is most important for players 6 to 12 years old. Their spatial awareness and ability to understand tactical concepts is still developing and at its height, and they have an unlimited capacity to acquire and develop new motor skills.

Simply put: mistakes lead to better skill acquisition.

Repetition of themes in small sided games is crucial, and especially in the “sweet spot” on the edge of the comfort zonethat produces errors but also teaches skills. This is where futsal comes in to play.

As Coyle explains in Talent Code, “Most Brazilian players learn their skills through futsal, the ssg equivalent of soccer. Futsal uses a half size and much heavier ball that doesn’t bounce; that promotes touch, technical and skill development. Sharp passing is paramount to have success. Futsal compresses essential skills into a small box, puts players into the ‘deep practice zone,’ making and correcting errors, constantly generating solutions to vivid problems. Players touching the ball 600% more often learn far faster, without realizing it, than they would in the vast expanse of the outdoor game.”

Deep practice needs to be on the edge of the players comfort zones, and maintained in game-related skill-developing situations.

Building myelin takes time, and putting ourselves in a position to fail actually helps fix our mistakes. Failing “better” and continuing this process until we accomplish the task is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to build myelin. We talk about letting players make their own decisions, allowing them to think for themselves – to problem solve; to self correct. Myelin production does just that.

This learning process can boost the brain's efficiency by increasing the speed with which a signal travels down the nerve fibers by up to 100 times. So think about it: if self-correcting could make signal transport over 100 times faster, why would you not want to help build this into a player’s mentality? By commanding the players, by telling them what to do, you are actually restricting this process from taking place.

Therefore, your players will actually think and react and make decisions more slowly and less efficiently because of this command style of coaching. Unfortunately, some coaches are still stuck in this old methodology of command coaching and it has to change. It doesn’t work.

What does this mean in terms of learning behavior?

Players should be encouraged to solve problems on their own, and not be told everything by the coach so they don’t have to think for themselves. By working through their own mistakes in practice, players train their minds to work faster and more efficiently. This is a scientifically proven fact. This will not happen if you continue to pursue the command style of coaching, where it is all about the coach and not about the player.

This is why we need to start this process at the youngest ages possible. There is a big responsibility to ensure that coaches for the youngest age groups begin this process of allowing the players self correction, and at the most: only guide them to the right decisions.

The secret is to develop specific practice to increase the layers of myelin to add more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.

What is specific practice? An example would be practicing the same theme over and over, initially as a technique and then as a skill. This could be one-touch passing, first in isolation as a technique and second in a game situation as a skill (when and where to pass).

They say that for a person to become an expert at something they need to do a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. This means that deep practice times 10,000 hours should produce world-class skills. This is the ten year/ten thousand hours rule. There are no guarantees for this, of course, but this is the kind of minimum effort required to achieve these results.

Simply put, the rules of deep practice are: try again, fail again; try better, fail better; keep trying, succeed. In other words, coaches need to allow players to fail/make mistakes and learn from them in practice.

Ignition

Deep practice is a cool conscious act; ignition is a hot, mysterious burst – an awakening.

Ignition is the motivational fuel that generates the energy, passion and commitment of a person from within to perform deep practice. It is intrinsic motivation where the athlete has a self-willed drive to succeed. This is the catalyst, and it represents a huge level of commitment that can be borne out of a player’s deepest, often unconscious, desires to succeed.

A person’s motivation is not just intrinsic; it can also be ignited by an event in the outside world, such as being inspired to play for your country after watching the skills of the World Cup Champions. In a famous example, Roger Bannister broke the seemingly-impossible four-minute mile in 1954. This ignited everyone’s belief to go for it, and within three years, seventeen athletes had broken what was previously considered a physiologically impossible feat.

An athlete can also be ignited or inspired beyond the intrinsic by Master Coaches.

Master Coaches

Master Coaches are the final piece in the “jigsaw of success,” and can have an immense amount of positive influence on the player. These coaches create a learning environment where the players are actively engaged and are lead by guided discovery methods of coaching. Training should be player centered not coach centered, where coaches only need to step in at the appropriate moments to make corrections.

Real master coaches are like farmers; they are deliberate cultivators of myelin. They are talent whisperers, and can be the difference between success and failure for athletes.

The drawbacks of poor training at young ages

Myelin does not unwrap, it only wraps. And so myelin is the reason bad habits can be difficult to break in older players. This is why developmental training is so important, where skill development is the focus. We must help players develop good habits that stay with them, because the bad habits equally stay with them if developed at a young age. The ages of 6 to 12 are the most important in the training of players and can affect their success in the future.

In summary

The game of soccer is dynamic; situations change and new decisions have to be made every second. Players are continuously making and correcting errors and constantly generating solutions to ongoing problems. To be successful, players must be skilled at decision making, and to be skilled they need to be properly trained.

This training occurs in deep practice. The more you practice “on the edge,” the more decision making situations you find yourself in. The more decision making situations you are in, the more thought it takes to solve them. The more this all happens, the more myelin is grown, the faster the body and brain processes situations and the better the decisions are made.

So, to recap; myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. The more we fire a particular skill circuit (it could be when and where to pass, for example), the more myelin is produced to activate and stimulate that circuit and the stronger, faster and more fluent our movements and thoughts become.

The three key ingredients for skill acquisition and development are Deep Practice (with specific practice), Ignition and Master coaching. These are required to help build the myelin wrap, which helps to speed up, strengthen and improve the accuracy of decision making. All three must be present to facilitate the maximum growth of myelin production and subsequent skill development.

In simple terms

The more Myelin the person produces the faster, stronger and more accurate the messages are from the brain.
Deep Practice ensures myelin is produced.
Ignition is the process that serves as the motivation for deep practice. Ignition supplies the energy, and deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progress (increasing the wraps of myelin). Ignition is caused by the inside energy of the person (desire, self belief) and the outside energy of the coach or outside events. Words are the signal most used to trigger ignition.
Master Coaches use the words that trigger ignition, which in turn motivates the deep practice that produces the myelin that speeds up and strengthens the decision making signals in the brain of the player. So, the types of words used can influence the player greatly. Negative words can have as much bad influence; as positive words have good influence. Coaches should take note of this important statement.
So, working backwards, the formula is: Master coaching creates Ignition, which encourages Deep Practice. Deep Practice – and especially specific practice – enhances myelin production, which produces improvements in accuracy and speed of decision making.

In conclusion

My method of coaching is, as you see, all about inspiring the players to think and make decisions for themselves. We need to encourage them to self determine “where, when, how and why” they need to play a particular way or make a particular decision in a particular situation.

It is encouraging, to say the least, that I have discovered this wonderful work – Talent Code by Daniel Coyle – which supports my work. This book proves scientifically that the way to develop players is to empower them and to give them the reins of thought.

The key is becoming a Master Coach. The Master Coach guides players and steers their path towards greatness. He applies his knowledge and experience to use the “less is more” approach in the right contexts of development. In a way he, is showing them without showing them, guiding them to the light at the end of the tunnel – without showing it directly – until the players themselves find and see it and go through it.

So please, let the players learn for themselves. With guided deep practice and appropriate ignition by master coaches, over time players will develop far better than coaches commanding and demanding and not allowing players to think for themselves.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Kai,

Another quality post - two in a row! WOW! Thanks for this one. I am going to look into this guy more deeply. Again, Wayne is sounding a lot like myself and John.

I will provide more thoughts on this later...

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Gallery: Wayne Gretzky - The Great 51
Happy Birthday to 'The Great One', Wayne Gretzky, who turned 51 on Jan. 26. To celebrate, here are some pictures from his illustrious career.

Calgary Herald, January 26, 2012


http://www.calgaryherald.com/sports/Gallery+Wayne+Gretzky+Great/6056659/story.html


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Wayne - a January baby? Hmmm... Malcolm Gladwell... quarterly birthdates and relation to the liklihood of success?

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

From The Talent Code blog:

Okay, it’s happened: 10,000 hours is officially in the mainstream. Athletes, musicians, students, businesspeople are counting away, waiting for their practice odometer to tick over and — presto! — they’ll be world-class experts.

Sorry, but that ain’t how it works.

Why? Because when you count the hours, it’s easy to lose track of the real goal: finding ways to constantly reach past the edge of your current ability.

The real lesson of 10K is not about quantity; it’s about quality. It’s about getting the maximum possible gain in the shortest amount of time — and to get that, you don’t focus on the time, but on the gain. You put your focus on improving the practice, which happens two ways: through better methods or increased intensity.

To be clear:

1. Certain kinds of learning — deep, or deliberate practice — are transformative.
2. That transformation is a construction process.
3. That construction process depends on your intensive reaching and repeating in the sweet spot on the edge of your ability.

You are what you count. If you count hours, you’ll get hours. But if you find a good way of measuring your intensity, or measuring your improvement, that’s what you’ll get.

For me, the best books are not the ones that come out of left field, dazzling you with their original genius.

No, the best books are ones that, the instant you read them, feel titanically obvious. The ones that take something right under your nose and show it to you in a way that makes the whole world pivot and seem fresh.

That’s why you should read The Power of Habit, By Charles Duhigg, who also happens to be a friend. Here’s the thesis:

Habits — automatic loops of behavior, triggered by cues, nourished by rewards, driven by cravings — make up a large percentage of our behavior.

To control your life, it helps to understand how these loops operate — to control the cues, rewards, and cravings. In short, the same neural machinery that makes you reach for a jelly donut can also make you reach for the tennis racquet or the math book, or perform a certain skill better, or build a productive practice routine.

In the book, Duhigg gives the example of the champion swimmer Michael Phelps. Phelps’s coach, the remarkable Bob Bowman, designed Phelps’s workouts as a series of strong, productive habits.

For example, each night Bowman would cue Phelps to “watch the videotape before you go to sleep and when you wake up.” There wasn’t an actual videotape — Bowman wanted Phelps to visualize himself performing every element of the perfect race. During practices, Bowman would have Phelps swim at race speed and tell him to “put in the videotape.” Eventually, at races, Bowman would simply whisper, “Put in the videotape.” (We know what happened next.)

There’s a great deal more, but my main takeaway is the crucial importance of the central craving. Strong habits are not built around a vague desires, but rather around deep and powerful cravings that dominate our conscious and unconscious minds, our identities.

To build good habits, then, put the craving first and foremost. Figure it out. Define it. Nourish it. Do everything to ignite and support the craving, because the craving is the engine around which powerful, productive habits can be built.

As Saint-Exupery said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t assign people tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Great stuff Kai. I haven't checked Coyle's blog for a while now; guess it's time to head over there again!

Quantity is NOT Quality. Deliberate Practice is highly focused (mentally and physically); not just 'putting in time to rack up the hours'.

I love how Coyle labels the root of motivation - serious motivation - as 'cravings'. Everything boils down to motivation. If one can determine their motivation, and harness it as their passion, good things will result.

I particularly like what Dr. Carol Dweck - "Mindset" - writes in her book. 'Open-mindedness' is the key... as is praising work ethic - 'TRY' - ; not telling someone they are 'SMART'.

Damn you Kai, now I will have to add Charles Duhigg's book to my lengthy reading list....

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Three updates from Daniel Coyle's blog...


How to Make Learning Addictive
April 10th, 2012

I’m about the ten-millionth person to make this point, but wouldn’t it be great if we could learn everything as fast and efficiently as we learn video games? If we could learn to play violin or write computer code as quickly as we learn Madden or Halo?

With that in mind, here’s a video-game term that might apply: replay value. It refers to how much a user wants to play a game over and over. You know the feeling — the irresistible itch to repeat a game just one more time, and just one more time after that (Angry Birds, anybody?).

Though the motivation feels internal, in fact replay value doesn’t come from the user; it comes from the design of the game itself. Games that provide lots of roles, lots of paths, lots of possible outcomes have high replay value — people love to play them, and get addicted. Games with few roles, few paths, few outcomes have low replay value; people play them once and then quit.

If you look at the practice routines of high performers, you’ll find they have high replay value. They are designed in such a way that you naturally want to do them again, and again, and again. For example:

Bubba Watson, who won Sunday’s Masters golf tournament with an “impossible” curving shot from the woods, learned to control the ball by hitting a small plastic ball in his yard when he was a small boy. The game young Bubba invented was to see if he could go around his house clockwise, then turn around and do it counterclockwise.
Earl Scruggs, the greatest banjo player who ever lived, practiced his sense of timing by playing with his brothers. The game went like this: the brothers would all start a song, then walk off in different directions, still playing. At the end of the song they’d come together to see if they’d stayed on time. Then do it again. And again.
Pretty much any skateboarding or snowboarding practice has a high replay value: think of how the sides of a half-pipe or ramp literally funnel the athlete into the next move. No wonder they learn so fast: the replay value in most gravity sports is off the charts.

The larger pattern here is that practices with high replay value tend to be practices the learners design themselves. One of the reason the learners can’t help but repeat them over and over is that they have a sense of ownership and investment — they’re not robots executing someone else’s drill; they’re players immersed in their own fun, addictive game.

Which leads to an interesting question: how else can we raise the replay value of our practice? Here are a few ideas.

1. Keep score — and I’m not talking about on the scoreboard. Pick exactly what you want to learn, and count it, or time it. Musicians could count the number of times they play a passage perfectly; soccer players could count number of perfect passes; math students could count the time it takes to do the multiplication table — just as they do in addictive math-learning apps like Math Racer and Kid Calc.
2. Provide multiple roles. Basically, switch places a lot. Everybody should periodically trade positions, to experience it from a new angle and come to a deeper (and more addictive) understanding. Batter becomes pitcher; salesperson becomes client; musician becomes listener.
3. Set near/far goals. The most effective goals have two levels, one near and one far. The near goal is today’s immediate goal; the far goal is an ideal performance far in the future which serves as a north star. Putting both goals out there (as video games do so well) add a dose of sugar to the practice process, and keeps people coming back for more.

How else can you make your practice more addictive?

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Q: What Stands Between You and Better Performance? (A: You)
April 4th, 2012

Call it “Flow” or “The Zone” — we’ve all had moments when it all comes together: when we can do no wrong, when our performance jumps to a higher level. The old cliche is that we go unconscious; our normal selves vanish and we’re replaced by someone better.

Now, science is showing us the useful truth beneath that cliche. Higher performance is not about addition; it’s about subtraction — specifically, subtracting the chatty, busybody part of your brain that focuses on your internal state. In fact, the lesson can be summed up as follows: get out of your way.

Exhibit A: Sally Adee, a writer for New Scientist, just wrote an extraordinary story that takes us inside the expert brain. The story involves a new technique called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, which sends low-voltage electricity to certain parts of the brain. The current turns off your prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that creates critical thought — and lets you act without interference.

The skill Adee tried to improve was marksmanship, via a military-designed video game. Before TDCS, Adee was average. After, she was transformed into an expert (she couldn’t miss!). Tests by the military show that TDCS more than doubles subjects’ ability to detect a threat. Other studies using related types of neurofeedback show similarly promising results.

The takeaway, I think, is not that we will all soon be sporting electrode caps (though we might!), but rather that the expert brain is a quiet place. A place where concentration and relaxation coexist, and where attention is 100 percent focused on the external, not the internal. Where the self, for a rare and lovely moment, disappears.

The other takeaway is that we should make a habit of developing this kind of relaxed, concentrated focus. It might be yoga, or exercise, or meditation, or prayer, or just a daily walk — it doesn’t matter, so long as it takes you to the sort of quiet place where you can vanish, and develop a sense for knowing when you’re there.

As Dan Millman writes: “The essence of talent is not so much a presence of certain qualities, but rather an absence of the mental, physical, and emotional obstructions most adults experience.”

(A belated, but big thanks to Rob Nonstop for the heads-up!)

-----

How to be Brave
March 26th, 2012

Girl's first ski jump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ebtGRvP3ILg

I love this video because it shows something you rarely see: the anatomy of a courageous moment.

Improvement isn’t just about getting better — it’s also about getting braver. It’s about encountering thresholds, and taking big, scary steps across them; it’s about jumping into uncharted territory where you don’t know if you’re going to fly or flop. This girl, who’s in the fourth grade, is experiencing the same kind of moment that happens on a theater stage, or on an athletic field or in an office, and she gets past it with a great bit of strategy.

First, positivity. She assures herself that she’s going to do it, and she’s going to be fine.
Second, simplicity. She’s not caught up in remembering a bunch of stuff, but focuses on two things. (Go straight. Don’t snowplow.)
Third, a reference point. She reminds herself that this is like what she’s done before, just a little bigger.

It’s a good combination — a nifty three-step program for getting past a threshold — and shows us the old truth: courage isn’t about transcending fear; it’s about dealing with it and moving forward anyway.

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A Solution for “The Parent Problem”

Daniel Coyle, April 19th, 2012


As I’ve traveled around talking to teachers and coaches, there’s one refrain I hear over and over: The kids are great. The problem is the parents.

I think this is deeply true, most prominently in youth sports, but also in other areas, like music and the classroom. It’s not because parents are dumb or ill-intentioned — though, okay, some are — it’s rather because a lot of parents genuinely want to help, and don’t know how best to do it, so they helicopter around and that makes things messy (I’ve been there, done that).

With that in mind, check out this letter written a few years back by a new Little League baseball coach to his team’s parents before the season began. And what makes it slightly more meaningful is that the Little League baseball coach happens to be Mike Matheny, who’s gone on to be the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals (he coached Little League just after he retired from pro ball).

If you’re curious, I would recommend clicking this link

http://www.mac-n-seitz.com/teams/mike-matheny-letter.html?ref=nf&fwcc=1&fwcl=1&fwl

to read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:

I always said that the only team that I would coach would be a team of orphans, and now here we are. The reason for me saying this is that I have found the biggest problem with youth sports has been the parents. I think that it is best to nip this in the bud right off the bat. I think the concept that I am asking all of you to grab is that this experience is ALL about the boys. If there is anything about it that includes you, we need to make a change of plans. My main goals are as follows:

(1) to teach these young men how to play the game of baseball the right way,

(2) to be a positive impact on them as young men, and

(3) do all of this with class.

We may not win every game, but we will be the classiest coaches, players, and parents in every game we play. The boys are going to play with a respect for their teammates, opposition, and the umpires no matter what.

Once again, this is ALL about the boys. I believe that a little league parent feels that they must participate with loud cheering and “Come on, let’s go, you can do it”, which just adds more pressure to the kids. I will be putting plenty of pressure on these boys to play the game the right way with class, and respect, and they will put too much pressure on themselves and each other already. You as parents need to be the silent, constant, source of support.

I am a firm believer that this game is more mental than physical, and the mental may be more difficult, but can be taught and can be learned by a 10 and 11 year old. If it sounds like I am going to be demanding of these boys, you are exactly right. I am definitely demanding their attention, and the other thing that I am going to require is effort. Their attitude, their concentration, and their effort are the things that they can control. If they give me these things every time they show up, they will have a great experience.

I need all of you to know that we are most likely going to lose many games this year. The main reason is that we need to find out how we measure up with the local talent pool. The only way to do this is to play against some of the best teams. I am convinced that if the boys put their work in at home, and give me their best effort, that we will be able to play with just about any team.

The thing I like most about this letter is how it so clearly establishes the relationship, and does so in a big-picture, friendly, personal way. As a parent, I wish I would have gotten more letters like this. As a former Little League coach, I’m wondering, why the heck didn’t I send one?

Why don’t more teachers and coaches use this technique? Could it be possible to use letters like this as a tool to change the dynamic, so that parents might stop being a problem and start being more of an asset?

(Big thanks to John Kessel and Jennifer Armson-Dyer for the heads up.)

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The Power of Small Wins

Daniel Coyle, http://thetalentcode.com/, April 25th 2012


Most of us instinctively spend a lot of time and energy seeking the big breakthrough: that magical moment when, after a lot of effort, everything finally clicks: when you play the song perfectly, ace the test, win the big game. Those moments are incredibly satisfying. But they’re also a problem.

Here’s why: focusing on the big breakthrough can cause you to overreach. It can create a steady diet of disappointment (after all, breakthroughs are rare, by definition). Worse, you stop focusing on the smaller, incremental things that really matter.

The best performers and teachers I’ve seen don’t get caught up in seeking big breakthrough moments. Instead, they hunt the little breakthroughs — the small, seemingly insignificant progressions that create steady daily progress. In short, they love baby steps.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explore this idea in their fascinating book The Progress Principle. In it, they analyze 12,000 diary entries from 238 subjects to get a picture of the subjects’ inner work lives. They conclude that the common trait of highly successful subjects is that they are focused on achieving “small wins” — those tiny, daily progressions that don’t seem like much but which add up, over time, to big things.

The payoffs of a “small-win” mindset are clear: you tend to be less disappointed, and more motivated. You stay focused on the present. You don’t overreach by taking shortcuts and trying to do everything at once.

Perhaps most important, the “small-win” approach is aligned with the way your brain is built to learn: chunk by chunk, connection by connection, rep by rep. As John Wooden said, “Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.”

A few ideas for a small-win mindset:

Keep a daily notebook: Name the small changes you make each day.
When you get a small win, freeze: Don’t breeze past small improvements; instead, take a few seconds to acknowledge and celebrate them.
Aim for a daily SAP — Smallest Achievable Perfection. Pick one little thing to perfect in a single day — one move, one action, one chunk. Work on it until it’s polished, until you can’t not do it right.

I’d love to hear if you have more ideas for making small wins.

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The Kid Who Loves Music

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, April 27 2012


Ethan Walmark is six, he’s got autism, and he loves playing piano (he’s been learning by ear since he was tiny). Here, he plays one of his favorites: “Piano Man,” by Billy Joel. It’s worth a listen.

http://youtu.be/CpF3326_b5g

People talk about passion so often that it can sometimes feel like an abstraction. It’s nice to see a reminder what it looks like, and what it feels like.

(Not to mention where it can lead.)

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The Social Power of Sharing Mistakes

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 3 2012


Much of the research about learning and the brain could be distilled into a few simple words:

Mistakes are good. Struggle makes you smarter.

When it comes to applying this lesson to our lives, the problem is not with the science, but rather with our powerful natural aversion to mistakes and struggle.

Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, mistakes feel crummy; struggle feels like a verdict. Also, mistakes often carry a social price — they can cost us our job, our money, our pride. So we instinctively hide them.

The question is, how to fix that? How do you overcome your natural mistake allergy?

One good answer: do it as a group.

Last week I heard of a nice strategy from the headmaster of a private high school in Utah. It’s called the Mistake Club, and it got started, as most of these things do, by accident.

Backstory: A new assistant headmaster (let’s call him Ernest) had been asked to speak to one of the school’s biggest donors about an upcoming project. For various reasons, the conversation didn’t go well; by the time it ended the rich donor was royally ticked off. Ernest’s first instinct, naturally, was to hide the mistake; to tell no one.

But for some strange reason Ernest didn’t. He did the opposite. He told the headmaster and staff the whole fiasco, describing each detail of the train-wreck conversation. Someone made a joke that they should start awarding points for each screwup.

The Mistake Club was born. Meetings were weekly; points were awarded on a 1-10 scale — the bigger the screwup, the more you “earned.” At the end of the year, a “prize” was awarded to the person who’d accumulated the most points.

The benefits, of course, go far beyond the pleasure of the joke. The Mistake Club established a culture of trust and communication. When someone shares the details of their mistake, the whole group learns vicariously. Social ties are strengthened. The meetings turn into coaching sessions; the organizational brain gets smarter.

Here are few other ways to do that:

Control expectations: I’ve seen sports teams and businesses sign contracts at the beginning of a season affirming that people will make mistakes, struggle will happen.

Deliver praise during the struggle: instead of praising someone at the moment of their achievement, praise them during their effort — since this is the behavior that really matters, and that you want to create again.

Encourage fallibility in leaders: it’s far easier for everyone to be transparent when leaders set the tone. For example, I recently heard of a hospital CEO who wanted to encourage hand-washing. She offered a reward of $20 to any worker who noticed her entering a sterile area without washing her hands first. Showing her own fallibility makes it easy for others to show theirs.

Legislate risk: Some companies build risk-taking requirements into their culture. For instance, Living Social, the online coupon company, encourages its people to take a business risk that scares them once a week.

The point is to find some way to create a safe social place where mistakes can be made and then used to accelerate learning — an inoculation for our natural mistake allergy. As with any inoculation, a small dose can have a big effect.

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What Mastery Feels Like

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 4 2012


Last night my lovely bride and I snuck out to the movies at Cleveland’s old Capitol Theater. Screen 1 showed a preview of the colossal whiz-bang new Avengers movie (we weren’t invited, naturally).

Screen 2, however, showed a movie about a real person with actual superpowers. His name is Jiro Ono, and he’s built himself into the best sushi chef on the planet (click the trailer for a taste).

http://youtu.be/UELAu70qXlI

It’s a terrific, up-close portrait of the power of daily practice. Jiro, who’s 85, talks about how much more he has to learn. And the culture they’ve built inside this tiny shop — a culture of attentiveness, precision, and reaching — should be the envy of any organization or team. At one point, a chef tells of learning to make a difficult egg sushi. On the 200th try, he did it, and he wept with joy.

The takeaway wasn’t about the discipline; it was about the love that fueled the process. As author Jonah Lehrer recently put it, “love is just another name for “it never gets old.”

Inside Jiro’s shop, it never gets old. (Avengers, eat your hearts out!)

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Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) on the Big Stuff

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 8th 2012


I love this for a lot of reasons, especially for Sendak’s thoughts about the unmistakable feeling of doing good work at the 2-min mark. But really, the whole thing is worth watching.

http://youtu.be/U68bZbMM7q8

“It’s sublime, to go into another room and make pictures. It’s magic time, where all your weaknesses of character, the blemishes of your personality, whatever else torments you, fades away, just doesn’t matter. You’re doing the one thing you want to do and you do it well and you know you do it well, and… you’re happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio, and I think, what a transcendent life this is, that I’m doing everything I want to do. In that moment, I feel like I’m a lucky man.”

(From ”Tell Them Anything You Want,” a beautiful film by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs)

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LBOT Preview: Meet Your Talented Illustrator

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code Blog, May 15th, 2012


Here’s the thing no one tells you about writing books: you spend a fair amount of time feeling kinda clueless.

I realize, you’re not supposed to say that. Writing a book is supposed to be a confident sequence of a-ha moments, that feeling of unstoppable creative momentum some writers like to call “taking dictation from God.” But for me, it can sometimes feel more like walking through a dark forest, bumping my head into trees, hoping to get to the other side. During those times, it’s not like taking dictation from God. More like, from Homer Simpson.

One of the key moments in the head-bumping journey of this new book (The Little Book of Talent, due out in August) happened not so long ago, when I realized that this book needed an illustrator. (In retrospect, hugely obvious, since this is a handbook filled with specific, concrete tips designed to help readers improve their skills/grow their brains. But at the time, not so obvious.)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Book-Talent-Improving/dp/034553025X

I found myself magnetically drawn to the work of Mike Rohde.

http://rohdesign.com/sketchnotes/

Mike’s work is simple, classic, beautifully clear, and best of all, has this uncanny knack for capturing ideas and turning them into vivid, memorable images.

When I called Mike about The Little Book of Talent, we started with the idea of doing six illustrations. Then it was twelve. Then twenty. Next thing we knew, Mike was cranking out no fewer than fifty-freaking-two separate drawings for LBOT, one illustration for each of the book’s 52 rules, an Olympic-level performance. For example:

Tip #25: Shrink the Practice Space Tip #51: Keep Your Big Goals Secret

It turns out that Mike’s knack is not an accident. He’s a pioneer of a new kind of visual notetaking called sketchnotes. You might have seen it on the web, or at conferences. The idea is to replace the old ways of note-taking (words stacked on a page) with a combination of key words and images that capture the larger idea in a more concise, engaging way.

A good sketchnote quickly captures the essence of complicated ideas and relationships, distills them to a simple, memorable form. It works because it leverages the our brain’s natural ways of learning (focused on images and spatial relationships). Best of all, it changes the role of the note-taker from passive transcriber to active decision-maker; creator.

For more, check out Mike’s work here http://rohdesign.com/weblog/category/sketchnote-handbook

and his flickr collection here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/collections/72157602798339521/

But the big news is that he’s at work on a new book of his own: The Sketchnote Handbook from Peachpit Press, due in October. The idea is to help teach people how to use sketchnoting techniques in their lives, and give them some tools to start.

http://rohdesign.com/weblog/2012/3/5/writing-a-book-on-sketchnoting.html

So now I’m trying this sketchnoting thing myself, in hopes that it helps me get lost less, or at least bump into the right problems more quickly. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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How to Imagine More Effectively

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code Blog, May 18th, 2012


We usually think of our imaginations as idea-fountains: wellsprings of creativity.

What’s interesting, though, is how often imagination is used by highly successful performers in their practice techniques. These people channel the fountain’s energy in a very particular way: they use their imagination to build a sensory template for the action they want to learn, speeding the learning process. They focus on pre-creating the feeling of a skill, projecting themselves inside an action so they can learn it faster and better.

Exhibit A: Wayne Rooney, Britain’s resident soccer genius. As this terrific article explains, Rooney spent much of his youth imagining as he practiced. He played in the dark, alone, inventing little games; imagined bricks as defenders; imagined street signs as goalposts. To this day, on the night before a game, he asks the equipment manager what color jersey his team will be wearing, so he can more vividly imagine himself going through game situations, over and over.

Rooney, famous for being a mumbly, half-literate lout, practically turns into a scientist/poet when he describes his technique: ”You’re trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a ‘memory’ before the game,” he says. “You work out what decision is the best, and then if you get in that position in the game, that comes back to you. It’s basically stored in your mind.”

Exhibit B: Two people, paralyzed from the neck down, who have taught themselves to use a robotic arm to reach out and grab objects. A chip is implanted in the motor area of the brain which responds to the electrical firing patterns.

So how did they learn this? Simple: the patients were instructed to stare at the robot arm while they watched researchers manipulate it, and to imagine themselves controlling it — reaching, twisting, tilting, grabbing. Like Rooney, they stared at the skill, they imagined, and then they did it. One woman, who suffered a stroke 15 years ago, was able to control the arm to a phenomenal extent: she grasped a cup of coffee and brought it to her lips (and also brought the researchers to tears; here’s the video).

These cases and others like them indicate that we carry around powerful, built-in mental machinery (perhaps mirror neurons) that assists us in skill acquisition, when we use it properly. Let’s call this technique projection, and let’s name its basic qualities:

1. It’s highly specific and detailed. You are imagining a single move (a chunk) in the deepest possible detail. The color of the jersey, the smell of the grass, the feeling of grasping the cup. It’s visualizing in sensory HD.

2. It has two steps. First, you stare at the target skill until you’ve built it in your mind. Then you project yourself inside that skill, focusing on what it would feel like.

3. It’s solitary. This isn’t something that’s done in groups, but alone, in quiet places, where you can operate without distraction.

4. It’s used in combination with intensive practice. All the vivid projecting in the world doesn’t help until it’s combined with a lot of high-quality reps.

In our busy lives it’s tempting to spend our learning time in a frenzy of activity. Maybe it would be smarter to spend more time with our eyes closed.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

The New Report Card: Forget an “A,” Try for an “M”

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 23 2012


Four years ago David Boone was a homeless 15-year-old sleeping on a park bench in Cleveland, Ohio. This fall he’ll be entering Harvard.

His is the kind of heroic story that would seem over-the-top in a movie, if it didn’t happen to be real: David used his book-bag as a pillow, studied in train stations, figured out how to avoid local gangs. (Read his story here.)

http://www.cleveland.com/seniorstandouts/index.ssf/2012/05/david_boone_persevered_to_go_f.html

More interestingly, David’s not the only hero in this story. The other is his report card. Not because of its grades, but because of its design. You see, report cards at David’s school don’t have “A”s, “B”s, and “C”s. Instead, they have “M”s and “I”s.

M stands for Mastery; I stands for Incomplete.

This method is a product of remarkable new high school David attended called MC2 STEM,

http://sites.google.com/site/mcstemhs/

in which David is part of the first graduating class. The school, part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation STEM Initiative,

http://www.stemconnector.org/gates

teaches science and engineering through hands-on, project-based learning in cooperation with a General Electric R&D facility across the street (translation: they don’t sit at desks listening to teachers talk).

As they learn, students are graded on specific skill-sets — called benchmarks — that make up each 10-week subject.

“M” means the student has mastered the benchmark skill (usually demonstrated by a score of 90-plus on a project or test).

“I” means the student needs to work more until they master the skill. They don’t retake the course — instead, teachers provide additional activities and opportunities for mastery, until it’s achieved.

It’s refreshingly simple: the mushy, judgmental landscape of Bs and Cs is replaced with a clear goal: mastery is expected; if you don’t get it right away, you will get new opportunities to work until you do. As David says, “They don’t accept mediocrity.”

I think one reason this technique is effective is that it uses grades the way they should be used: not as an often-demotivating verdict on identity (“You’re a C student); but rather as an ignitor of effort, a motivational north star. “Incomplete” is a motivating concept, because it sends a strong signal that complete learning is not only possible but expected; that everyone is capable of top-level work. It nudges the culture away from judgement and toward continual improvement and reaching. It turns a school into a skill-construction zone.

The question is, how can other organizations put this M/I grading method to work? For instance, could a soccer coach build a team around the idea of mastering certain moves? Could a businesses do the same when teaching employees? A music teacher?

Also, I’m curious: do you know of other simple methods that schools, teams, and businesses use to promote the love of mastery? If so, I’d love to hear about them.

Re: Discussions on "The Talent Code"

Dept. of Multitasking

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 25 2012


Because just completing a triathlon isn’t enough (apparently).

http://youtu.be/1QoqenZytO8?hd=1

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How to Build Resilience

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 29th, 2012


No matter what talent you’re building, resilience is a big factor; perhaps the factor. Defined as the ability to recover from adversity; resilience is the ultimate killer app because it allows us to adapt, to learn, to turn setbacks into progress.

The mystery is, where does it come from? How is it developed? And perhaps most important, is it possible to teach?

One useful way to think about resilience is to think of it as the skill of controlling your emotions in negative situations. In this view, negative emotions are “hot” — they cause the brain to spark and short-circuit, they cause performance and confidence to dissolve in a cascade of doubt and judgement. Resilience is the skill of cooling those “hot” emotions and reinterpreting setbacks in a positive, future-oriented light.

We normally think of resilience as a response. The surprising thing about resilience, however, is that the most important moment comes before the negative event — it’s pre-silience. Studies show that resilient people start controlling their emotions before the stressful events begin. In other words, resilient brains function sort of like smart thermostats; even before the emotional heat arrives, they provide an anticipatory burst of cool, calm control.

Check out this study about Navy SEALs

http://blog.usnavyseals.com/2012/03/navy-seals-found-to-handle-stress-better.html

who were found to anticipate negative events by activating their emotional-control centers — in other words, before they encounter the negative event, their brains are already in calm-down mode.

The other interesting thing is that it seems this ability can be grown through practice. For instance, professional musicians who are preparing for a major performance will often pre-create, as closely as possible, the performance conditions, right down to the time of day, the clothes they’ll wear, the chair they’ll use.

NFL kickers like Billy Cundiff of the Ravens, who use bio-feedback devices

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7649003/nfl-science-why-ravens-kicker-billy-cundiff-choked-afc-championship-game-espn-magazine

to help teach them to regulate their stress levels in pressure situations.

Then there’s the wonderful example of Susan Cain,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/books/review/how-the-author-of-quiet-delivered-a-rousing-speech.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

an introvert (and author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking)

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352145/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338259959&sr=1-1

who had to face her worst fear: giving a speech in front of a huge audience. (Long story short: she got coached, did nothing but rehearse for a solid week, and nailed it.)

They are all being pre-silient: creating the pressurized situation, over and over, to teach their brain to calm itself at the right moments. In this way of thinking, practicing resilience is not that different from practicing a golf swing. The keys are:

1) Pre-create the stressful situation. It’s not enough to imagine it vaguely — try to get every detail. Ideally, duplicate the atmosphere; if not, imagine it as vividly as possible: a golfer or musician might imagine the uneasy rustling of the crowd; a CEO might imagine the hush of an expectant boardroom.

2) No stopping allowed. Once the “performance” starts, you can’t give yourself an exit door; you need to endure it completely, get to the other side of it.

3) Repeat. Then repeat again. And again. Learning to endure and control spikes of intense emotion is like enduring any sort of stimulus: time and repetition are your best friends.

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What Does Great Practice Feel Like?

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 31st, 2012


What’s the best deep practice made of? Novak Djokovic, top-ranked player in the world, gives us a peek at his recipe. (Skip to 1:05 for the best moments.) It includes:

1) Intensity: full-effort reaching, clear results, quality feedback.

2) Smallness: it focuses only on a few targeted qualities — for instance, improving touch, and the ability to disguise shots.

3) Game-ishness: this is no boring drill. It’s the opposite — a thrilling, absorbing, emotion-generating game (as the ending shows).

http://youtu.be/XJ3YXVholE8

The next question: is there a math-class version of this? A music-lesson version? A software-coding version?

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What’s Your Coaching-Thought?

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code Blog, June 8th, 2012


One strategy I’ve always found useful is the “swing-thought.” The term originates with golf; it refers to focusing on a single idea as you swing the club.

For example, one swing-thought might be SMOOOOTH. Or ROLL WRISTS. A good swing-thought works because it un-clutters the mind, clarifies focus, and captures the essence of your best performance.

Which makes me wonder: do the best coaches and teachers have the equivalent of swing-thoughts as they work? Are there key ideas coaches can use in the moment of teaching to help them coach better?

Based on my observations, I’d say that most master coaches have three distinct coaching-thoughts.

The first is CONNECT. They create a personal link; they use their interpersonal skills to capture the spotlight of the learner’s attention. Until that’s achieved, nothing useful can happen.

The second coaching-thought is ASK. The coach puts forth a task — it could be doing a drill or playing a song, or trying something new — it doesn’t really matter what it is, so long as the task 1) is unmistakably clear; 2) puts the learner on the edge of their ability (which is to say, it’s neither too hard nor too easy).

The third is RESPOND. The coach perceives what the learner is doing, and uses it to generate the next task. The next task might be more difficult, or it might be easier — all that matters is that it helps the learner navigate closer to the goal of proficiency.

Connect. Ask. Respond. This process isn’t a lecture from a podium. It’s more like a personal conversation that happens on the edge of the learner’s abilities.

When I coach, I find it useful to visualize what’s happening inside the learner’s brain: to picture the wires glowing, trying to connect, the new circuitry forming through each repetition. I know, it sounds sort of science-fiction-ish, but it works for me because it helps focus on the underlying process. Mistakes aren’t verdicts; they’re pieces of information you use to build the right connections.

Next question for you coaches and teachers: what images and ideas are going through your mind as you work? Are there any useful “coaching-thoughts” you’d like to share?

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Introducing Your Talent-Tip Hall of Fame

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code Blog, June 12th, 2012


We just arrived in Alaska, where we’re spending a big chunk of the summer. So far, everything’s going well: family and friends are healthy, weather’s been solid, and during this morning’s coffee, we had an official welcoming committee: a newborn moose calf and its mother ambling through the backyard.

Speaking of arrivals, it’s exactly 10 weeks until The Little Book of Talent publication date (August 21). As a way of marking the countdown, I’d like to update one of my favorite posts from about a year and a half ago, when I asked you readers to name the single best tip — the best advice, the best strategy, the best practice tool — they’ve ever received.

Your responses (all 71 of them) were terrific — so terrific, in fact, that it seems a shame to let them be buried in the comments section of the old post. So with that in mind, I’ve combed through the tips and selected my top four favorites.

1) Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast (from Greg Sumpter)

I think we typically want to learn a skill as quickly as possible, and be done with learning it. If we could only slow down, break things down into small reproducible parts, and excel in a smoother way, we would get to the end product with excellence much more quickly.

Why I like it: Because it keeps me focused on what really counts: being accurate and efficient, and letting the speed come later.

2) Start with the End in Mind (Bill Dorenkott, Head Coach of Ohio State Women’s Swim Team)

My 20-minute drive to work allows me quiet time to employ this rule for my day, week and season. I find it much easier to reverse-engineer a challenge than to fly by the seat of my pants.

Why I like it: Because there’s a huge gap between mere activity and targeted work; this saves me time.

3) Cultivate Awareness (Kent Bassett)

Instead of engaging in a running commentary about all the mistakes to avoid, and keeping a list of all the mistakes made, you should cultivate awareness. It fires the more unconscious, creative part of the mind. You can even say to yourself, “I’m going to play this passage, and I’m not going to try to avoid mistakes. I might even try to make mistakes.” This counter-intuitive technique allows you to play more freely, and often, with fewer mistakes.

Why I like it: Because rather than getting governed by your mistakes (always a danger), this helps you focus on mastering them.

4) Feel pain, not hurt (Markus)

Feeling pain is a signal of growing and improving. [Feeling] hurt is a signal of stop which pause the flow of skill development.

Why I like it: Because it makes clear the useful distinction between good pain (stretch, struggle, reach) and bad pain (ouch).

What I really like, however, is the idea that this master list of talent-development tips exists, and that we can make it even more useful by sharing it and adding to it as time goes on. So with that in mind, here’s the entire list http://thetalentcode.com/2011/04/03/a-sneak-preview-and-a-question/comment-page-1/#comments, along with a question: what are your favorites? What new tips need to be added?

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Dan is sending me a copy of his new book prior to release date, for me to preview. I will post my thoughts once I receive it. Looking forward to it!

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

How to Fix a Slump

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, July 1st, 2012

Ever see this diagram? (It’s from comedian Demetri Martin.)

I like this, because I think it’s true. From the outside, success looks like effortless progress; from the inside, we discover the journey is a lot more complicated. In fact, the most interesting part of the line is where it turns sharply downward, into one of those nasty-looking tangles where progress stops, development stalls, and frustration rises. It raises an interesting question:

What’s the best way to fix a slump?

Normally, when we hit a slump, we experience an overwhelming instinct to ignore it — to shut our eyes and just try harder, and hope things change. That makes sense — and it feels satisfying. But is it the best way?

We find an interesting case study from Andrew McCutchen, the Pittsburgh Pirates centerfielder. Drafted in 2005, McCutchen was a can’t-miss prospect, a first-round pick who performed outstandingly well for two years in the Pirates minor leagues — until, suddenly, he hit a dry spell. He stopped hitting. His average dropped to a puny .189. This was it: McCutchen’s slump, his crisis; his line was headed straight for the basement.

In this case, the Pirates organization used a surprising strategy. When McCutchen hit his downturn, they flew hitting coach Gregg Ritchie to visit him. Ritchie carried a piece of paper: a print-out of McCutchen’s hitting flaws — specific, targeted problems with his swing mechanics that Ritchie had noted a year and a half earlier.

Until that moment, McCutchen didn’t know the list existed. But now, working with Ritchie, he used this list of flaws like a blueprint. He lowered his hand position; he shifted his weight — together, player and coach fixed his swing. And it worked: McCutchen got out of his slump, and kept moving up. He’s now an All-Star.

I like this story because I think it gives us insight into how to best handle these downturn moments. We instinctively want to do it alone; to lift ourselves back on that upward track out of sheer will.

But what works better is to approach the slump more like a science problem. Cool off the emotion. Collaborate and gather information. Figure out the shortcoming, and start re-wiring the improvement. In a word, be agile.

I also like it because it shows the importance of organizational agility. The Pirates handled this well, because they understood when to make the intervention. Coach Ritchie knew all along McCutchen’s swing had potential problems, but he didn’t try to fix those problems early on because his swing was working (as McCutchen said, if coaches had tried to correct him, he would have ignored them — and rightly so). No, the Pirates wisely waited until the the problem arose — until they had McCutchen’s full and desperate attention. Then, together, they went to work and built a better swing.

Fixing slumps is not about solo strength. It’s about group agility.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

How the Best Teachers Begin Their Lessons

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, July 11th, 2012


Quick question for coaches and teachers: What’s the single most important moment of a lesson? Is it:

(A) the initial explanation of the skill being taught?
( the first couple tries?
(C) the moment things click, when the learner “gets it”?

I think the answer is (D) — None of the Above.

There’s a strong case to be made that the single most important moment of learning happens before the lesson actually begins.

We know that master coaches are extremely skilled at quickly making a strong emotional connection with a learner, to create the bond of trust that’s the foundation of all learning.

But mere emotional connection isn’t enough. The world is filled with extremely charismatic, fantastically entertaining teachers who are wonderful at creating connection but not so great at actually improving skill.

Because it’s not enough just to capture the learner’s attention — you have to create intention: an urgent desire to work hard toward a concrete goal, toward some vision of their future self.

Science is giving us a peek inside that process. A group of researchers at Case Western were able to look at the brains of learners in two conditions. In the first, the coach was judgmental, and focused on negatives and the past. In the second, the coach was empathetic, and focused on the future.

http://blog.case.edu/think/2010/11/15/coaching_with_compassion_can_alight_upa_human_thoughts

With the judgmental coach, the visual cortex showed limited activity. With the positive, future-oriented coach, however, it lit up like a Christmas tree. The researchers concluded that this correlated with someone imagining their future.

The takeaway: when it comes to learning, brains work exactly like flashlights. It’s not enough just to turn them on; they have to be pointed toward a target.

A few simple ways to do this:

Encourage expression about future goals. Where do they want to be a month from now? A year? Five years?
Ruthlessly eliminate negative statements — especially judgements — that cause brains to shut down.
Count down until some Big Future Event. How many practices do we have left until the tournament? How many more lessons until the recital? A calendar with Xs is a powerful tool.

How else? What other tips do you have for clicking on those flashlights?

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

What World-Class Practice Looks Like, Part 2

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, July 17th, 2012


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RNfaIW5k1g&amp;feature=player_embedded

One of the beautiful things about great practice is how simple it is.

This is especially true with soft skills — those improvisatory skills of reading patterns and reacting instantly to them — which show up so often in team sports and the creative arts.

Check out this video of Barcelona (aka the world’s best soccer team over the past four years) as they do their regular one-touch keep-away workout, which is called rondo.

Here’s what I like about it:

1) It generates reps of the key skills (anticipation, quick, accurate decisions under pressure), over and over.

2) It’s played with 100 percent maximum intensity.

3) It’s really fun/addictive — check out those smiles and laughs at the end.

Xavi, Barca’s midfielder, says: ”It’s all about rondos. Rondo, rondo, rondo. Every. Single. Day. It’s the best exercise there is. You learn responsibility and not to lose the ball. If you lose the ball, you go in the middle. Pum-pum-pum-pum, always one touch. If you go in the middle, it’s humiliating, the rest applaud and laugh at you.”

For this team, rondo isn’t a mere drill. It’s more like their identity.

To me, the truly interesting question is this: How do you create a culture in which this little game — not ego, not showing off, not even scoring goals — becomes the most important and valued part?

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

When I first saw this pre gram warm up a few months ago, the first thing I thought of was the game botchgo that Tom mentioned many times before on his old site. It is so simple but the one touch passing generates so much thought and awareness on participants that there is no way to go through this game without 100% dedication on everyone involved.

Such a great game

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

There are some great videos here... Nike Soccer / Joga Bonito (a campaign launched in 2006). I have been using these videos as part of my teaching and coaching toolbox.

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2006/nike-football-joga-bonito/

I particularly like this one: http://youtu.be/NQxlnd-DK8I as it provides many examples of skill, creativity and passion as the players prepare for a game.

The Little Book of Talent

I got this email from Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code. He has written a new book called 'The Little Book of Talent". The email is about the book.
I got the ebook version and have been reading it. It is very concise and I think it is a great too for coaches, teachers, parents and in general all human beings. So if you are in one of these categories I recommend it.
I pasted Dan's email below.
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Hi everybody,

I want to tell you that I've got a new book coming out this week. It's called The Little Book of Talent. Here are the basics:

1) It's a manual for improving skills: 52 simple, proven tips for getting better at sports, music, art, and business. Think of it as the practical-minded companion to The Talent Code. A coach that fits in your pocket.

2) The tips are taken from the talent hotbeds I've been visiting for the past five years: top music academies, sports teams, the Navy SEALs, Olympic training centers, and world-class businesses and schools.

3) We've been lucky enough to receive some good early reviews and kind words, such as:

"This book should be given to every graduate at commencement, every new parent in a delivery room, every executive on the first day of work. It is a guidebook -- beautiful in its simplicity and backed by hard science -- for nurturing excellence." - Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit.

"It's so juvenile to throw around hyperbolic terms such as 'life-changing,' but there's no other way to describe The Little Book of Talent. I was trying new things within the first half hour of reading it and haven't stopped since. Brilliant. And yes, life-changing." - Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence.

4) I'm eager to get your reaction. If you want to learn more, check out my blog at thetalentcode.com. And here's the Amazon link.

Thanks,

Dan

PS - here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0JtjasYCU

The Little Book of Talent

I read the digital copy of "The Little Book of Talent" and really enjoyed it.

It is a quick reference book to 52 important points about coaching or teaching a person or a group on how to focus and how to practice to become very good at whatever a person wants to become good at.

I really enjoyed it and will keep my reader close by so I can refer to it during the season.

The Little Book of Talent

I am halfway through re-reading this small book. I have it online and Dan Coyle had Random Houxe send me a complimentary copy.

I am going to suggest that All of my Players AND their Parents read this book.

There is a good focus on How you can become very good with Deep Practice.

Interesting differentiation between Hard and Soft skills.

Hard skills are technique that use mechanically efficient movements and they must be exact and become movement patterns.

Soft skills are the game reading and creative skills and they must be learned by Playing and recongnizing patterns and the Read -Recognize - React as opposed to Dave KIng's Read and React. Shrink the space and play lots of games.

Limit practicing to 'Only on Days that you Eat'.

I am talking about lots of games for the next few days in the Daily Drill section .

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn something

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Tom,
"The Talent Code "was a great read. So good I went over it a second time.

Just received the small hard cover book "The Little Book of Talent" in the mail. After reading the first book I had to read this book.also.

RookieCoach

"The Talent Code" and WHERE IS EVERYONE

I really enjoy the "Little Book of Talent' and am going through it for the third time.

This discussion board now has NO discussion. Dean doesn't post anymore. Haven't heard from Kai in months. Rookie Coach a few postings.

It appears by the hit count that lots of coaches come here 24/7 but no one posts comments, questions, drills or anything.

It is like I am doing a silent hockey class with no feedback.

I will continue because it makes me try to get better all the time but I invite some feedback.

OK

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Hi Tom,

I've been quite busy with coaching these few months. I'm assistant coach in U20 team that plays in Finnish U20 Championship league.
But I'll try to bee more active with the forum in future.

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Kai, it sounds like you are really busy. I look forward to your input from the OTHER side of the ocean.
Tom
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Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Tom and all coaches,

How many coaches have had the chance to read The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle ?

If you have read the book .

Is there one tip, or tip number, that really hits home for you as a coach ?

Without giving to much of the book away.

Great read . Tom you must be on your forth time reading it by now ?

RookieCoach
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Rookie CoachI love the book but especially the part that defines hard and soft skills and then the best ways to practice them.
Tom

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

This is from one of the best all around Conditioning Coaches in the business. A great blog to follow on Twitter or Google Reader. Lists three books on talent development.



http://www.functionalpathtrainingblog.com/2012/10/talent-development-skill-learning.html

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

I’m just starting to read The Talent Code, but have read a lot of comments about the book. Love the idea about DEEP PRACTICE, and would like to set up drills to accomplish this, but not sure on how to do this. I like to use the following drills in my Novice hockey practices, and feel these do relate to Deep Practice: Would love to hear comments.

Cross Ice 2-2, 3-3, or 4-4 is the equivalent to Futsal, making and correcting errors, lots of puck touches.

2 – 2 Keep away – same reasons as the cross ice.

Circle Monkey in the Middle - 1 or 2 players in the middle of a faceoff circle, 4 to 5 players making one touch passes through the circle. Start with the players in the circle without sticks.

Target Shots - Have the players aim at targets on the boards, kids are really focused to hit the targets. Targets can get smaller as the players get better.

Quick Hands – Players stickhandle through pucks that are spaced out 1.5 feet apart, they see their mistakes when they hit a puck.

I am thinking about doing time trials with the kids for quick turns, and any puck control circuits???
In this way the kids will work on beating their best time. Is this something that coaches in hockey do? Do you guys think this makes sense?
--------------------------------------------
Peter good to see you taking part in the forum.
I think all of the ideas above are good practice activities. If the players focus and work on correcting any mistake they make right away then it is deep practice. So trying, failing, trying to correct the mistake, failing again, modifying what you are doing to correct the mistake is deep practice.

Do things really well before focusing on speed. If they are competent at a skill then do time trials as it is a way to set up deep practice at going full speed.
Tom

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Quote by: peter

I’m just starting to read The Talent Code, but have read a lot of comments about the book. Love the idea about DEEP PRACTICE, and would like to set up drills to accomplish this, but not sure on how to do this. I like to use the following drills in my Novice hockey practices, and feel these do relate to Deep Practice: Would love to hear comments.

Cross Ice 2-2, 3-3, or 4-4 is the equivalent to Futsal, making and correcting errors, lots of puck touches.

2 – 2 Keep away – same reasons as the cross ice.

Circle Monkey in the Middle - 1 or 2 players in the middle of a faceoff circle, 4 to 5 players making one touch passes through the circle. Start with the players in the circle without sticks.

Target Shots - Have the players aim at targets on the boards, kids are really focused to hit the targets. Targets can get smaller as the players get better.

Quick Hands – Players stickhandle through pucks that are spaced out 1.5 feet apart, they see their mistakes when they hit a puck.

I am thinking about doing time trials with the kids for quick turns, and any puck control circuits???
In this way the kids will work on beating their best time. Is this something that coaches in hockey do? Do you guys think this makes sense?
--------------------------------------------
Peter good to see you taking part in the forum.
I think all of the ideas above are good practice activities. If the players focus and work on correcting any mistake they make right away then it is deep practice. So trying, failing, trying to correct the mistake, failing again, modifying what you are doing to correct the mistake is deep practice.

Do things really well before focusing on speed. If they are competent at a skill then do time trials as it is a way to set up deep practice at going full speed.
Tom

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Thank you Tom, love your ideas.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Peter this is a really good clip about what 'deep practice' is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8x2-OyZz4A&feature=related Daniel Coyle is being interviewed and they go to some of the talent hotbeds to demonstrate this method of practice.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Quote by: TomM

Peter this is a really good clip about what 'deep practice' is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8x2-OyZz4A&feature=related Daniel Coyle is being interviewed and they go to some of the talent hotbeds to demonstrate this method of practice.

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Very interesting. I love being a coach.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Recently finished reading the Talent Code, and love the idea of deep practice. My 8 year old son is in his second year Novice, and loves to practice, and talk hockey. So the two off us decided to practice his wrist shot in the garage, the plan is to take 100 shots a night.

My thought on how to make this DEEP PRACTICE was to have him aim at the 5 hole on his shooting tarp, the 5 hole in this tarp is really small, so he will try a task, fail, learn, adjust, and then repeat. Well this DEEP PRACTICE is really working.

First night he was able to get 3 pucks out of 100 through the 5 hole, now as I said the hole is really quite small, and was just missing on most of his shots.

2nd Night 4 out off100

3rd Night 11 out off 100

4th Night 13 out off 100

5th Night 15 out off 100

6th Night 22 out off 100!!

Thank you Tom for suggesting this book.
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Peter, it sounds like a good example of deep practice.
Tom

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Quote by: peter

Recently finished reading the Talent Code, and love the idea of deep practice. My 8 year old son is in his second year Novice, and loves to practice, and talk hockey. So the two off us decided to practice his wrist shot in the garage, the plan is to take 100 shots a night.

My thought on how to make this DEEP PRACTICE was to have him aim at the 5 hole on his shooting tarp, the 5 hole in this tarp is really small, so he will try a task, fail, learn, adjust, and then repeat. Well this DEEP PRACTICE is really working.

First night he was able to get 3 pucks out of 100 through the 5 hole, now as I said the hole is really quite small, and was just missing on most of his shots.

2nd Night 4 out off100

3rd Night 11 out off 100

4th Night 13 out off 100

5th Night 15 out off 100

6th Night 22 out off 100!!

Thank you Tom for suggesting this book.
---------------------------
Peter, it sounds like a good example of deep practice.
Tom

I watched documentary about Finnish soccer player Jari Litmanen. He used to stay on the field after practices and practice shooting. He took ten balls and tryed to shoot all ten balls e.g. to top left corner. If he got 3 first and missed 4ht he would start from the beginning and do this as long as he got all the 10 balls in a row to the top left corner. I think this is also a good example about deep practice.

So we modified the idea little and we came up with a skills game for our morning skills practice: Group of players each of them with e.g. 5 pucks. one of the players calls the spot where to shoot. First one to shoot all the five in a row to the target spot wins ( if you miss you have to start from the beginning).

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Great idea Kai. I am sitting in a hotel room in New York waiting for my wife and son to wake up. All of the walking yesterday must have tired them out.

Daniel Coyle wrote another book called 'The Little Book of Talent' where he condenses everything about the centre's that produce champions.

I want to set up a 'Mission Impossible' circuit where the players go from one station to the next and do activities like you suggest and if they fail they have to return to the station they started at to move on. Possible ideas are to score on a breakaway, saucer pass over something to a target. If you have more suggestions I would love to hear them.

Have you tried the videos from this site on your smart phone. I am wondering if they run well in Finland.

I brought my wife to NY instead of going to Stockholm for the coaching conference. We picked up our son in Toronto and brought him here as a graduation from university present.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Quote by: TomM

Great idea Kai. I am sitting in a hotel room in New York waiting for my wife and son to wake up. All of the walking yesterday must have tired them out.

Daniel Coyle wrote another book called 'The Little Book of Talent' where he condenses everything about the centre's that produce champions.

I want to set up a 'Mission Impossible' circuit where the players go from one station to the next and do activities like you suggest and if they fail they have to return to the station they started at to move on. Possible ideas are to score on a breakaway, saucer pass over something to a target. If you have more suggestions I would love to hear them.

Have you tried the videos from this site on your smart phone. I am wondering if they run well in Finland.

I brought my wife to NY instead of going to Stockholm for the coaching conference. We picked up our son in Toronto and brought him here as a graduation from university present.

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I love the Mission Impossible circuit idea. Love the breakaway as the last station, and the saucer pass is good, I like to start with " Quick Hands" where the players stickhandle through 6-8 pucks. They have to start over if they hit any of the pucks.

Keep the ideas coming...this could be good.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Quote by: TomM

Great idea Kai. I am sitting in a hotel room in New York waiting for my wife and son to wake up. All of the walking yesterday must have tired them out.

Daniel Coyle wrote another book called 'The Little Book of Talent' where he condenses everything about the centre's that produce champions.

I want to set up a 'Mission Impossible' circuit where the players go from one station to the next and do activities like you suggest and if they fail they have to return to the station they started at to move on. Possible ideas are to score on a breakaway, saucer pass over something to a target. If you have more suggestions I would love to hear them.

Have you tried the videos from this site on your smart phone. I am wondering if they run well in Finland.

I brought my wife to NY instead of going to Stockholm for the coaching conference. We picked up our son in Toronto and brought him here as a graduation from university present.

Here's a few I came up with

• Bounce a puck on our stick blade X times/ distance
  
• Bounce a puck on our stick blade and drop it into bucket that's a few meters away
  
• Stickhandle multiple pucks skating forwards / backwards
  
• Deflect pucks from air to net forehand/backhand
  
• Stop high saucer passes from air with your stick

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Stickhandle puck while kicking a soccer ball.

Putting the puck between your legs while stickhandling.

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Great ideas.

Re: Discussion - "The Talent Code"

Guys,

I will be running my first summer Power Skating and Stickhandling program .
It will be mostly younger kids with a few older players.
The older players will be used at the beginning of each line as a visual learning tool for yonger players.As mentioned in the Talent Code many hotbeds for talent work this way. This will be slowed down with exagerated moves out of their comfort zone.
This site has great video's from the A200 formation with a few pro players.

I have been putting together short video clips on the stride mechanics and stickhandling to show the players.
How many coaches use video on the ice as a learning tool?
Thoughts on this or suggestions?

Thanks
RK
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RK, I do quite a bit of stuff with ex NHLer Morris Lukowich and he uses Coaches Eye which is an app on the Iphone or pad where you can analyze a players technique while on the ice and send them the video after.

Hockey Coaching ABCs - Forum
https://www.hockeycoachingabcs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=641