What does it take to win a gold medal? - not endless hours of practice says a new study

Gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medallists may not the people that practice more than everyone else. A new analysis of almost 3,000 athletes showed that to become a world class athlete takes an enormous amount of practice, but it is not the most number of practice hours that clinches a gold medal. So what does it take to win a gold medal?

Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson published a study in 1993 that suggested that the difference between mediocre muscians and maestros was largely determined by the number of hours they spent practicing. He conducted further studies in sports, chess, and medicine. He said the world’s best athletes, musicians, doctors and chess players were simply the ones who practiced the most. He called it the 10,000-hour rule – put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and you’ll become great. Deliberate practice is defined as the practice that is closely monitored by coaches at all times.

A new study, published in July 2016 in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Case Western University researchers, says practice is just one factor that contributes to greatness – and gold.

Brooke Macnamara and her team of psychology researchers analyzed 34 studies that tracked the number of hours that 2,765 athletes had practiced in their sport. Those studies recorded the athletes’ achievements by race times, performance ratings by experts, or memberships in elite groups.

The results showed that deliberate practice could explain 18% of the difference in performance between elite and non-elite athletes. But when the researchers looked only at the very best competitors – Olympic or world-level athletes – differences in the number of hours practiced explained just 1% of the difference in their performance at competitions. Macnamara said, ‘This suggests that practice is important to a point, but it stops differentiating who’s good and who’s great.’

At national and world-level sporting competitions, genetics, psychological traits, and other factors influence performance, say the researchers of the new study. Other researchers who were not involved in the study question whether this study will change people’s behaviour, because sporting competitors will still practice – and they will still practice a lot. It is becoming more difficult to pinpoint with any accuracy what it takes to win gold – that defining factor that separates the difference between a gold, a silver, and a bronze medallist – and those who narrowly miss out despite years of practice.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-wins-gold-for-practicing-the-most/

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).