Reply To: Player Development: The 10, 000 Hour Rule

[Tom Molloy]

Daniel Coyle just wrote a book that explains how we learn any skill. It supports the 10 000 hour concept but he explains how to practice effectively. He goes to places around the world that are developing world class athletes. Places like a tennis academy in Moscow that is run down and has one indoor court but has trained half of the women's top 10 tennis players. A baseball hotbed on a small Caribean island that produces major leage players by the bushelful. He travels to a small music academy that trains singers like Jessica Simpson from age 11 and many others. He explains why Korea now has 45 women on the LPGA tour.

I just returned from Europe where I visited Salzburg to see the friends I have there and then went to Heidelberg Germany to the IIHF coaching conference which had Daniel Cole as the first speaker. I had a good talk with him that evening and he signed the book I bought and now have read twice. I then travelled to Finland to visit my co-author Juhani Wahlsten and we had a meeting with some coaches there and plan to produce a booklet on games.

The book is the Talent Codeby Daniel Coyle. It explains how we have to gradually produce movement circuits (or any other kind of learning) by trying, failing, trying again. This connects the nervous system patterns and the circuit is wrapped with myelin which is white fatty matter (like the rubber coating on an electrical cord) This myelin holds together this new knowledge (movement, reading, speaking etc.) and the more we repeat this movement the more times the circuit is wrapped and the fasted the response time.

Anyone can learn anything if they work long enough at it to produce these circuits. We can learn all our lives. Up to puberty then up to 30 we learn faster but we retain the ability to learn. Deseases like MS or dementia are caused by the breakdown of this myelin coating and we lose the circuitry to control our muscles with MS and the cognitive ability with dementia.

Sports, music, education, behavior are all dependent on developing the proper circuits and there are effective techniques that enhance learning in coaching, teaching, parenting and learning anything.

Team games need not only individual skills (how and what) but the ability to recognize the the when and where and why.) So technique and game sense have to be practiced. So we can't just practice like we would teaching the piano and focus on just one participant but we have to add the dimension of all the variables that the game presents. Brazilian Futsal is the example given for why Brazil produces most of the world greatest players. (intense game in a small area)

Best book on learning I have read so far.

'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'