One of my biggest pet peeves is the label, " they are lucky to be so talented" . The individuals who make this remark have not been alongside them when they have been putting in hour after hour of training and deliberate practice. Others who do feel they put in the time may get frusterated when they do not achieve the same level of results and wonder why. Possibly one of the missing components can be the idea of "deliberate practice".  

Currently this fall I have two group programs that is putting runners through the steps to improving their running. While kicking things off a week ago I happened to come across a reminder of this idea of deliberate practice, which then had me refer back to something I read in July about the characteristics of successful people in Fortune Magazine. A well known researcher, Erikssen has found a common ground between the top people in any type of professional field. He has found that 10,000 hours is what it takes to become the best in a particular field. This test worked in sport, music, medicine among many other professions. Moving down the line in ability it was shown that the next best were at about 7500 hours, then 5000 hours. Now most of us reading this are probably to late to catch up in the hours practiced category but it is also known that these 10,000 hours were only valuable when practiced deliberately. An example used in the article from Fortune Magazine, "

Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice."

Geoff Colvin who wrote a well researched book, Talent is Overrated provides some super research behind his arguments that super achievements were not decided at birth. In Colvin's mind it is not so much the numbers of hours but the way practice was carried out. Colvin says," There is a certain quality among the best of the best. They set themselves up for specific feedback. They apply uncanny objectivity to the investment of practice time and do not rely on gross repetitions to build  skill."

Running is made up of repititions of very similar movements, with thousands of steps taken every run. When looking to improve upon a skill Individuals need to start with a reasonably good picture in their head about what they are trying to accomplish. Following that, an appropriate breakdown of the skill needs to be learned, providing athletes with the ability to begin the process of building it back up, correct movement by correct movement, using a Whole-Part-Whole Approach to motor learning.  By now the old way has been ingrained pretty deep into the brain, it is at this point that individuals must win the battle in their brain between the old way and new way of performing the skill. Deliberate practice is the focus necessary to win over the old skill patterns to ingrain the new and more efficient patterns for running. For many now, being in the off season is a great time for this type of practice because when recreating a skill, "Less is More". This means when a skill reverts back to the incorrect way the run is over. I know this is very hard to take for endurance athletes but in the long run it will be well worth it. Last winter I spent a fair bit of time with a member of the 4x100m bronze medal relay team working on run technique, my run technique. I remember very clearly him telling me their coach would say to them, "until you run 30 perfect meters, you are not running 40, and definitely not 100m". This is all to take off a second or parts of seconds over 100m.

Add that up for 42 000m!!