Bounce

by Matthew Syed

What had marked me out for sporting greatness? I came up with a number of attributes: speed, guile, gutsiness, mental strength, adaptability, agility, and reflexes.

Top performers had devoted thousands of additional hours to the task of becoming master performers.

when top performers seem to possess an early gift for music, it is often because they have been given extra tuition at home by their parents.

it’s a lack of being able to repeat good shots consistently that frustrates most players. And the only answer to that is practice.’

If we believe that attaining excellence hinges on talent, we are likely to give up if we show insufficient early promise.

Miller showed that the memory span of most adults extends to around seven items, and that greater recall requires intense concentration and sustained repetition.

countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer.

encoding them in a higher-order construct (i.e., a word). This is what psychologists call ‘chunking’.

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Speed in sport is not based on innate reaction speed, but derived from highly specific practice.

‘The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I worked hard every day…That

Mozart was one of the hardest-working composers in history, and without that deep and sustained application he would have got nowhere.

‘I have always believed that if you want to achieve anything special in life you have to work, work, and then work some more.’

A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable.’

Agassi

They have compressed thousands of hours of practice into the small period between birth and adolescence. That is why they have become world-class.

He schooled Susan at home, devoting many hours a day to chess even before her fourth birthday. He did so jovially, making great play of the drama of the game, and over time Susan became hooked. By her fifth birthday she had accumulated hundreds of hours of dedicated practice.

To understand a new sentence, the reader must not only understand its specific meaning, he must also be able to integrate it with all sentences previously read. He must, for example, remember previously mentioned objects and people in order to resolve references to pronouns.

Maybe some people just do not want to believe in the power of practice.’

I am certainly clocking up countless hours at the wheel, but does this constitute the acquisition of knowledge? It is not as if I am straining to improve.

experience, if it is not matched by deep concentration, does not translate into excellence.

I have not improved in five years. Why? Because I have been cruising along on autopilot.

‘When most people practise, they focus on the things they can do effortlessly,’ Ericsson has said. ‘Expert practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well – or even at all.

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it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.’

the practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: progress. Every second of every minute of every hour, the goal is to extend one’s mind and body, to push oneself beyond the outer limits of one’s capacities, to engage so deeply in the task that one leaves the training session, literally, a changed person.

But they were not training longer; they were training smarter. They were training more purposefully. They were, in effect, training on turbo-drive.

My body and mind had been transformed through a sustained process of being pushed beyond existing limitations –

world-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached. Over time, through constant repetition and deep concentration, the gap will disappear, only for a new target to be created, just out of reach once again.

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Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again. Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavour, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance.

‘No time plus no space equals better skills. Futsal is our national laboratory of improvisation.’

The finesse and intricacy of the game, together with its ferocious speed, mean that players make plenty of mistakes as they seek to master the skills.

I had to create time and space that scarcely seemed to exist.

And for practice to be truly purposeful, concentration and dedication, although important, are not sufficient. You also need to have access to the right training system,

the body and mind can be radically altered with the right kind of practice.

Purposeful practice also builds new neural connections, increases the size of specific sections of the brain, and enables the expert to co-opt new areas of grey matter in the quest to improve.

That, if you like, is the price of excellence.

‘Many players confuse hitting balls with practice.

‘It is only human nature to want to practise what you can already do well, since it’s a hell of a lot less work and a hell of a lot more fun. Sad to say, though, that it doesn’t do a lot to lower your handicap ... I know it’s a lot more fun to stand on the practice tee and rip drivers than it is to chip and pitch, and to practise sand shots with sand flying back in your face, but it all comes back to the question of how much you’re willing to pay for success.’

‘If you don’t know what you are doing wrong, you can never know what you are doing right.’

Same technique for different shots

A theory that is not testable (i.e., a theory that is immune from feedback) can never be improved upon.

his practice is sporadic.

packing countless more diagnoses into the available time – and partly through the guiding power of feedback.

purposeful practice is pursued with a vengeance, while it is all but neglected in the areas where we all stand to benefit.

‘Later doesn’t always come to everybody.’

If you’re lazy or you sit back and you don’t want to excel, you’ll get nothing.

nothing new, nothing unusual, nothing of any great importance.

The book was no different from any of the others I had read at school. But I was different. My attitude was different. My motivational stance was different.

‘The need to belong, to associate, is among the most important human motives. We are almost certainly hardwired with a fundamental motivation to maintain these associations.’

‘Mental toughness and heart are a lot stronger than some of the physical advantages you might have,’ he said. ‘I’ve always said that, and I’ve always believed that.’

Jordon

Excellence is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again. The paradox of excellence is that it is built upon the foundations of necessary failure.

‘Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation, and it harms their performance.’

That we should praise effort, not talent; that we should emphasize how abilities can be transformed through application; that we should teach others and ourselves to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; that we should interpret failure not as an indictment but as an opportunity.