Deep Practice Makes Perfect: This is How to Master Skills

Have you ever wondered why certain so-called ‘talent hotbeds’ exist? You know, those locations where certain activities unexpectedly thrive. For example, how does a small country like the Dominican Republic produce so many great baseball players? Or how did Florence, Italy produce so many great artists? How does a modest storefront music school in Texas produce superstar singers Demi Lovato, Jessica Simpson and a bunch of other pop-music phenoms? Or how does a rundown tennis facility in Russia churn out more top-20 professional tennis players than the United States?

Oh…one more thing, do you have any idea what in the world futsal is and what it has to do with the fact Brazilians are so good at soccer.

In today’s post, we will answer all of the above questions by discussing something they all have in common, which is a concept called deep practice. And to understand the concept of deep practice we will explore NY Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle’s fascinating book called The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown, Here’s How.

The Talent Code

Coyle has done an incredible job reading through research and traveling around the world to visit numerous talent hotbeds (locations where certain activities thrive like the ones we discussed in the introduction) to identify three elements that maximize talent.

What I liked most about the book is the way Coyle breaks down talent development based on neuroscience.

The three elements that he believes maximize talent are:

(1)  Deep practice

Which consists of chunking up the activity into little steps, repeating them, and then feeling the struggle.

(2)  Ignition

Being motivated to continue once you fail.

(3)  Coaching

Getting the proper instruction.

While each element is critical on its own, it is their convergence which is critical to creating a skill. If one is taken away, the process of creating skill is sub-optimized.

We will discuss all three elements in a minute, but the overall premise of the book is that “greatness isn’t born, it’s grown” and that talent is “the possession of repeatable skills that don’t depend on physical size.”

As I said earlier, what I love about this book is that it is based on neuroscience which centers around a white fatty insulator in our brains called myelin.

Let’s take a quick look at myelin so that we can better understand Coyle’s three elements needed to create talent.

My Oh Myelin!

Coyle describes myelin and its effect on creating skills as follows:

“The talent code is built on revolutionary scientific discoveries involving a neural insulator called myelin, which some neurologists now consider to be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Here’s why. Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse—basically, a signal traveling through a circuit.

Myelin’s vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way—when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note—our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.” ¹

So, more repetitions mean more myelin which means faster synapses and thus improved skill.

A couple more interesting notes about myelin:

  The more myelin we possess, the easier it is for us to perform a given movement and eventually it becomes unconscious to us.

  When we wrap myelin around an axon, unfortunately, it doesn’t just only reinforce our good skills, it reinforces whatever it is we do the most. Which is why it is crucial to do things correctly from the start, otherwise we are reinforcing bad habits. Once myelin is created it cannot simply be unwrapped, which is a physiological explanation for why bad habits are tough to break.

So, the whole premise of the Talent Code is to optimize our deep practice to create myelin faster and more efficiently. This is due to the fact that the more myelin we create, the more the skill is hardwired into our bodies and brains.

Let’s now discuss the three elements that can help us create myelin faster and more efficiently:

(1)  Deep Practice

Coyle explains that struggling right at the edge of our abilities is the best way for us to learn. By taking ourselves to that edge consistently is where our fastest learning comes which is the most important characteristic of deep practice. The idea is to target the struggle and reach, get feedback, improve the process by making adjustments as we go and implement them into our practice.

Coyle has 3 rules for deep practice, which are as follows:

Rule #1:  Chunk it Up

The first step is to observe the skill as a whole. For example, watch the entire backhand being hit or listen to the entire song.

Next, break it up into chunks or pieces. Breaking it up into chunks allows you to master them one by one and then put them together.

He also advises starting by going slowly to perfect the movement before speeding up.  By going slow, it helps you catch and attend to errors better, which helps you attain a higher level of precision when you fire signals. This allows the myelin to form over the correct portion of neurons faster and more precisely.

Rule #2:  Repeat It

Now that we understand myelin, this next part makes more biological sense. The idea is to build more myelin by doing something over and over. However, as we have also said, you need to do it properly and slowly at first, as repeating mistakes will only train mistakes. Coyle says that most top talent hotbeds practice no more than 3-5 hours per day and that by doing it in a state of deep practice will typically leave you exhausted.

Rule #3:  Learn to Feel It

The last step of deep practice is what he calls learning to feel the struggle.  At this point, you should be able to feel if things are going smoothly or not. This is where the struggle comes in. The idea is to feel the struggle by picking your target, reaching for it, evaluating the gap between the target and the reach, and then returning to step one and adjusting as you continue to practice.

Coyle compares it to a baby learning how to walk:

“It’s the feeling, in short, of being a staggering baby, of intently, clumsily lurching toward a goal and toppling over. It’s a wobbly, discomfiting sensation that any sensible person would instinctively seek to avoid. Yet the longer the babies remained in that state—the more willing they were to endure it, and to permit themselves to fail—the more myelin they built, and the more skill they earned. The staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it’s helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.” ¹

Now that we understand deep practice, let’s move on to the second element Coyle describes, which is…

(2)  Ignition

Deep practice isn’t enough, there needs to be some motivational fuel in terms of energy, passion, and commitment which Coyle calls ignition. As Coyle says: “Ignition supplies the energy, while deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progress, a.k.a. wraps of myelin.” ¹

There were several things that contribute to ignition:

Identity

Part of ignition is that there is a spark that makes us feel like this is what we want to be. For example, this may be due to having a musician or soccer player in our family that we want to emulate, which makes us feel like it is part of our heritage and thus our identity. We feel like ‘it’s our thing’.

A belief that we can do it

One of the examples he used was Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile. Once Bannister eclipsed the 4-minute threshold, no less than 17 others did it within 3 years! Nothing profound had changed in the world of running other than Bannister’s accomplishment which signaled – you can do it too!

Language of ignition

As we said in a previous post, the language of how we praise others is critical. Rather than praising people for ‘being smart’, Coyle points out that the research of Carol Dweck from Stanford “shows that phrases like “Wow, you really tried hard,” or “Good job, dude,” motivates far better than what she calls empty praise.” ¹

Lastly, let’s look at the third element which is

(3)  Coaching

The behavior of the coaches that Coyle observed was not the fiery and intense mentors that you may expect, as he says:

“Instead, the teachers and coaches I met were quiet, even reserved. They were mostly older; many had been teaching thirty or forty years. They possessed the same sort of gaze: steady, deep, unblinking. They listened far more than they talked. They seemed allergic to giving pep talks or inspiring speeches; they spent most of their time offering small, targeted, highly specific adjustments. They had an extraordinary sensitivity to the person they were teaching, customizing each message to each student’s personality.” ¹

The idea around good coaching is to provide information rather than engaging in criticism or complimenting. It is probing and observing to identify the little tweaks that help the students achieve their goals.

The goal of coaching is “to get inside the deep-practice zone, to maximize the firings that grow the right myelin for the task, and ultimately to move closer toward the day that every coach desires, when the students become their own teachers.” ¹

 So, What is Futsal?

Futsal was a game invented by an Uruguayan in 1930 and it is short for ‘futebol de salao”, which is Portuguese for “soccer in the room”. Basically, it is a different form of soccer where a smaller ball is used and instead of playing on a big field, the game is played on smaller courts with 5 or 6 players instead of 11. Consequently, it is like playing soccer in a phone booth where you have “an intricate series of quick, controlled passes and nonstop end-to-end action.” While other countries have played it, Brazil became obsessed with it and made it the foundation of their soccer culture and eventual dominance.

Why does it work so well? The answer lies in the math and in the myelin. As compared to regular soccer players, futsal players touch the ball 6 times more per minute which increases repetition and builds more myelin. Operating in such small spaces enhances their ball control, sharp passing, and creativity which gives them an enormous advantage once they start using a regulation ball on a larger regular-sized field.

As Dr. Emilio Miranda, professor of soccer at the University of Sao Paolo says:

“No time plus no space equals better skills. Futsal is our national laboratory of improvisation.”

Until next time, embrace the struggle, keep kickin’, and as always…PYMFP!
–Rick

P.S. Wanna know more? Check out the entire book.

If you enjoyed this post, it would mean the world to us if you shared it with people you care about via any of the social media platforms below!

Popular Previous Posts:

Free Trait Theory: When and How to Act Out of Character!
9 Tips for Storytelling: This is How to Tell a Better Story!
How to Act as If to Get Yourself in a Confident Mindset
Being Resourceful: How to Make More Out of What You Have!

References

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown, Here’s How by Daniel Coyle