The Myth of Practice: Are You Polishing Diamonds, or Logs?

Most readers will be aware of the frequently quoted ’10,000 hours’ theory made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, ‘Outliers’, and lauded by Matthew Syed in his 2010 homage to Gladwell, ‘Bounce’.

Very briefly, for the uninitiated, Gladwell’s premise is that many thousands of hours practice equates to better chances of achieving excellence. Syed, a former England No.1, backs up Gladwell, saying that he wasn’t necessarily the best table tennis player in the country, just the one that practiced the most.

Simple, eh? Simple, yes - but flawed.

The theory never quite made sense to me. It always appeared overly simplistic, and just did not stack up against years of my own personal observation as an elite junior, but also as a sports agent and administrator later in life.

In fact, the opposite was often true – I distinctly recall some of the most talented players I played with who became either football or cricket professionals being some of the worst trainers in the squad. What they definitely were though, was the most talented.

Sure, Syed trained hard, but perhaps only harder than his peers of similar ability. Could a more naturally talented table tennis player could have achieved greater heights with less training?

With this in mind, I was relieved to stumble across a 2014 Princeton study which debunks Gladwell's theory. The study involved the meta-analysis of 88 studies into the effect of practice on elite performance - (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797614535810.

When applied to sport, the difference between those who practiced to an extreme level, and those who did not, could only account for an 18% difference in resultant output – what we might call ‘better performance’.

18% is not insignificant – but it is certainly indicative of a much lower impact on performance than is commonly supposed.

“There is no doubt that deliberate practice is important, from both a statistical and a theoretical perspective. It is just less important than has been argued,” the study’s lead author, Brooke Macnamara, said in a statement. “For scientists, the important question now is, what else matters?”

What else, indeed? What other factors account for why one apparently elite athlete can be so comprehensively outperformed by another?

Let us consider table tennis. This is a sport driven by practice. Players and coaches often pride themselves on masochistic claims of how many hours per day they practice, with the Chinese method of 6 hours a day, 6 days a week held up as the gold standard. Their Olympic success is seemingly irrefutable proof that their method is correct.

The conclusion is flawed though. It is like saying that the only person in the village with a mower is the best at cutting grass.

A country with a population of 1 billion who has a sport as its No.1 participation activity is always going to be able to identify a pool of very talented players, simply through sheer weight of numbers. If a country with a population of Moldova, for example, applied the same levels of training, would it gain similar Olympic success? Of course not, because the talent available is inevitably going to be thinner from a purely statistical point of view.

So, if imposing massive training loads is not the answer, what can we do to achieve better high-performance results?

Start with creating opportunities. Matthew Syed readily admits that the fact that his parents bought him a table, that he had a willing practice partner in his brother, and a readily accessible local club, were decisive factors in his development.

No table, no brother and no local club would not have created an Olympian like Syed, because there would have been no opportunity for the development to take place.

Think about talent identification. In the absence of a Communist-style approach to mass participation in a state approved activity, we need to work smarter, not harder, when it comes to considering where we should focus limited high-quality coaching opportunities.

Put simply, concentrating on coaching the best players and benefiting from the 18% growth in their output makes more sense than spending the same amount of resources on Joe or Jane Average.

Focus on creating high quality training blocks, not just a lot of them. Athletes are also humans.

They thrive in interesting and innovative environments which they find stimulating. Why are we surprised when swimmers, gymnasts or rowers drop out of their sport at early age after a decade of early morning starts and monotonously repetitive actions?

Adopting a more holistic approach to athlete development by addressing their emotional, nutritional, and social needs, not just their sporting ones, will create happier, more balanced athletes.

The recent Michael Jordan documentary, ‘The Last Dance’ is a fascinating look into what can go wrong if focus is all-consuming. This is perhaps counter-intuitive, as you may reasonably assert that it was Jordan’s single-mindedness and unmatched work ethic that saw him achieve greatness.

I would suggest, however, that he was always going to be a great because of his innate talent. Many other NBA players were elite in their field and trained hard, yet there was only one Michael Jordan. Why? Because his talent levels were innately higher than those of his rivals. The cost of this single-mindedness was a human one – I challenge anyone who has watched the documentary to argue that Jordan comes across as a well-adjusted human being.

Australia punches well above its weight in sports. Isolated geographically, in global terms we are a small population on a big, dry island. Yet we are successful.

Do we train harder than others? Of course not – we benefit from positive environmental factors, such as good weather and great facilities (opportunity). We have traditionally invested heavily in agencies such as the AIS to nurture athletes (talent identification). Our sports scientists are the envy of the world, with many overseas professional sports clubs enlisting Australians in high performance roles in the English Premier League, the NBA and elsewhere (quality innovative training).

Why then do we still see the ’10,000 hours’ line lazily rolled out so often?

There are a few main reasons, none of them good.

It is used as a disciplinary tool to try and inspire youngsters – the argument goes that “if you train hard, then you too can play in the big leagues”. Except we know that won’t happen if you are not born with the requisite amount of innate ability.

It is also easier for people to believe that it is true. They want it to be true because it gives them hope. And when a Steven Bradbury gets his moment in the sun, their achievement is lauded as ‘proof’ that practice trumps talent, and feeds into the well-worn ‘Aussie battler’ narrative.

The ‘truth’ though, as anyone familiar with Gary Ablett snr, Shane Warne, or Mark Viduka will tell you (none of them known for being great on the training track), is quite the opposite.

To paraphrase Syed from his latest book, 'Black Box Thinking' which applies a cognitive lens to high performance, we are hardwired to think that the world is simpler than it is.

To avoid the uncomfortable reality that myriad unpredictable reasons affect an ultimate outcome, humans prefer to lock on to a single 'narrative fallacy' based on post-event hunches (e.g. he/she is the best because they train harder).

This feeds in to to another difficulty - people fear admitting their mistakes, and are therefore reluctant to challenge them. Instead, they prefer to re-frame and re-spin their beliefs to have retrospective effect, and conveniently edit out mistakes.

You might be able to buy the same drink and wear the same shoes as MJ, but simply replicating his training regime alone is not going to make you "Be Like Mike".