Bounce

[glatt]

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.

[lookout123]

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.

[monster]

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.