10,000 hours of training/practice - not really

Triathlon Forum
1

The pop culture saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master something is being debunked. https://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gladwells-10000-rule-2014-7

Practice in sports, an 18% difference. This seems low to me and it’s lower than games or music, in the article. One could take that long to increase their aerobic capacity alone in distance events. 2hrs a day X 365 days X 7 years = 5110 hrs

IMO a person won’t really find out how good they are at something until they explore it for seven years. Knowing how good you are after 7 years and mastery is something else though.

10,000 hours or another 10,000 hours would not make me a master of swim, bike or run. Yet, I can see where many champions have put in that time and some make it in about half that time.

Your thoughts?

2

So a couple things. The 10,000 hour rule is never really a good summary of Anders Ericsson’s work. Gladwell turned that into a bit of clickbait.

Looking at the article, it doesn’t really go into detail how the Princeton study came to their conclusions, but I’d say it’s obvious that Education and Professions don’t correlate well. One there is not generally well established ways to perform deliberate practice in those fields. Ericsson even discusses that in his book. Also, much of the success that comes from Business and Entrepreneurship is much more associated with luck rather than skill.

Also, the definition of what world class is would be important to establish in the Princeton study. (Maybe they did, I don’t know) But for example, in baseball, is a AA player World Class? How about a Div I college player? Small differences in ability make huge differences at the highest levels, but those differences are small. So when it says 18% difference in sports, is that mean that other factors make more of a difference between a player stalling at AAA and making the Majors? Or is it the difference between playing professional ball and making your Varsity team? Because I fully believe genetics plays a major role in the first scenario, but practice makes a much greater role in the second.

3

I think in every single instance of these so-called studies of practices and hours, the genetic component of the achievement is dramatically understated. Even if the scientists do scientific tricks like controlling for gene characteristics, I still think it gets totally lowballed.

I used to be a pure believer in nurture (and not nature) since I worked my tail off as a kid and young adult, and every single adult person told me it was all about how hard you worked and very little to do with who your parents were.

Now that I’m slightly older, have done enough things that I’m really good at as well as things that I clearly have very limited natural aptitude for (triathlon, unfortunately) I’m more and more convinced that genetics are by farrrrrrr the biggest factor, especially once you’re dealing with national to world class level performers or athletes. I’d put the influence of genetics at well over 90% if comparing joe-average MOP Ager to someone who has the potential to be a pro triathlete.

When I was a Juilliard-level violinist, I’d look at all the other violinists in an All-state and even All-national high school orchestra beside me and think “it feels like even though these kids are good, I still feel somehow that no matter WHAT they do, I’ll be better than them with a lot less practice, and there’s nothing they can do about it.” Thought it was my awesome practice, but in retrospect, it was clearly my natural ability. Similarly, I’d look at the paid top violin soloists in the world, and think/know that no matter WHAT I did/practiced, I’d never be that good, ever. And I was being trained by a world-class Juilliard instructor.

4

10,000 hours or another 10,000 hours would not make me a master of swim, bike or run.//

I don’t believe the premise ever was that 10k hours could make a slug into a cheetah.

5

Talent above all else.

6

Sounds like you achieved what I call a “This is as good as I am” realization. Which in my book, is a HUGE accomplishment. Some people stick with something that long to know how good they are. Many others move on rather quickly and seldom know.

Congratulations on what you achieved.

7

10,000 hours or another 10,000 hours would not make me a master of swim, bike or run.//

I don’t believe the premise ever was that 10k hours could make a slug into a cheetah.

More true than not true. In high school, I started running cross country my senior year and never scored a point in track. Took up running after cycling in college and a poor competitive cyclist because I lacked bike handling skills. Yet, with training high mileage the Lydiard way, first marathon was a 2:48 and best a 2:32:30. Had improvements of four minutes annually, yet I wasn’t going to be a cheetah or the best in San Antonio (not even top ten).

So yes, a slug is not going to be cheetah. However, if a person wants some self-knowledge to know how good they are at something (which could be way less than world class) it’s going to take about two hours a day for 5 - 10 years. IMO

8

All of this is interesting. I grew up in Alaska and can document approximately 10,000 hours spent on skis between age 15 and 30 as I was trying to be the ‘best extreme skier in the world’ . I got close with five top 5 performances in world championship events (2000, 2002, 3x in 2008). The thing is in that sport though is it is akin to figure skating, where the athletes are judged for subjective things like ‘difficulty’ or ‘aggression’ or ‘fluidity’ etc.

I would always be bummed with a 2nd or 4th or something because half the time judges were bros with who ever and that guy would get the points. And then it became who you knew to get in the right movies with the right sponsors. I pretty much beat on that dead horse into my early 30’s. #makingexcuses

Included in all of this was tons and tons of mountain climbing which is a endurance sports endeavor. Nutrition, pacing, planning. Lots if it.

Then I realized when I was about 34 that I was as good as I was gonna get and no one really wants to pay be for this skill set. (as my dad pointed out many times)

In the meanwhile I had been ‘cross training’ on a DH bike from age 22 to 34. Wow I can fill the summer months up with high risk /low pay adventures! Then I was struck by the notion that DH bike races are TIMED. How amazing, a competition based on objective measurement.

I quickly saw that I was not gonna be pro biker. Those fuckers are fast. I did manage to make money with 5 years of DH bike trail building which was fun. making $20/hr to build and test table tops and huge berms.

Then I burned out on the mountains and moved to Hawaii for a winter with wife and 3 year old daughter. Fell in love with surfing thought I was gonna do it for rest off life. Leaning curve was faster than expected , nearly drown a few times in big surf. Not interested anymore.

So quick recap: 20 years skiing and 10’000 hours, 10 years DH biking with maybe 2500 hours. 3 years of surfing and maybe 300 hours.

I’m maxed out on ‘flow sports/ adrenaline sport’. So I’m a carpenter, living in Kona 4 years ago at age 35. I lived up on Kaiminani above the airport and would bike to work every day in Hualalai. Every day I would get passed by the spandex clad ironman people. “So gay,” I thought. At the same time I was keen to get back to my endurance roots with running and biking and swimming. My interest was in the healthy nature of the sports and the ease at which I could squeeze the activity into my day. Maybe those ppl are on to something?

Exactly 2 years ago I decided to start training in earnest for triathlon. With over all weekly average of 5 hour/week I’m looking at 520 hours. I’m 39 with 2 kids and construction management job thinking of pushing tri training until age 43 (solid 5 years) and then what who knows. Ironman Kona? Sure don’t we all wish? I know I’m not gonna go pro, I just think it is funny I went to hawaii for the surf and left with love for these 3 basic sports and the highly calibrated measurement system.

My skier and biker friends think I went crazy, because I dropped that lifestyle for this one.

9

Wow. So you got to know how good you are at a very high level a couple of times. Now you’re living in Hawaii with wife and kids. You’re doing OK!

It’s amazing the quality of people on ST and training for IM. Hearing of successes like yours is pretty satisfying.

10

10,000 hours or another 10,000 hours would not make me a master of swim, bike or run.//

I don’t believe the premise ever was that 10k hours could make a slug into a cheetah.

Monty,

Back to your comment. You didn’t even keep the comparison to specie, family or class. They are both in the Animal kingdom though.

Is the disparity of talent and results within our specie greater than other species or less? Does our ability to “practice” lessen our differences or exacerbate them within the specie?

11

What is the definition of talent? Are you describing pure ability at something starting from a very young age? By that I mean the kid who can swim butterfly legally at age four or write a piano sonata at age 7.

The problem with defining talent is that it has no subjective criteria and ignores all the other factors (training, mindset, pain tolerance, etc), that define success in later years. It’s also a matter of reference.

Take me as an example: I get constant comments from AOS at the public pools about my stroke and my speed. Looks flawless, so fast, effortless, BLAH BLAH BLAH. I held 1:09-:10 on 20 x 100y @ 1:25 yesterday not really getting after it. The truth is that I’m 47 years old and not even 5’9” (174cm) with a slight muffin top. I’ve never won an NCAA title and never qualified for Olympic Trials. I’ve finished as high as 2nd ONCE in one race as USMS Nationals, in a race few others do. I’m not even all that good.

I have put in DECADES of swimming. I had great stroke technicians as my early coaches. I never was a top-swimmer as a kid. I just LOVED everything about swimming, and I had fire in the eyes. I worked my ass off in ways that only semi-skilled kids who want to do better ever do. I honed my competitive spirit and my own desire to the point that it kept me going long after all the taller, faster, better-looking kids burnt out and turned their backs in it forever. I just outlasted them, and in continuing to swim, I kept adding hours to my training that added to my base conditioning and smoothness of technique.

Talent can be so many factors. Those athletes at the very pinnacle of sport don’t just bring “preternatural” physical abilities. We’ve ALL seen the washouts who just lost the drive, didn’t want to train, got caught up in the world outside. The NFL, NBA, UEFA, FINA, etc, are FULL of busts. Those organizations are also full of athletes who put the various factors together.

In swimming, the obvious pinnacle is Michael Phelps. You CANNOT just describe his success on his physical gifts. He honed his body with MILLIONS of meters in training. But so do most swimmers. He had a competitive fire and focus. Standing on the blocks with other swimmers, you’d see he has no real advantage over the others, and they’re all prepared similarly. He had a fire and mission that others didn’t, a desire to “go back to the well” when other got tired of it. In his case, talent was fostered and trained in.

Leo Messi may be considered to be the greatest football player of the last 20 years. Certainly, he’s one of the two greatest players never to win a World Cup. But he’s called “the Little Magician.” He’s short, even by football standards. What defines his success or talent?

In the tri and endurance world, a far larger impact on success is mindset and training. Long LONG hours of training. And a mindset to do that and to persevere and beat the others who have trained hard and suffered. The long careers are celebrated. Are we still celebrating the unbeatable Chrissy Wellington, with her X Kona titles but her extremely short pro career?

12

Talking just about the professional/employment at 1% I would argue that 10000 hours is simply overcoming the barrier to entry, it likely takes 20000 hours or way more to be really good at what you do.

Just talking basic employment like electrician/trades/nursing etc…when you push that out to doctors/lawyers/engineers etc it’s probably on the order of 30000 minimum hours to become something close to “best in field”

2c
Maurice

13

Well said 140, and I will expand just a little on what you just said. What is talent? To me, talent is the ability to endure long hours of training, without getting bored to the point of quitting. Talent is the ability to know when you are going to far, or too hard, and breaking your body down to an injury, one that ends careers, or shortens the season to almost nothing. Talent is the ability to love something so much, that you can ignore all the the uncomfortable things associated with it. Talent is the willingness to sacrifice wonderful things to achieve a goal, and that is also a talent, setting goals that you just have to achieve…

These and many more things are talents, and of course there are the talents that a lot of people like to throw out there as the be all to end all. The talent to perform a certain physical or mental action. Yes, people are born with some measure of this, but even the most gifted in this area without most of the above talents, goes no where past medicore. Some of the most physically gifted kids I knew in high school were just lazy. There were Michel Phelps types all over the place, but without the talent to take that gift to the end, it just sits there in the front end of the pack, not caring that much if they can win on the world stage.

I think a lot of people like to focus so much on the genetic talent because it takes the pressure off of them. They dont have it, so there you go, a built in excuse why the world is better than them, no matter what they do. And of course in some respect they are right, to be the very best you have to have talents in virtually all of these categories. You cannot force someone to love something so much, they will get in at 5 am every single morning, and go suffer for a couple hours. You can say that is a choice, but it really isn’t. It’s a talent for hard work at all cost that is either instilled, or born with. Nature Nuture, who really knows where it all comes from, both I presume. Recognizing these talents is a talent in itself, by yourself and others…

14

@ Monty

Talent in triathlon (and every other field) absolutely includes the grit to continue doing what you don’t want to do, as well as a natural innate desire to enjoy the task at hand that you’re so focused on. Just being having the capacity to run super fast doesn’t mean squat if you have zero discipline and zero interest in developing it.

This grit and enjoyment absolutely has a genetic component as well, wayyyyy stronger than people have credited it for, mainly because it is one of the things that we can directly influence (say, as opposed to how tall you are.) But it’s a very real thing, and you can see it right off the bat with younger kids <10 and the range of self-discipline as well as passion for their activities that they want to do.

I’m pretty sure I fall into the category of someone born with high grit/discipline and submediocre endurance sport ability. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember, and I’m not just looking at myself favorably - I used to wonder why nobody else around me could keep working on tasks they didn’t like (can’t they just HTFU!?!?) even at age 4, and it was no different even after graduating Harvard college (yep, even those kids didn’t have my level of grit), Juilliard violin (I did this while winning in the National Westinghouse science competition in high school and a LOT more stuff), and now even as a busy professional that does a ton of childcare and housework (my wife has literally done the dishes less than 2x/year, for example). Even though I wasn’t close to a collegiate runner, on no team, and not even racing, I’d be on the Harvard track at 5:00AM doing intervals to stay in shape, even before the ROTC and other teams arrived. That’s not something you learn, that’s something you’re born with and cultivate from there.

15

The pop culture saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master something is being debunked. https://www.businessinsider.com/...ls-10000-rule-2014-7

Practice in sports, an 18% difference. This seems low to me and it’s lower than games or music, in the article. One could take that long to increase their aerobic capacity alone in distance events. 2hrs a day X 365 days X 7 years = 5110 hrs

IMO a person won’t really find out how good they are at something until they explore it for seven years. Knowing how good you are after 7 years and mastery is something else though.

10,000 hours or another 10,000 hours would not make me a master of swim, bike or run. Yet, I can see where many champions have put in that time and some make it in about half that time.

Your thoughts?

Idk, I think 10k hours doing one thing makes you an expert. But it will never make the person world class, that requires genetics.

Now, you could be world class with shit genetics at something like patrolling, but definitely not the Marathon.

16

It’s also not just 10000 he’s, it’s 10000 of QUALITY practice hours.

Tons of people think they are guitar experts because they’ve played guitar for well over 10000 he’s but really just the same easy songs over and over again. Or swim the same moderate effort not too hard for decades with no moxup of technique or regimen. Not experts.

17

It’s also not just 10000 he’s, it’s 10000 of QUALITY practice hours.

People forget that part. It’s 10,000 hours of DELIBERATE practice, which is not an easy form of practice. Also, it’s not 10,000 hours either, but I digress.

18

Take me as an example: I get constant comments from AOS at the public pools about my stroke and my speed. Looks flawless, so fast, effortless, BLAH BLAH BLAH. I held 1:09-:10 on 20 x 100y @ 1:25 yesterday not really getting after it. The truth is that I’m 47 years old and not even 5’9” (174cm) with a slight muffin top. I’ve never won an NCAA title and never qualified for Olympic Trials. I’ve finished as high as 2nd ONCE in one race as USMS Nationals, in a race few others do. I’m not even all that good.

I have put in DECADES of swimming. I had great stroke technicians as my early coaches. I never was a top-swimmer as a kid. I just LOVED everything about swimming, and I had fire in the eyes. I worked my ass off in ways that only semi-skilled kids who want to do better ever do. I honed my competitive spirit and my own desire to the point that it kept me going long after all the taller, faster, better-looking kids burnt out and turned their backs in it forever. I just outlasted them, and in continuing to swim, I kept adding hours to my training that added to my base conditioning and smoothness of technique.

Talent can be so many factors. Those athletes at the very pinnacle of sport don’t just bring “preternatural” physical abilities. We’ve ALL seen the washouts who just lost the drive, didn’t want to train, got caught up in the world outside. The NFL, NBA, UEFA, FINA, etc, are FULL of busts. Those organizations are also full of athletes who put the various factors together.

In swimming, the obvious pinnacle is Michael Phelps. You CANNOT just describe his success on his physical gifts. He honed his body with MILLIONS of meters in training. But so do most swimmers. He had a competitive fire and focus. Standing on the blocks with other swimmers, you’d see he has no real advantage over the others, and they’re all prepared similarly. He had a fire and mission that others didn’t, a desire to “go back to the well” when other got tired of it. In his case, talent was fostered and trained in.

Leo Messi may be considered to be the greatest football player of the last 20 years. Certainly, he’s one of the two greatest players never to win a World Cup. But he’s called “the Little Magician.” He’s short, even by football standards. What defines his success or talent?

In the tri and endurance world, a far larger impact on success is mindset and training. Long LONG hours of training. And a mindset to do that and to persevere and beat the others who have trained hard and suffered. The long careers are celebrated. Are we still celebrating the unbeatable Chrissy Wellington, with her X Kona titles but her extremely short pro career?

Talent is a natural aptitude or skill at something. Clearly, you’re good. You have some talent.

Just as clearly, the other people you mentioned have loads and loads of more talent.

I think it’s pretty cut and dry, myself.

You can work as hard as you want. Without talent, eh, hopefully you enjoy the process…

19

Talent is the ability to love something so much, that you can ignore all the the uncomfortable things associated with it. Talent is the willingness to sacrifice wonderful things to achieve a goal, and that is also a talent, setting goals that you just have to achieve…

I think you’re asserting that mindset is an aspect of talent. I disagree for the most part. You can be driven to succeed and still suck. You can be absolutely in love with running, do all the training, all the ancillary things, and still suck.

Jan Ulrich was uber-talented. Best in the world, once in a generation talent. He didn’t love cycling. Only did it because he could make good money from it.

Mindset is something altogether different in my book.

20

That’s not something you learn, that’s something you’re born with and cultivate from there.

And yet, it doesn’t overcome talent.

That’s why talent is above all else. It doesn’t matter how much drive, grit, determination, mental fortitude, whatever, you have, without that physiological ability, you won’t ever be at the top.

Not to say it’s not perfectly wonderful to be a national, regional, local, whatever, or just the best you can be. Certainly it is. But it’s pretty evident in just about every field out there that there are those that are just better, not because of grit or practice or anything else other than the fact that they were born better.

Just like there are those born smarter, stronger, more beautiful, etc., etc.