A class for brand-new to advanced coaches on the principles of deliberate practice and how to incorporate it into your training. This seminar will focus on how to break down skills into their most basic parts and gradual push it to more challenging levels to work toward mastery. These techniques can be used on yourself as a skater or on the people you coach. The same fundamentals can be applied not only to skating and roller derby techniques but also to all facets of life.

How Many Explain Talent: Gifts vs. Practiced Talent

• Gifted: God-given gifts, either have them or you don’t
• Practice: 10k hours, Malcom Gladwell. Get better? Get worse?

How you practice is what matters! Deliberate practice leads to elite performance.

Examples of High Level Talent: What Makes Them Great?

• Do they all engage in deliberate practice?
• Natural Gifts (Born theory): Mozart & Tiger

Older talent (Practice theory): Jerry Rice He spent very little time playing football. He designated his practice to work on his specific needs. While supported by others he did most of the work on his own It wasn’t fun. He defied the conventional limits of age.

What Deliberate Practice Is

• It is designed specifically to improve performance. Comfort Zone/Learning Zone/Panic Zone
• It can be repeated a lot.
• Feedback on results is continuously available. Coach. Mentor. Videotape.
• It’s highly demanding mental. 60-90 minutes per sitting with a max of 4 to 5 hours per day.
• It isn’t fun.

Other Factors that Effect Performance and Practice

1. Luck
2. Effort
3. Avoid the automatic

How to Put it into Practice

Generally you need these 2 things:

1. Knowing what you want to do.
2. Knowing the next steps to get here.

Conditioning
Changing Skill

• Before you start: Goal Setting.
• While you’re doing it: Self-Observation. Meta-cognition.
• After work: Feedback about results. Compare to relevant standards. Errors.

Performance/Practice is self-fueling process. Passion. Difficulties.

Conclusion

Believing in limitations.

Bad news: We are each responsible for our own achievement.
Good news: We are more able to achieve an exceptional level than most believe they are.

References

• References / Recommended Reading
  Calvin, Geoff. Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.
• Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.
• Gladwell, Malcom. Outliers.