My Best Athlete, Musician, Songwriter, And Ceo Of Fizzle Co.

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

Building upon the previous chapter, we begin to understand how all the right ingredients for achievement and success can be present, and yet they may never happen without a stroke of luck. Becoming an expert at some skill is earned by putting in hard work across several hours, approximately 10,000 hours. Being born in the right year, or time

Some people are born with natural god given skills and ability while others who are not that lucky and have to work twice as hard just to get the same result. And then there are those rare individual who even though they are born with the talent, they still work just as hard and sometimes even harder to keep improving. It is called determination and that is a trait that all the great athletes share and it is what separates the great ones from the just good ones. This is perfect way to describe Peyton Williams Manning, who is considered to be one of the most prolific passers in NFL history.

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

One’s skills and talents define what someone does and how others perceive them. In Outliers, Gladwell speaks of the “10,000 Hour Rule”. He says that if one practices a skill for 10,000 hours, then they will master that skill. Some musicians, like the Beatles, are known for their music and their musical talent, because they practiced over 10,000 hours. Their musical skills help develop their identity and how others recognize them.

As I mentioned before swimmers aren’t based on their ability to master the techniques but also in the values they posses. The values they posses are respect, honesty, fairness and courage. I had to learn and use those values everyday I went to swimming practice. There’s one thing that I needed to have to become part of the discourse community, which was being passionate about swimming and not giving up. At the beginning it was really hard for me not to give up when I was exhausted, but after becoming more passionate for swimming I never gave up. There were moments when I thought of giving up, but I knew that if I really wanted to call my self a swimmer I shouldn’t give up and I didn’t. For example, once I was in a Swimming Festival in my High School where I competed the four different strokes. I always finished second in the 50-meter freestyle race, but that day I decided I would end up first place. The race started and I jumped into the water and started pacing my self so that I would finish strong. In the first 25-meters we were all tied up and I was starting to feel tired. But I knew I couldn’t give up, so I took a deep breath and pushed harder. I pushed harder and was able to win the first place. After this race, I realized that even though I felt like giving up, something inside me was telling me to push harder and that thought led me to success. I was able to

Perfecting a certain skill can take a very long time and a lot of hard work.

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).

There are a lot of aspects that should be taken into account when determining what makes an athlete successful. One could argue that natural ability is one of the determining factors which leads to success. For example, if an athlete has dreams of playing in the NBA then height makes a difference. There aren’t many successful players in the league under six feet tall. One could argue that level of competition plays a role in the development of an athlete. This could include the skill level of the opponent or outside factors such as playing conditions or game circumstances. These types of arguments play a role in athlete success, but will not be used in this paper because they are factors that are out of the athlete’s control. This paper

After reading The Sports Gene and Outliers, it is determined that people become “talented” with practice and there is no such thing as innate “talent”. In Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, in chapter 2 it is said, “...10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert-in anything.” This supports the idea that people become “talented” with practice. The quote supports the claim because if it is being said that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything, it can be assumed that people do not have innate “talent”, but rather have a level of mastery over many hours of practice. It could be said on the opposite side of the argument that if it takes 10,000 hours to master anything, “ Why is there

“A theory of general psychology that states the differences between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain. (Ericsson, K. A).”

Deliberate practice is a type of learning that requires a focused effort to improve importance. It is a long process, but it is found to be more effective than just relying on memorization, or automaticity. It’s a type of learning that can help anyone refine their skills, or learn new tasks. There are several steps one needs to take to learn deliberate practice effectively. These steps are similar to those of self-regulated learning. “Self-regulation refers to self-generated thoughts, feelings and actions that are strategically planned and adapted to the attainment of personal goals” (Zimmerman 2000, 2006).

In the beginning of the school year, we were assigned to read Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. Throughout the book, I learned some types of practice, such as naive, purposeful practice, and most important deliberate practice. I learned deliberate practice can be applied to every subject such as sports, music, and even in the medical field. Deliberate practice includes pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in order to improve. To do deliberate practice, we have to challenge homeostasis. Homeostasis means to act in a way to maintain its own stability. Once again, you have to push yourself harder and harder. This will make you adapt and the you will have a new comfort zone which eclipses your previous comfort

What makes a good athlete? What separates a person on the 1st line up from a bench warmer? Where does athleticism come from? Is it from our genes, or is it a product of the environment we live in? These are the types of questions that arise in the nature vs. nurture debate pertaining about athletic ability. In 1582, British educator, Richard Mulcaster wrote that
''Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward,'' he gave the world
a euphonious name for an opposition that has been debated ever since; Nature and Nurture. People's
beliefs about the roles of heredity and environment affect their opinions on an
astonishing range of topics including sports. The nature versus nurture debate not only exists in the sporting community but also in many others. It is a very controversial topic that has puzzled researchers for centuries. There are two sides to the debate; Nature and Nurture. To be on the side on nature one believes that DNA and heredity make us who we are. In the case of sports, an athlete is born with genes that give them the ability to excel in a certain sport. On the other hand, many people believe that we become who we are because of the environment and people around us; Nurture. A nurtured athlete is an individual that has developed elite skills over time caused by rigorous training and their surroundings. Nature or nurture, which contributes more to the creation of professional athletes?

What makes champions in sport? At the end of the day, it is the moment when one stands at the top of the podium, holding up their well-deserved medals and trophies that all elite athletes strive for. Thus, experts have studied this question extensively to see which programs, or by what means, are elite athletes developed to achieve this goal. One of the many aspects to athlete development is the controversial topic of deliberate practice versus deliberate play. Deliberate practice can be defined as “any training activity (a) undertaken with the specific purpose of increasing performance, (b) requiring cognitive and/or physical effort, and (c) relevant to promoting positive skill development” (Cote et al., 2007, p. 185) On the