Achieving Goals In The Sport Gene By Epstein

While many say that practice makes perfect, is that true? Does a person need to put in such a vast amount of time in order to get better and excel in something? In a chapter of his book called “The 10,000 Hour Rule” in Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell believes that a person needs to put in a least 10,000 hours in order to excel in their area of practice. Contrary to Gladwell, fellow author, Daniel Goleman states that the hours of practice doesn’t matter but the concentration and focus is what makes a difference. Using evidence from his book, “Focus:The Hidden Driver of Excellence,” Goleman concludes that a person doesn’t need to practice hard, but practice deliberately. After reading the theories on repetition and how it relates to success, I think that it’s not the of hours on studying or training that is important, but the concentration and attention to detail that makes a person great. I conclude that a person doesn’t need to worry about putting in a unreasonable amount of hours, but they need to focus on concentrating and in

Practice isn’t the thing to do once you are good. It is the thing that makes you good. In the novel “Outliers", in the chapter “The 10,000 Hour Rule”, Gladwell introduces a theory that signifies that 10,000 hours is the approximate amount of practice time it takes for someone to become a master at something, and therefore likely to become a successful being. Gladwell backs up the theory by discussing a study that was performed around the 1990s by K. Anders Ericsson. In the study, Ericsson and his colleagues examined the long-term practicing habits of musicians at an elite musical academy in Berlin. Gladwell exposes the practicing habits of a few well-known successors to prove his theory such as, Bill Joy, The Beatles, and Bill Gates. Psychologist Michael Howe even applied the rule to Mozart, greatly considered a child prodigy.

Some people believe that dedication, persistence, and time people can accomplish any goal. Everyone should have goals when striving to achieve a specific task. Goal setting is used by top level athletes, successful business man, and achievers in all fields. A wise athlete once said, “Without time and effort put towards ones goal for the sport, you are nearly wasting your time and your teams time and you will never achieve ones goal for that

How much of our lives do we actually control ? Everyone has and will always have different outlooks on this question that can’t possibly be proven, we can solely try to persuade and convince each other otherwise.For example two authors had two different viewpoints on this controversial question.David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene, argues that physical ability formed at birth out ways hard work and success achieved through years of practice.The opposing author William Ernest Henley wrote a poem called Invictus that is strong and powerful to anyone that reads it, claiming that you are the master of your own destiny. These are both reasonable claims but I believe William Ernest Henry has a more convincing argument therefore he better answers the question, How much of our lives do we actually control ?

It has been identified that through sports psychology one can improve their physical ability and performance. Sports psychology is the study of how the mind, mental states and behaviour effect sporting performance. There are several sport psychology techniques, which have helped me become a better volleyball player. These techniques include planning for performance, controlling arousal levels, mental rehearsal and concentration.

Early specialization is characterized by year-round training in a single activity, beginning at a young age, apart from other activities with the goal of developing expertise (Ericsson et al., 1993). Ericsson and his colleagues studied pianists and violinists of varying skill levels and discovered that the expert musicians typically began training between ages four and five while the non-experts started training later in life. Moreover, a pattern emerged indicating that the level of performance attained related to the amount of deliberate practice. By age 20 the best performers had spent over 10,000 hours, an intermediate group had put in 8,000 hours, and the least accomplished group only 5,000 hours. In their theory of deliberate practice, Ericsson et al. (1993) suggest that talent plays no role in the development of expertise, rather it is an effortful activity motivated by the goal of improving performance. Typically, deliberate practice requires a high amount of concentration and must be carried out over time. The obligation to significant amounts of deliberate practice in one sport from a young age has been demonstrated as one approach to developing elite athletes (Helsen et al., 1998).

How much of what happens in our lives do we actually control? This is a question that mankind has been pondering for thousands of years. There are two different articles that could answer the question. David Epstein, the author of “The Sports Gene”, writes about a true story of fate, in which an amateur high jumper makes it to the top due to his god-given gift of a large Achille’s tendon. Malcom Gladwell argues in his piece, “Outliers,” that success depends on one’s willingness to practice or try again. Using extensive research and solid evidence, Malcom Gladwell creates a better argument that success is a result of hard work and dedication, and therefore better answers the question, “How much of what happens in our lives do we actually control?”

A man most people know for his incredible but challenging basketball career, Michael Jordan, once said when giving tips on how to be successful like himself, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the levels of everything you do will rise. I’m not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat.” Although some may disagree and say that quality practices do not go hand in hand with quantity practice for successful people, I disagree. Successful people practice with a purpose: to be successful. Bill Gates had intentions of becoming successful when spending endless hours in the computer lab. The Beatles always had it in their plans to become better each performance when they would play eight hours a day in Germany. Based on evidence, it seems to be a pattern that a successful individual does have both a practice of quality and quantity in their vocabulary to mean the same thing. These individuals have therefore taught themselves hard work, because this idea of 10,000 hours of practice has allowed them to learn how to work for what they

Practice is beneficial only if the person genuinely is interested in what they are doing. Raymond T. Hightower, president of WisdomGroup software company states, “The elite don’t just work harder than everybody else. At some point the elites fall in love with practice to the point where they want to do little else.” Those people

Some people believe that humans do not control their own destiny, and success is due to natural causes. Others believe that humans do control their own destiny, and success is due to hard work. The Sports Gene, written by Daniel Epstein, is about a young man named Donald Thomas who discovered his natural talent for high jumping through a friendly bet. Outliers: The Story of Success, written by Malcolm Gladwell, explains that hard work is more important than natural talent. Through thorough explanation, Gladwell produces a more convincing argument supporting hard work over natural talent for controlling what happens in our lives.

I have experienced seeing how practicing affects my skills overall. Without a doubt, practicing is an important factor of success; you cannot get better at something without working to improve. That being said, you cannot just slap a number down as the “magic number” for how much practice you need to become the best you can. You must take into account the quality of the practice and the speed at which each individual picks up new material. For example, I went through a period of time where I would “practice” guitar for half an hour a day. In reality, I was not practicing as well as I should have been; I would practice songs other than what I was supposed to be learning and not use my time efficiently overall. As a result, I moved through the material at an excruciatingly slow rate. But, when I got my act together and starting genuinely practicing for thirty minutes every day, I began improving again and eventually got back to learning at the pace I had been at before. The issue at hand was not the length of my practice, it was the fact that I was not practicing the way I should have been. Even if I had gotten ten thousand hours of practicing in, it would not have much of a difference if I had been practicing

Every elite athlete makes it look easy. Splashing through the water or striding gracefully down the track making it look effortless. Some people assume they are “naturals,” that their perfect DNA sequence is what has brought them to this level. Others argue that hard work and drive is what has made the difference, separating the elite from the average. These thoughts are the ones that give rise to the age-old nature vs. nurture debate. Countless hours of studies and research has concluded: it’s both. High performance sports consultant Ross Tucker puts it this way, “The science of success is about the coming together of dozens, perhaps hundreds of factors” (1). The relationship of such factors, including genetics, types and lengths of

In earlier days sports psychology was mostly concerned with developing assessment methods that would identify those people with the potential to become serious superior athletes. Today the focus is on psychological training, exercises that strengthen the mental skills that will help athletic performances on the path to excellence. These skills include mental imagery and focus training. If an athlete is serious about becoming the best he or she can possibly be, the most essential ingredient is commitment to practice the right things. It takes incredible commitment to reach the top: a commitment to rest and train the body so it can perform under the most demanding conditions and a commitment to train the mind to

In order to become an expert performer Abbott and Collins (2004) suggest that talent development requires the possession of Psychological Characteristics for Developing Excellence (PCDE), which as the performer moves through the transition phases become further developed. PCDE’s are both trait characteristics and state related skills such as self-belief, dedication and discipline (Abbott and Collins, 2004). Another significant aspect of becoming an expert musician is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice requires determination with the correct motivation for the performer, and the necessary time and effort roughly equating to 10,000 hours (Ericsson et al., 1993). MacNamara, Holmes and Collins (2008) state that expert musicians require numerous aspects to reach the highest level; natural talent and/or deliberate practice combined with social context and significant others are needed to maintain performance at this high level. As talent is developed, the performer moves