When to start specialising in sport - the debate rages on!

In the excellent 'The Talent Code' Blog, Daniel Coyle posted the following passage discussing the potential pitfalls of kids specialising early in sports...

"In the glossy heart of the 1980s, in the dimly lit halls of East Anchorage High School there walked a god. He was rangy, blond, and bore the cinematically perfect name of Trace Savage. And Trace Savage was awesome

(Just say it out loud: Trace Savage.)
Trace Savage was awesome partly because he was cool, partly because he was nice, but mostly because he was the best all-around athlete any of us had ever seen: quarterback of the football team, starting forward on the basketball team, and track star. He was living our American sports dream, and the dream of everyone we knew.
Then, in the space of a few years, that dream changed.
Maybe it was the rise of superfocused prodigies like Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, and the Williams sisters. Maybe it was the rise of parenting as a competitive sport. Maybe it was the ESPN-ification of youth sports, which lost its community base and morphed into a free-market bazaar of travel teams, trophies, and tournaments, with each kid (read: parent) seeking the holy grail of success: the college scholarship.
By the time the mid-nineties rolled around Trace Savage had vanished from the landscape like the white rhino. In his place stood a different species: the specialists.
Every sport became a highly organized year-round enterprise: indoor soccer in winter, hockey in summer, baseball all year round. Suddenly kids had to choose before they turned 10 or so, or risk falling behind the pack. The logic seems straightforward: if you want to be good at a sport, you should play intensively year-round. It makes perfect sense.
It was also, in retrospect, a perfectly bad idea. While early specialization works for a lucky few, an increasingly large wave of research has provided proof that early specialization doesn’t work so well for the rest of us. Let us count the ways:

• 1) early specialization increases the chance of injuries.
• 2) early specialization creates worse overall athletes (more evidence here).
• 3) early specialization makes kids less likely to participate in sports as adults.
• 4) early specialization creates a falsely high barrier to participation, eliminating kids who might otherwise succeed in a more open system.

I think the bigger point is this: when it comes to athletic skills, we are natural omnivores. Our bodies and brains are built to grow through variety of activities, not just one.
Think about what happens when you play multiple sports. You develop whole-body skills like balance, quickness, core strength. You cross-train skills from one sport to another.
It is not a coincidence that many top performers were multiple-sport kids growing up. Roger Federer played soccer until 12; Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant did the same. The reason they possess such brilliant footwork and vision is because they built those skills, over time, by being omnivorous.
Most important, multi-sport kids develop a far more useful skill: how to learn. They learn how to adapt to different situations, make connections, and to take true ownership over the improvement process.
I’d also argue that multi-sport kids have a better chance to stay emotionally healthy, because they’re free of the all-the-eggs-in-one-basket pressure that goes with specialization — a pressure that can lead unhealthy patterns when it comes to relationships and emotional stability. (See: Woods, Tiger.) They are free of the sense that, should they fail, they are at risk of losing their identity, and letting down their parents.
So the real question is, what do you do? How do you nurture a Trace Savage in a Tiger Woods world? Here are three useful approaches, courtesy of Ross Tucker of The Science of Sport, who’s written widely on the subject.

• Delay: wait as long as possible before choosing a single sport to pursue. It varies according to sport, but research puts the ideal age for specialization around the early teenage years. (That doesn’t mean you start at that age, of course, but rather that you start getting serious.)
• Diversify: embrace all possibilities to broaden skills. Experiment and cross train.
• Co-operate: seek ways to build connections between the silos of individual sports, so that families are not forced to choose one over the other too soon.

I’d add one more word: Connect. One of the main reason specialization is hard to resist is the parental peer-pressure that comes with joining any “elite” team. When every other family on the team is skipping school to travel to that “prestigious” out-of-state tournament, it’s awfully hard to say no. So I’d suggest seeking out other parents, kids, and coaches who share the multi-sport view, and working together to create fun, homegrown, omnivorous alternatives."

This post cause a massive ammount of debate in the comments area and I put forward my own view (as you might have guessed I would) I thought I would share it here.

For me...this is actually a moral argument as it raises questions that relate to the best way for us to bring up our children. Some think that they need to provide opportunity and put investment into their children from an early age to give their kids the best chance in life. Others are fearful that this approach will have the opposite effect in the long run as a generation of 'pushy parents' sees a generation of kids fall out of love with a sport that they have been doing for too long. 

Within rugby we have researched this area as we have a major problem with kids leaving the sport between the ages of 16 and 24 and we have discovered that the earlier kids start playing the more likely they are to drop out. We also discovered that the main reasons for drop out relate to burnout due to boredom or the attraction of other sport which suggest to us that the varied diet of sport for as late as possible is very important. We are working very hard to ensure that our talent selection systems are now starting much later (i.e. post maturation) so that we keep windows open to kids who have great athletic ability and drop out of other sports. From our perspective we hope the other sports keep going with their early specialisation models as we may well benefit long term! 

Much of the problem stems from the fact that kid's sport has become big business. The weight of evidence in support of the late specialisation model  (see this link for some more http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130423172601.htm) is pretty heavy and yet people are still finding spurious arguments in support of it...why...because their livelihoods depend on it! 

The problem is that every time we get an elite star that came from a early specialised background that this is presented as the case for this model, the media love to report this and it then takes on a bit of a folk following as a story. What nobody will consider is the 100's of kids that did the same but didn't make it and dropped out. It comes down to a straight trade off...the odd elite star and the risk of large scale drop out or a healthy sport full of lifelong participants and the promise of more elite stars as a happy by product. 

The challenge for sports administrators is that we try to use research and logic to strengthen our argument but we are fighting against a powerful triumvirate of the hard line opinions of a commercial industry fueled by parents who are emotionally attached to the futures of their children which is in turn powered by the media's delight in a romantic story of the 'boy or girl done good' by trying hard from early childhood. 

I am fearful that the only way that this super tanker can be turned around will be be when it is too late....

Ric Shuttleworth on coaching and skill acquisition

One of the benefits of what I do at the RFU is to meet some of the best people in the world of player development and coaching. One of those people is Ric Shuttleworth who has recently joined the organisation as elite coach development manager. Ric recently gave a talk to a group of coaches working with divisional U16 players and I thought that there was so much good stuff there that I would share it.

Ric's philosophy is based on the 'Game Sense' or perhaps more accurately the 'Constraints Led' model of coaching. He suggests that skill should never be developed outside of a game like training environment, rather coaches should always challenge themselves to create what the successful Australian Hockey Coach, Ric Charlesworth calls 'designer games' so that players are learning and developing skills while inside a game like context so that the acquired skill is learned in an integrated sense rather than isolated.

He started off with a recording of a conversation with Robbie Deanes, the Australian Rugby Coach. His key messages were...

- Let the players find the solutions.

- The information should come from them to us.

- We want mistakes. Mistakes are good.

- The point of difference is awareness. We don't spend enough time developing this. Decisions are based on awareness.

- The best will have a dynamic collective understanding. They will think on the fly based on what they see in front of them.

- Defenders determine the attacking strategy, react to what they do. Defensive density both depth and width is key. Identify the clusters.

Ric then added the following following points which I hope will make sense...

- Ask a question but don't expect an answer. Allow the game to be the teacher, let them find the solution within the game. Get them to explore the solutions.

- Manipulation of time and space to create pressure. Players who have played a lot of invasion games are good at this.

- Information dictates technique. The development of the skill should never be done in isolation of wider information. Otherwise the skill breaks down.

- Expression and creativity is prized over conforming to a model. Innovation must be part of it.

- Technique based KPIs are not important. Process is key, how committed to learning are they.

- Establish the aim of the session based on the problems. List the problems and then work backwards towards the single solutions.

- Work out the methods of learning based on low, medium and high pressure options. Slide between these to illicit the best learning model for the individual.

- Players want you to be in control. But you must break the control cycle. Don't offer feedback...force them to solicit it.

- Generation Y get told what to do a lot. They are not used to making decisions.

- Try to Structure 'unstructured' practice.

- Encourage the players develop the games or solutions or constraints to solve the problem. Make them critically evaluate tactical approaches and make decisions accordingly.

I came away with so many ideas about how I could improve my coaching, I can't wait to put some of them into practice.

How to make sure your sessions develop skills more effectively

Hi all,

Here is some great stuff from Daniel Coyle on how to make sure that you deliver sessions that develop skill effectively.

http://thetalentcode.com/2012/10/15/four-quick-cures-for-poor-practice/

By the way Daniel has a new book out called 'The little book of talent: 52 tips for improving your skills'. It is like a coaching manual for skill acquisition and is really great. Here are a couple of video clip which outline the tips.






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Is talent natural or nurtured - who cares!

One of the real pleasures of what I do is working with coaches. I really enjoy meeting people working at the coal face of sports trying to do the best they can to help the athletes they work with to maximise their potential. In many of the sessions I run there is often a discussion exploring the 'Nurture – Nature debate' where arguments rage about the relative merits of genetic attributes inherited from birth versus the socialising environmental factors which develop human abilities.(check out the excellent 'Creativity Post' for a really interesting insight into the views being put forward) 

The conversation often ends up with the room split into 3 camps:

·      The ‘Nurturers’: who think that talent is largely the product of the developmental environment.

·      The ‘Naturists’: (not the getting naked type!) that want to suggest that talent is innate and the product of inherited genetic attributes.

·      The ‘Middle Majority’ that argue that talent is a combination of both. 

There can often be quite strong views put forward by the opposing ends of the discussion and I often find myself acting as a referee between the two camps. As I see it the nurture vs nature debate is often so divisive and engenders so much passion because it can act as a metaphor for how we as humans see our world. For nurturers, the nature argument is abhorrent as it sends out a message that if you are ‘blessed’ or ‘gifted’ with certain qualities and attributes then you have a material advantage over others and no amount of striving is going to overcome that. Those in the nature camp contend that it is equally wrong to give people the false hope that if they spend enough time trying to achieve something then they will achieve their dreams or goals when the reality is that their genetic disadvantages are such that this is unlikely. 

Put another way, nurturers believe that anybody can be Albert Einstein if they work hard enough, the nature camp believe that no amount of work can overcome the innate qualities that made Einstein who he was. 

I have to say that the coach and social scientist in me coupled with the fact that I have a personal leaning towards a more meritocratic, egalitarian model of society leans me towards the nurture argument. It resonates with me as I believe that if we can create more opportunities for people to deliberately practise by having quality coaching experiences made available to more people more often then we will do a great deal to maximise more young people’s athletic potential. 

On the other hand the more I work with different sports the more I can see that genetic differences are important especially in sports where the physiological requirements are much more prevalent as attributes such as height, weight, strength, power and speed are more advantageous to performance.

So how should we look at this problem? If we are looking for talent should we be focussed on physiological factors driven by our genes or should we focus on environmental factors which drive talent development?

I think that this polarisation of the argument is unhelpful and misses the point. You don't necessarily become a world champion just by putting in thousands of hours of practice however we also know that you would never become a world champion without putting in thousands of hours of practice.

I recently met with Professor Patrick Bateson who is a leading expert on Ethology (the biological study of behaviour) at Cambridge University and the author of‘Design for a life – How behaviour develops’ to discuss this very issue. He explained to me that the Nurture v Nature debate is completely nonsensical to him as it is clear that there is a need to understand the development of human athletic potential from the position of both sides. Having said that neither does he subscribe to the position of the ‘middle majority’. Professor Bateson suggests David Schenk in ‘The Genius in All of us’ gets closest explaining this argument by saying that it isn’t Genetics versus Environment or Genetics plus Environment but rather Genetics multiplied by Environment.  

Essentially Prof Bateson wants us to embrace a more sophisticated understanding of the issue and points to some of the latest findings in the field of Epigenetics (more on this in future posts) which is beginning to suggest that a person’s Genotype (how their body is made up genetically) is not necessarily fixed and that adaptations can occur based on a variety of environmental influences. 

Dr Jeff Craig the joint leader of the Developmental Epigenetics Group at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Australia goes some way to backing up this point. Writing on a blog on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website for a programme called ‘Life at 5’ he states…

“Up to the late 90s and even early 2000s, we thought that DNA was our destiny - which is not true.Our genes are just lengths of DNA; they don't do anything by themselves - they need something to turn the gene on and turn the gene off. This is where epigenetics comes in. Epigenetics literally means 'above' genetics and it refers to the tags that sit on top of our DNA. They are marks that stick to the beginning of a gene and tell the gene to be active or to be inactive. It's like having a dimmer switch. A light bulb in a socket doesn't do anything by itself; it needs power, an on/off switch and a dimmer switch to turn it up or down”.

How I interpret this is to say that, while genes are vital in creating the building blocks which lead to establishing ourselves as humans they are not our fate. Who we are and who we ultimately become depends on a subtle and delicate interplay between our DNA and the environment.

To illustrate this point, Richard C. Francis highlighted a number of studies in his book Epigenetics - The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance that have suggested  that the way an organism responds to extreme trauma could largely be determined by their genetic construction. In essence, those having a certain genetic make up would be very resilient to trauma where as others who did not have the same composition could struggle and could end up suffering from stress, anxiety, depression, mental illness well into their adult lives. 

The same studies then went on to examine the effects of parenting over a period of time and they came to 2 startling conclusions.

1. The genetic make up was largely determined by the level of attachment and intimacy provided by the mother at an early age. 

2. The offspring with the genetic make-up that should have left them prone to suffer badly from trauma recovered to become even more resilient than those with the genetic advantage as long as they were given the right kind of nurturing from their parents, siblings or others.

So what does all this mean for sport and coaching? 

Many athletes can possess the most fantastic physical (genetic) attributes which translate into amazing athletic abilities. We all know people like this,  they can turn their hands to anything and are good at everything yet they somehow fail to achieve their potential. In my view this is more often than not because they have never really been taught how to fail, it all came so easy to them that when the going does get tough they either can’t handle it or they get demotivated and drop out.

Essentially we think that what they have naturally will be enough to see them through. Even the most gifted still need to be nurtured.

In summary, let’s move beyond the Nurture – Nature debate and let’s understand that while physiology is important it is also dramatically affected by environment.

For me as a coach I find this to be a really powerful motivating force. I love the notion that we can create situations and conditions through our coaching that can influence a child’s life in ways that can go beyond the sports field and can help them in other aspects of their life. I am of the belief that being a coach of talented youngsters is a great privilege and I have often maintained that a big part of my role is to help them to develop a ‘bubble of resilience’ which helps them to navigate the challenges and pressures that constantly bombard them and threaten to derail their development. 

It just occurred to me that a great film to illustrate my point is 'The Blind Side' starring Sandra Bullock. I can also highly recommend the book of the same title by one of my favourite authors, Michael Lewis. 

How to win a World Cup

Mark Lane was the Head Coach of the World Cup winning England Women's Cricket Team. You could forgive Mark for having a swagger or a certain arrogance that comes from being the best in the world, but nothing could be further from the truth. You are unlikely to find a more engaging, honest and straight forward individual.

Mark was kind enough to get up early in the morning to give a talk to a group of talent coaches as part of a 'Talent Coach Breakfast Club' and here are a few of my notes from the day...

The Journey so far...

Mark's journey as a coach is not typical for an international coach, he played minor county and county 2nd XI cricket and then began coaching part time once he retired alongside his job as a builder. He was offered a job running one of the new indoor cricket schools that were popping up throughout the UK (where he started working with players like Claire Taylor on a one to one basis!)before being offered a chance to be the assistant coach of the Kenyan national team (important lessons learnt about dealing with different types of people with different agendas here!). When he returned to the UK he started working as a community coach on the ECBs 'Chance to Shine' programme (49% increase in the number of girls playing Cricket as a result of this programme - Mark was very proud to tell us) before receiving a phone call from the England management out of the blue asking if he could step in for another coach and be with the team in Australia in 3 days time. As Mark tells it "There I was with my balls and bibs and cones in a school and 3 days later I was at the SCG with the girls for the Ashes - it was literally from playground to test arena" (the ECB motto).

Coaching Philosophy

Creating the performance environment is central to Mark's philosophy of coaching. He wants to develop  culture within the team based on the following principles:

• Open and Honest 
• Challenge each other to be better
• Accountability 
• Know your role
• Enjoy what we do 
• Trust

(A good book on this subject is 'The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team' by Patrick Lencioni. Thanks to Craig Keegan the England Under 21s Women's Hockey Coach for recommending it for me). 

Knowing the player and individualising coaching

Mark pointed out that a big part of his development as a coach was to improve his ability to relate to people and understand what makes them tick. A lot of the development provided by the ECB has focussed on this area and personality profiling and management techniques are fairly central to their development programme. Mark has worked extensively on his communication style and his ability to get through to players with different personality types.

An example of this was when Mark asked Claire Taylor what she wanted to do during practice and he said that she really wanted to read her book. He told her that is that was the way she could best prepare then she could do so. "It raised eyebrows at the time and there were a few funny looks but now we have trust and openness and shared values so now we can have optional training sessions and no-one bats an eyelid" Mark points out.

One of the major techniques used in this process is a review that is also used by the men's team coaches ("it's great being able to share ideas with Andy Flower"). This review process is based around 4 questions:

• What have you learned? 
• What went well?
• Areas for improvement
• What ifs

Being a sports psychologist

"I am the best sports psychologist these girls can have" Mark says, "and my sports psych often tells me that". Mark outlines that much of his work is about preparing players for the emotional and mental demands of performing at the highest level under pressure. There is still room for the psychologist to work with players on areas of personal development but when it comes to preparation to play that is entirely his domain, as he outlines "my psych is great but he can be a bit fluffy for me, I am all about the here and now and I like it to be real world".

To illustrate this Mark wants to make sure that the players are mentally tough and uses a variety of techniques to help build the correct mindset, they include:

• Getting the players to sing in front of each other. This was done as a way to create trust and openness but also as a way to show the players how to cope with being out of their comfort zone. 
• Consequence training - making as many sessions as possible have a consequence. One example was the '5 point net session' where players can stay in the nets as long as they haven't got 5 points (1 for the ball beating the bat, 3 for getting out, 1 for not showing enough intent).
• Playing against male players or playing with male players in men's teams. 

Continuous improvement

Mark explained that he wants the players to examine their performances and continuously improve, he explained that in the past they had 2 or 3 key players and the rest would rely on them. He challenged the girls on this and told them that they needed to step up. One admitted that she had never scored a 50 for England and so he asked her what she was doing playing for England. The same girl has now scored multiple hundreds and is the best finisher in the world.  

Mark has also made sure the times when the team has not been successful have been opportunities to learn. After one unsuccessful series they agreed that that needed to be tougher, and to be able to take criticism from one another. This can only be done when the culture is right and still requires work and careful management. 

Consistency = belief = confidence 

One of the ways in which Mark can evaluate the programme is by measuring the confidence levels of the team. The work put in by the players has brought about good performances on a regular basis, which has imbued the players with faith in their abilities. "We now have a healthy arrogance", he suggests. I asked if he measures the women's programme against the men's programme or there is a quiet rivalry. I flicker of a smile comes across his lips but the answer is more straightforward than I had hoped, "the men have had great success and so have we....their world is different to ours but I like to think that we can stand on our own two feet". 

Preparation and taking chances

In sport we prepare ourselves for the contest and then we go out there and try and take our chance. This is a perfect metaphor for Mark's career to date... work hard and become as good as you can be at whatever level you are working at. If you get a chance, be prepared to drop everything and go for it...and give it your all. 

The quotes in this post are not exact verbatim transcripts of Mark's words as I couldn't scribble that fast. Instead I am  paraphrasing Mark's words to give a flavour of  how he thinks. 

Understanding the 10,000 hour rule

A lot has been made about the 10,000 hour rule, Anders Ericsson's theory that stipulates the average number of hours of 'deliberate practice' to achieve excellence in any domain. For those not familiar with the concept, the model suggests that experts were differentiated from lesser performers by the amount of time they spent in deliberately practising their chosen activity. The average number being reported by the participants in the various studies conducted by Ericsson's research team being 10,000 hours. The assumption many people make from this is that if you do thousands of hours of practice then you will become a highly proficient performer at whatever you choose. 


Deliberate practice is not just about amassing hours at something, it is a very specific process  involving focussing on a challenge, mindfully working on it with a goal to improve performance, often the process is guided by an expert or a coach and the process involved lots of trying and failing. As Annie Murphy Paul puts it in this piece in the Time Magazine: Ideas section  "It sounds simple, even obvious, but it’s something most of us avoid. If we play the piano — or...the guitar — or we play golf or speak French, it’s because we like it. We’ve often achieved a level of competency that makes us feel good about ourselves. But what we don’t do is intentionally look for ways that we’re failing and hammer away at those flaws until they’re gone, then search for more ways we’re messing up. But almost two decades of research shows that’s exactly what distinguishes the merely good from the great".


This study "It's not how much, it's how"  goes further to explain this as it outlines that musicians that improved more rapidly than others did so because of the way they practised rather than the amount they practised. Essentially those that improved the most looked at mistakes and tried to rectify them immediately before moving on to anything else


The video below is a good example of deliberate practice, the drummer, Simon Phillips (who has played with a number of big name bands including 'The Who') is largely self taught and developed these sorts of exercises as a way to improve his technique. Just imagine how many times he got this wrong before he was competent!