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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article. I think when it comes to pure physical sports they're missing some of the original point. The concept of 10,000 hours is about developing a skill, not becoming physically gifted. Michael Jordan's 10,000 hours come from shooting and knowing where to go where the ball will be, more so than just being the most physically gifted.

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Your ignoring the chess example where 3,000 hours get some people to masters status but 25,000 is not enough for others. 10,000 was an average but a useless one because it's for 20 year olds and there is only so much free time before 20 and many need far less time which means others needed even more.

> the chess example where 3,000 hours get some people to masters status but 25,000 is not enough for others

There are so many factors at play. One important one is environment...e.g. if your parents are chess masters and you've grown up watching them play, that's not being included as part of the 3,000 hours...and it should be, because the one with 10,000 hours might not have such an advantage.

Fair enough. The 10,000 hour rule is not iron clad, more a suggestion. The point I'm trying to get at is it's more about routines that require practice rather than pure physical exertion. As in, "Deliberate practice contributes more to the outcome of playing violin and shooting baskets than it does to a 50 yard dash"

The Russians studied skill development in sport more than anybody. In weightlifting one of their leading coaches, Medvedyev, had a 7-year plan to take a promising 10 or 11 year from child to international competitiveness, planned down to the day.

As the plan progressed, the percentage of work dedicated to different training demands varied. By the time a trainee has pass into the final phase (Master of Sport International Class), he would only be performing the competition lifts for about 16% or 17% of overall training volume. The rest was taken up by a very large collection of assistance exercises, rotated as necessary.

After a while, the emphasis was on getting stronger. Their pattern of movement from tens of thousands of repetitions was sufficiently fixed that all that was left was maintaining the pattern and making them stronger.

I've heard similar for other sports too... That their Judo and Wrestling training has very little competition and much more drilling and supplementary conditioning.

They had a cadre of sports scientists who worked on a range of sports and shared findings. I'm most familiar with weightlifting because that's my sport, but from one of my textbooks you can see how they applied common principles across a range of sports.

You can run in circles for long sometimes. I suppose the people who get stuck needs another teacher, context. Or just a time off. Sometimes you finally click for something you didn't understand 10 years earlier, for almost no reasons, but now your brain sees it. As weird as pleasurable.

In my own experience, the physical interface is a third of the skill. So I agree, the abstraction, perspective is far more important. Physical capacity to serve the need of an idea.

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