Deliberate Practice - Expertise IS in our GENES!

The long held belief that outstanding performance was a result of innate ability has now been replaced by beliefs about the role of intensive deliberate practice.   Why then has there been such a seismic shift away from previously held views regarding the crucial role of innate talent in the developemnt of expertise?

The answer to this question is central to the Ericssons theory of deliberate practice and can be explained by the mediating role of 'gene expression' during the transformation from one level of performance to the next. During this process dormant genes are actively selected (called in to action) as a result of intense and extended practice - in other words the mechanisms of the body, through training, adapt to meet the demands that are being placed on them.

Under these circumstances the superior capacities (physiological and cognitive) exhibited by experts and previously thought to be innate, in fact result from rather than cause the development of expertise. It is therefore not unrealistic to suggest that all healthy individuals have inherited the potential to reach expert levels of performance, as the necessary genes appear to reflect genes contained within all individuals’ DNA.

For example endurance athletes routinely experience hypertrophy in the left ventricular of the heart which speeds up the flow of blood to meet their increased need for oxygen (see below).

hypertrophy in the left ventricular (botton right) of the heart

Another example of adaptation to training and its mediating role in the development of expertise is that of professional musicians. A professional key board player can produce 1800 notes per minute with precision of space and time that is unsurpassed in any other type of human behavior. This is possible because professional musicians’ develop quicker nerve conduction due to the enlargement of myelin cells - this specifically occurs during training activities that require rapid information transfer and temporal precision.
 

In applying this thinking to the development of expertise in golf involves the following: firstly the qualities that allow experts reproduce superior performance in a representative context needs to be identified. Experts often fail to outperform non experts in closed context controlled tasks. Experts, then, are distinguishable from non experts by their ability to perform under the many constraints that affect performance at an elite level. Only once you have learned how they acquired these skills can you go about designing training activities that lead to superior performance in golf.

References

Ericsson, K.A (2003) “How the Expert Performance Approach Differs from Traditional approaches to Expertise in Sport” in Starkes, J.L & Ericsson K.A (Eds), Expert Performance in Sports, Champaign, IL, Human Kinetics

Ericsson, K, A; Nandagopal, K and Roring, R,W (2009) Toward a Science of Exceptional Achievement: Attaining Superior Performance through Deliberate Practice Longevity, Regeneration, and Optimal Health 2009 New York Academy of Science  1172: 199–217

Gruber, H; Jansen, P; Marienhagen, J and Altenmueller, E (2010) Adaptations During the Acquisition of Expertise, Talent Development & Excellence of Expertise, Vol. 2, No. 1, 3-15

Münte, T, F;  Altenmüller, E and  Jäncke, L (2003)”The musician’s brain as a model of neuroplasticity”,  Neuro Science Volume 3  473

Stewart, L. (2008) Do musicians have different brains? Clinical Medicine, 8, 304–308.

The Role of Deliberate Practice

The fact that Anders Ericsson’s theory of deliberate practice (see Ericsson et al 1993) needs no introduction is a reflection of its newly found position in popular culture. Without doubt the most popular hypothesis from the deliberate practice framework is that expert performance is achieved because of an individuals’ prolonged effort to improve and not because of any special or innate talents.
 

If this alone were true then potentially, you and I and countless others would be playing on the PGA Tour by now. Ben Hogan, for example, spawned generations of golfers who were willing to beat balls for hours on end and yet so few went on to achieve the same success. Why then do some people derive more from practice than others?

According to Ericssons research, the answer is simple; when the reproduction of a skill becomes automatic (the autonomous stage of learning), no amount of increased practice/experience will bring about a marked improvement in performance. In other words the autonomous stage of learning means that a skill can be reproduced without any real stress; and here in lies the problem, in order to experience continued adaptations in the mechanisms that control performance we need stress. In the absence of stress no further adaptations will be experienced - we have arrested the development of our potential.

For this reason expert performers’ deliberately circumvent the autonomous stage of learning by seeking out increasingly demanding tasks. Such tasks continuously require them to stretch their performance beyond its current level. They overcome the detrimental effect of automaticity and in doing so acquire the cognitive skills to support their continued learning and improvement.

As Ericsson explains, the future experts and their teachers “…search continuously for optimal training activities that will appropriately strain the targeted systems to induce further adaptations…”

Perhaps then Hogan’s secret was quite simply that above all he developed the ability to practice with the most effective intensity and duration – he had what is known as the talent to practice deliberately!

References

Ericsson, K.A., Krampe, R.T. and Tesch-Römer, C. (1993) “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance”, Psychological Review, Vol 100, No. 3; pp 363-406

Ericsson, K.A (2007) “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance” in Charness, N; Feltovich, P,J; Hoffman, R,R &  Anders Ericsson, K (Eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, pp 683-703, New York, Cambridge University Press

The Myth of LTAD?!

I was reminded recently about a lecture at the University of Birmingham in 2006 when the presenters had the temerity to talk to us about the “The myth of LTAD”. Up until this point I like many others had accepted LTAD as fact and had welcomed it as a great resource.  So how then could something so well respected, scientific and embraced by so many NGB’s, be a myth?

If the controversial nature of the lecture was designed to pique our interest it certainly worked; during the past five years I have been able to study this closer as it relates to my own area of research.

In making my own assessment with regards to the “Myth of LTAD” I have looked at the model primarily from the viewpoint of its evidence base and the scientific principles around which the theory is built.

The Issues surrounding the evidence base of the model are simple; during the development of the model no scientific/empirical studies were conducted to establish whether expert athletes actually develop via the four key stages proposed in LTAD. Indeed the only research conducted so far regarding how experts develop reveals different activities and stages to those proposed in LTAD (see Williams 2009). As it stands the evidence base for the model constitutes the basic elements of the Canadian Men's Alpine Ski team program spanning three Olympic cycles.

So what then of the scientific principles that form the conceptual framework of LTAD? In terms of validity, within a model, these principles should form laws that govern any observable variances in the phenomena of athlete development.

An example of this would be the so called limiting affect, in LTAD, experienced if the athlete neglects any age related critical and sensitive periods of development,  during these ‘windows of trainability’ the athlete is said to experience accelerated adaptations to specific types of training. Failing to take an advantage of these ‘windows’, it is warned, will lead to athlete never reaching their full potential. Not surprisingly this type of information is intuitively appealing to sports coaches’; and indeed the practical applications of these principles have led some to claim to be world leaders in their field.  

However on closer scrutiny it is not possible, amongst the vast LTAD literature, to find any citations of peer reviewed evidence supporting the “windows of trainability” claim. Indeed the research, non peer reviewed/ non empirical or otherwise, is so scarce that Viru et al (1999) suggest that any conclusion being drawn from them should be considered to be inaccurate.  

This lack of evidence leads to criticism of LTAD as operating in the ‘land of theory’ in that it can only claim to be reflecting ideas, theories, hunches and hypotheses about the development of an athlete. None of which is a problem, we all have theories and hunches about the world but when the model is promoted as absolute scientific fact then there is no doubt that "the myth of LTAD" is a reality. 

References

A, M, Williams & P.R Ford (2009) Promoting a skill based agenda in Olympic sports: The role of skill acquisition specialists, Journal of Sports Sciences, 27: 13, 1381 - 1392

Viru, A., Loko, J., Harro, M., Volver, A., Laaneots, L. and Viru, M. (1999) ‘Critical periods in the development of performance capacity during childhood and adolescence’, European Journal of Physical Education, 4 (1): 75–119.