We’ve all heard it over and over again from coaches, parents and TV announcers: practice makes perfect. You hear stories about famous athletes from an early age taking the time to hone their skills and put in the work. Waking up early to get to the gym before anyone else, staying late on the field to put in extra time and having a “no days off” mentality. A good work ethic is a great thing, but it’s not the only thing that matters when it comes to perfecting your craft and I’ll let you in on a little secret: practice doesn’t make perfect. 

10,000 Hours? 

     In his book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcom Gladwell writes extensively about the 10,000 Hour Rule. Essentially, he hypothesizes that in order to perfect a craft or become an expert one must devote 10,000 hours of their lives to that craft. In his book he cites a study from Anders Ericsson on violin students in Berlin achieving mastery of the violin, and came to the conclusion that on average it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery or a level of expertise. He later concludes that The Beatles had put in that same 10,000 hours practicing and playing in dive bars prior to ever making it big, and that Bill Gates put in roughly 10,000 hours of coding prior to launching Windows. The only problem? The average time spent on the violin from this study was only about 7400 hours and while these students were great violinists, they weren’t yet experts by any stretch of the imagination at 18 years old. The 7400 Hour Rule doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, so Gladwell did the next best thing and assumed these violinists would practice another 2500 hours by the time they were 20 and thus the 10,000 Hour Rule was created.

     There are a lot of problems with this rule. First off, not everyone starts from the same place. In the book The Sports Gene David Epstein refutes this rule in his chapter “10,000 Hours Plus or Minus 10,000 Hours”. In this chapter he writes about a walk on who made a track and field team for the high jump at his university with zero experience and was able to set records, and in the beginning was actually wearing Chucks Taylor’s or dress shoes, honestly I can’t remember which one but it drives home the fact that this kid was completely unprepared from a practice standpoint. This athlete was genetically gifted and his starting line was light years ahead everyone else he was competing against. Those 10,000 hours wouldn’t have moved the needle much for him, because he didn’t need it. While this may be an exception to the rule, genetics can’t be discounted when it comes to obtaining a skillset. Secondly, this rule doesn’t distinguish between types of practice. There’s all the difference in the world between one hour of skill development with an expert and five hours of self-practice figuring it out on our own. While there’s a TON to be said for figuring things out and learning on our own, specific direction from an expert blows that kind of practice out of the water when it comes to skillset development. The third part of practice this rule doesn’t distinguish between is the mindsets of students acquiring a skillset. While you can have all the genetic predisposition and experts to guide you in the right direction, if you’re not dialed into the work there’s no way you’re going to become a master at anything. Drive is a HUGE factor when it comes to skillset acquisition, if you don’t have it all the practice in the world won’t be able to help you. The last, and possibly most important factor is purpose within practice. The purpose of your skillset acquisition should be just that, to acquire and master a skill. For example I can go out on the ice and shoot 1000 pucks at the net, or I can go on the ice and work to shoot from a good position and put 100 pucks within an inch of the elbow of the bar. While one is technically less physical work, there’s a specific purpose to what I’m trying to accomplish and that lower amount of work is going to do more for me than shooting 1000 pucks with no intent. While purpose is arguably the most important aspect of practice, but goes hand in hand with drive. 

     While 10,000 hours of practice can be thought of as a good rule of thumb (or not in all honesty), there’s a lot of other factors that play into this time spent perfecting a craft. From where you start, to the type of practice you’re putting in, to the drive of the athlete and intent there are a lot of factors that will determine if you’ll ever have what it takes to become an expert and how long it will take to get there. 

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

     While important, practice does not make one perfect, perfect practice does. And that begs the question: What is perfect practice? Now there’s no clean-cut definition of what constitutes perfect practice but we’ll try to lay it all out here. First off, you need to have direction. This direction typically comes from an expert. That expert can be your coach, scientific data from a peer reviewed article, a book written by a professional, video’s created by professionals, etc. You get the picture; an expert is basically someone that has taken the time to not only learn the skillset you’re trying to acquire but has also put in the effort to learn how to teach it. Secondly, you need to have a desire to achieve this perfection. Now I don’t mean you want to be the best and you’ll work long hours to get there, I mean you’ll work hard AND put your trust into the expert you’ve chosen to help you acquire the skillset and be open and coachable. If you’re not going to be coachable, you’re never going to gain expert levels of skill. The third and final factor that goes into perfect practice is intent every time you step out onto the field of play. Have a purpose every time you put on your gear or go into the gym, that’s why you’re there and you’re going to work towards accomplishing that task. From working on putting the puck in the elbow of the goal, to hitting PRs in the gym you have to have intent and can’t just go through the motions and expect adaptations to be made that favor your perfection of a skill. If there is no intent, what you’re doing is just a hobby.

     While there’s a lot to be said for just spending time on the field of play and practice, there are a lot of factors that go into perfecting a skill. We can’t just check boxes off a list when it comes to our preparation for sport, we need to make sure those boxes have the right information next to them. We need to change this mantra of practice making perfect because it doesn’t, perfect practice makes perfect.