Athletic Skill Development: Learn It, Earn It, Own it!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

How many times in your life have you heard someone say, “It’s just like riding a bike.”? The concept is simple, once you learn how to do something, the skill stays with you. When it comes to athletic skill in any sport this can be a blessing and a curse. If an athlete learns bad habits or develops poor movement mechanics or inefficiencies along the way it can have the same negative effect as an injury. From a pro athlete perspective you will often hear scouts and development people say that once an athlete learns a skill he/she owns that skill. This means that technically we know what they’re capable of accomplishing, their focus then becomes continuing to fine tune and enhance their skill development and maximize their athletic foundations of balance, movement and strength.

Learn It!

The Myth of Talent: “Talent is long patience.” – Gustav Flaubert

 Most people believe that elite performance is somehow due to genetic “talent” that separate one athlete from another. Talent is defined as “a natural ability of a superior quality”.  In other words, you either have it or you don’t. This is a common cultural flaw in sports, business, and life that can be the kiss of death to setting and achieving goals. Excellence is made up of many different components but ultimately true performance success in all aspects of life can come only through determination, drive, and dedication.  Although genetic factors certainly play a role in the determination of which sports an athlete may be able to perform well at (often due to body size and shape), the concept that one athlete is genetically more talented than another and therefore guaranteed success is simply not true.

When we refer to the elite level in any area of life whether it is athletics, music, art, languages, or job/career skills, the physiology of learning is the same. Some individuals are wired to learn specific skills more efficiently than others and may have a pre-disposition towards one area of expertise. Although they may learn and adapt at a faster rate, they must continue to keep learning and training to develop and hone their skill and maximize the efficiency of using it.  In the book “The Talent Code” the author, Daniel Coyle, outlines the physiology of learning and the mind/muscle connection that occurs at different levels for different people. (I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the physiology and process behind how individuals become elite at anything it is worth the read.) He also has a great website/blog that includes a visual, interactive description of how this process works  

 Earn It!

Deliberate Practice: “In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regime of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years.” -- Erricson, Krampe, Tesch-Roemer 1993

One of the most important aspects for deliberate practice is ensuring quality of practice over quantity of training time. Although the adage “practice makes perfect” has always been the mantra of many coaches, it is more correctly perfect practice that makes perfect as overtraining can quickly lead to burnout, chronic injury and ultimately poor skill acquisition as fatigue and reduced mental concentration can greatly decrease the ability to execute skilful movements efficiently. By now most people are familiar with the concept of the 10,000 hour rule and how it has evolved into the development of Long Term Athlete Development models within elite sports all over the world. The concept of deliberate practice, simply preaches practice, training and learning with purpose. The contention of the deliberate practice model is that the main differences that separate elite athletes from others ”reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.”

Deliberate practice involves training and eliminating weaknesses, whereas most athletes migrate to training their strengths. Remember, a chain (and the body) is only as strong as its weakest link and it is the athletes that take the extra time to identify the weaknesses and really eliminate them from the equation hat will have the most success. Unfortunately this process also takes a lot of time and mental energy for success to occur.  It does not matter how much time an athlete trains or practices, if the time spent is not moving to improve weaknesses and breakdown barriers to success it is often a waste of valuable time and energy.  The commitment to deliberate practice distinguishes the elite performer from the majority of children and adults who seem to have difficulty meeting even the much lower demands of practice in schools, recreational programs or school physical education programs.

Hard Work = Success “No matter how good you are you can always get better, and that is the exciting part.” - Tiger Woods

This is fantastic news for every athlete. You can always get better. Work ethic and dedication, not talent, are often the things that truly define excellence. It is the quality time spent in the weight room, on the practice field, and on the rink. It is the time spent leading up to the game or the season or the competition. It is the dedication to the development of skills, tactics, conditioning and confidence, not the predetermined genetic makeup that determines success. Michael Jordan did not make his high school basketball team. He took that personally. From then on he was always the hardest working athlete in every practice and every game from pre-season to playoffs and he became the best basketball player on the court and arguably the best athlete of all time. The great thing about effort is that it is totally within the athlete’s control. Many talented athletes, who have initial success, end up watching less talented ones, the ones that decided to work harder, go right on past them, and by the time that realization occurs, it is often too late to catch up.

Own It!  

 The best athletes are so skilled in their sport that they often make success look easy. But the skill level they attained came from great genetics, great coaching and years of perfect practice. When it comes to an athlete’s strength and conditioning program these same factors apply. Sport specific movement patterns, conditioning, and athletic strength that incorporates a direct tie in to the needs of the sport can act as an auxiliary opportunity for perfect practice and the development of skill execution under fatigue in order to enhance performance at the end of games, throughout a tournament or competition and over the course of a season. True performance success comes from the early recognition of an individual’s talent potential to develop and specific skill set for success and the athlete’s ability to make the commitment to do whatever it takes to learn it, earn it and own it.