Bounce
 

Bounce by Matthew Syed is an outstanding read. This book reinforces my personal beliefs about ability, achievement, and excellence. I strongly recommend this for coaches, parents, or anyone else who has ever thought "I (or my kid) could never do that". The premise of the book is quite clearly, YOU CAN.

Very long story short is that purposeful practice is far more important than any perceived natural ability. Early practice and even birthmonth combine to create a perception of natural ability at a skill. This perception results in increased attention and encouragement which leads to more practice and better teaching. It is a perpetual cycle that creates a false divide between the gifted and average. The divide widens over time until there is genuine divide between the elite and the rest of us. What is interesting is that the time required for this process is roughly 10 years (or more importantly, about 10,000 hours of practice) regardless of the endeavor.

Like I said, the book reinforces my own ideas. It may challenge or support yours, either way it is a thought provoking read.

Confirmed: every point in your post, via articles in Scientific American. Sounds like a very solid book.

How does the birth month play into it?

With most activities age cutoffs are based on birthday.

Soccer: Lil Lookout is an 01. Anyone born august 1st, 2000 or later can be in that age group. That means LL is 10 months younger than the oldest in that age group. 10 months is a significant amount of time for size, maturity, and practice hours at that age. Significantly, most elite soccer players in the US are born between August and December.

Hockey: Age cutoffs are by calendar year. Most Elite hockey players in the US are born between January and April.

It isn't something special about the time they were born, it's just they are generally the biggest and strongest, and often the most experienced when competing against their own age group so the coaches pick them for the best teams, give them more advanced and frequent training, and compete against the best teams. This all starts with their perceived "gift" which is really nothing more than time/age.

On the flip side, to this point LL is more advanced than most of the players in his age group not because of some genetic gift, but rather because from age 3-7 his dad coached multiple teams and LL effectively practiced with a soccer ball against stiff competition 6-9 hours per week rather than the 0-1 hours per week most kids in their early years practice/play. At age 7 LL moved into the competitive leagues and at age 9 is now on the top team in the state. He is obviously more skilled than many, but even so several coaches have already commented that he's "too small" to really compete for much longer. He is only 6 weeks too old from being in the next age group down where his size and maturity are at or above average. LL will have to choose to work harder than his peers for more hours if he wants to be selected for the elite teams for the next 5-6 years at which point it will become less relevent because he will or won't have achieved the magical 10,000 hours of purposeful practice.

I imagine it's because kids are artificially grouped into grade levels, which are then considered equal. The oldest kid in 1st grade might be almost an entire year older than the youngest kid, yet they will be expected to be equal.

Interesting. I never thought much about it, but it's definitely something I've seen going on with my kids' teams.

LL went to a private school up until... well next month. The school gimmick is that their kids test an average of a year ahead of grade on all standardized tests. We didn't realize until we were already part of the system is that it's because all of the kids are at least a year older than they should be in that grade. They gave us a lot of trouble over starting LL in kindergarten the same year he would have in a public school but we overruled the administration and did it anyway. When he was in first grade they called us in and told us they were concerned because LL was testing "low". It turns out that meant he was middle of the road in his class. He was 6 and the oldest kid in his first grade class turned 8 in September.

They tried scaring us with the "he'll be picked last in sports", "when he gets older scouts will ignore him because he'll be younger than his classmates", and the classic "boys mature slower than girls and he'll be an immature high school freshman in a class full of 16 year old girls".

We ignored them and they finally backed off after the 3rd grade soccer team asked for him to be on their team... when he was a full year or so younger than the first graders. The teachers just ignored us and we ignored them from that point on.

Lil Lookout has always been grouped with kids older than himself. When he was 4 the other parents didn't want him playing Under6 soccer so he played with the Under8's. Now he turned 9 and when he plays rec league he plays with the Under14's. Club team he plays with his own age group but has been invited to help on tournament teams up to two years older than he is.

I can look back on it now and see that it was all down to the number of hours he spent on the field at an early age. He is 9 but has probably spent the same number of hours practicing and playing as an average12-13 year old player.

Rings true man.

Yeah, my mom started me in kindergarten a year early, which meant I had to go to private school for a couple of years until I was entrenched enough in the grade levels that public school would take me. Academically, I was more than ready, and still bored out of my mind with the curriculum even being a year ahead. But socially, I have to say I definitely had some issues in the beginning, being with more mature kids (I wouldn't have said I had any issues at the time, but I also couldn't figure out why no one liked me...) On the other hand, I was realistically more like two years behind socially, so I think I would have had the same problems even if I'd been in my "correct" grade.

We see it too. To a certain extent. It's MUCH more obvious with boys. Thor is young for his grade and his hockey team (Oct Birthday -grade cut-off is December here). Hector is middling for grades, good for hockey and perfect for Swimming (April Birthday -USA swimming ages you up on the first day of each meet -including the year-end championships which are in March. So You make state cuts, and have a March 1 birthday and age up, you're fucked.

Hebe has a Dec birthday and suffers from this with USA swimming, but suffers more from being a later developer/short. Most of the girls in her age group have a good 6-12 inches on her, and she's nearing the top of the age group. Put her in the pool with the same-sized girls of any age and she'll thrash them. As they all reach maturity, her practice and skill will win out, but it would be frustrating right now if we were less low-key.

In school, she's up a grade and is tiny among her peers, but holds her own socially and academically, and on the soccer field (where it goes by grade not birth year because it's Rec and Ed)

LL was asked to guest on a team two years up from him for a semifinal game today. 8 goals and 2 assists in an 11-10 win.

The opposing coach (who doesn't know me or LL) stopped over to give the recruiting speech afterwards and his lead-in was, "your son has a natural gift..."

Made me think of this thread.

The "natural gift" line is a cop out by folks who didn't put in the hard yards to get there. There are natural gifts but they make up a very small proportion of modern success.
You wanna get to the top? Hard work, lots of it. You can make it fun, best if you do, but it won't all be fun.
Quality education also matters. Later, expert mentoring is the finishing touch.
Look at the Williams sisters. Sure they're big and strong (for women, and frankly for most men, too!) but there are plenty of big strong people who are lousy at tennis. Those girls had rackets in their hands at the age of three.

" You want fame? Well, fame costs and right here is where you start paying, in sweat!"

I think by the time kids want fame, it's too late to catch up. The ones that eventually achieve fame, wanted and found fun, otherwise they wouldn't have put in the hours.

The exceptions would be the Williams girls and Tiger Woods, whose parents are rumored to have been slave drivers. :haha:

I laughed out loud.

I just now bothered to do the math. 10,000 hours in 10 years is about 3 hours a day. Every day. For 10 years.

How do you fit in 3 hours a day on top of school and homework and sleeping? It really is a sacrifice. You have to give up a normal life if you want to be elite.

3 hours a day is a long time. My daughter practices 2 hours a week. Of course, she's not elite.

Yeah, that's a lot of hours but take a step back and think about it. practice or education isn't necessarily regimented or location specific. LL spends a lot of hours in organized practice and games but nowhere near enough to get him to that 10,000 hour mark, BUT:

3 recesses/ day x 5 days/week playing soccer

Watching the pros on TV

Watching my adult teams play each week

Streetball in the neighborhood

Even playing FIFA on playstation teaches things @ the game.

In LL's case adding all thatto his normal practice and game schedule means the kid has probably averaged 12-15 hours per week for more than 5 years playing or learning about the game. Easily 12-15, but even at only 10 hours each week he'd still have racked up more than 2,500 hours by the age of 9.

my kids swim that much, easily, on average. When you add in the watching/learning from others and general fitness training. Some weeks, they maybe only get 10 hours in, others it can be nearly 30. three hours/day is 21/week. These summer weeks it's a huge number of hours -especially for Hebe who is working as a junior coach -a great way to learn is to teach someone else. My kids are probably not headed for the Olympics. But I wouldn't be surprised if they get good swim scholarshipsat college. That would be a nice payoff. But that's not why they do it. They do sort of do it for fame. Not national fame, but it feels good to be good at something and see your name published in the results as a winner, and to get the mvp trophy.

However, it's not that easy to get that much time in for most sports. Like Hockey. the ice time is way too expensive for that, and there's only so much off-ice traaining they can persuade people to pay for.

That said, what is practice/training? Soccer helps with both hockey and swimming. All my kids play soccer -that's another 3 hours per week in season.

....but wait, I'm not sure I subscribe to this wholly, because all my kids put in a similar amounts of time in the pool ...and yet Hebe and Hector leave Thor way behind. At his age, Hebe was 2nd in the breaststroke at championships. He'll be lucky not to get DQd. She did that in her first season on a swim team. This is his fourth year. Hector was not so good at that age, but for him the practice really pays off and now he too is a contender. I think there is natural talent. And I think that elite level skill can come from practice. I think it depends on the child, it's not one size fits all.