There are levels of learning . These three books are ones I recommend at a higher level :
THE CAPTAIN’S CLASS by Sam Walker
THE TALENT CODE by Daniel Coyle
THE SPORT GENE by David Epstein
I have just finished THE TALENT CODE.and will excerpt some highlights later on. No finer examples of the “CODE” exist than Tim (the backboard ) and Charlie Owens. I interviewed Charlie and suggested people thought his skill was an act of genius! Below is his response :
The more I wrote the more I thought, I wonder what Charlie would say about
this?
Here are some thoughts the “master” shared:
- The most adamant statement contradicted that this was pure talent. That those great hands weren’t simply heaven sent. No way. He cited several older men from his local club who spent their time beating him with lobs, drop shots, and guile. As a small youngster, one older “wizard “beat me 100 times before I beat him at his own game. He never beat me again”. No, those “tools” were hard earned, no short cuts, but a lifetime of fun and victory.
Want to be a great coach? Reading this book will help. (Random direct quotes )
FROM The Talent Code:
Pg. 7 “This book is divided into three parts—-deep practice, ignition, and master coaching—which correspond to the three basic elements of the talent code. First, the participants look at the task as a whole—as one big chunk, the megacircuit. Second, they divide it into its smallest possible chunks. Third, they play with time, slowing the action down, then speeding it up, to learn its inner architecture.
We’re all familiar with the adage that practice is the best teacher. Myelin casts the truth of this old saying in a new light. There is, biologically speaking, no substitute for attentive repetition. Nothing you can do—talking, thinking, reading, imagining—is more effective in building skill than executing the action, firing the impulse down the nerve fiber, fixing errors, honing the circuit.
This jibes with what tennis coach Robert Lansdorp has witnessed. Lansdorp, who’s in his sixties, is to tennis is to investing, having worked with Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport, and Maria Sharapova. He is amused by the need of today’s tennis coaching what Warren Buffett is to investing, having worked with Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport, and Maria Sharapova. He is amused by the need of today’s tennis stars to hit thousands of groundstrokes every day.
“You ever watch Connors practice? You ever watch McEnroe or Federer?” Lansdorp asks. “They didn’t hit a thousand; most of them barely practice for an hour. Once you get timing, it doesn’t go away.”`
Deep practice is not simply about struggling; it’s about seeking out a particular struggle, which involves a cycle of distinct actions.
- Pick a target
- Reach for it.
- Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach.
- Return to step one.
The differences were staggering. With the same amount of practice, the long-term-commitment group outperformed the short-term-commitment group by 400 percent.The long-term-commitment group, with a mere twenty minutes of weekly practice progressed faster than the short-termer who practiced for an hour and a half. When long-term commitment combined with high levels of practice, skills skyrocketed.
“What we do here is like lighting a switch,” Ali said. “It’s extremely deliberate. It’s not random; there’s no chance involved. You have to stand behind what you do, to make sure every single detail is pushing the same way. Then it clicks.. The kids get it, and when it starts, the rest of them get it, too. It’s contagious.
He said he had tried piano but didn’t have the knack. “Didn’t have the patience, you mean”, Miss Mary replied kindly but firmly.
“Thank you for teaching,” and Miss Mary bows and solemnly replies, “Thank you for learning.”
Yet while myelin may be counted in wraps and hours, Wooden and Miss Mary also show us that master coaching something more evanescent: more art than science. It exists in the space between two people, the warm, messy game of language, gesture, and expression. To better understand how this process works, let’s pull back and take a broader look at the shared characteristics of master coaches.
One does not become a master coach by accident.Many of the coaches I met shared a similar biographical arc:they had once been promising talents in their respective fields but failed and tried to figure out why”.
* Skill is a cellular insulation that wraps neural circuits and and grows in response to certain signals.
* HSE (The Holy Sh*t Effect ) or when it clicks.
*You will become clever through your mistakes.”
* What is the best way to get to Carnegie Hall?
Answer: Go straight down Myelin Street.
- To put it another way, myelin doesn’t care who you are—it cares what you do.
- Deep practice X 10,000 hours = world class skill.
*Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is a triumph of some enthusiasm. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
*Where deep practice is all about staggering- baby steps, ignition is about the set of signals and subconscious forces that create our identity; the moments that lead us to say THAT IS WHO I WANT TO BE.
- Education is not about filling a pail, but the lighting of a fire. W.B. Yeats
ON MASTER COACHING
To describe John Wooden as a good basketball coach is like describing Abraham Lincoln as a solid congressman.
*A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. Henry Brooks Adams.
*Wooden would say, “…I am not going to treat you players
the same…..you are all different.”
- “ The second they get to a new spot, even if they are still groping a bit, I push them to the next level.”
*Why does slowing down work so well?The myelin model offers two reasons. First, going slow allows you at attend more closely to errors, creating a higher degree of precision with each firing—and when it comes to growing myelin, precision is everything. As football coach Tom Martinez likes to say, “It’s not how fast you can do it. It’s how slow you can to it correctly”. Second, going slow helps the practicer to develop something even more important: a working perception of the skill’s internal blueprints—the shape and rhythm of the interlocking skill circuits.
The Little Green Book of Tennis 