Nature v Nurture in youth sports - blog post from Phil Loomis - IYCA

Hi all,

I wanted to share with you this really well written article from Phil Loomis that was posted on the International Youth Conditioning Association website which looks to outline the how young players and athletes develop and to unpick some of the myths and misinformation surrounding the subject. In my opinion the article is really well measured and balanced and gives a well structured viewpoint on the challenges faced by parents and coaches in a landscape that is very outcome driven.

The article chimes with many of the sentiments I have previously expressed on the nurture vs nature debate on this blog previously and so i thought that it should have a place here so that I could share it with anybody that is interested in the subject.

 

What is talent? Excellent article by Scott Barry Kaufman

Hi all, 

I wanted to share this article I came across by Scott Barry Kaufman, an award-winning psychologist and author. He is adjunct assistant professor of psychology at New York University and has written a number of excellent books on talent and expertise including Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined and The complexity of greatness: beyond talent or practice. 

The article is one of the the most well written, accessible and balanced accounts of the research relating to talent that I have read. It takes an extremely complex area and manages to package the key findings into a really neat and well written package. 

From my perspective Kaufman has superbly outlined the delicate interplay between innate characteristics as defined by nature through genetic inheritance and the socialising influence of the developmental environment. 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jul/07/can-science-spot-talent-kaufman

I have written a previous blog post on this subject which gets nowhere near as close to Kaufman in terms of a well reasoned and written article but hopefully provides a slightly different slant on the same theme. http://developingsportingtalent.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/is-talent-natural-or-nurtured-who-cares.html

Enjoy

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....

Great video explaining Carol Dweck's Growth and Fixed mindset concept

Hi all,

I found this great video which explains Carol Dweck's concept of a 'Growth Mindset' and thought I would share it with you.

I think that this aspect of developing young sports participants is the bit that I see being missed so often. Everywhere you go in kids sports there are people who are bombarding them with external influences that foster a fixed mindset. The way we praise, the fact that it is always about winning and losing, the things shouted by parents from the sideline all drive children into having fixed mindsets.

Anyway I will let you take a look for yourself.

Golf Boys 2.Oh!

Some of you might remember the original 'Golf Boys' video when Hunter Mahan, Ricky Fowler, Ben Crane and Bubba Watson got together to produce a spoof music video called 'Oh, Oh, Oh' which went viral and got over 6.5 Million views. If you missed it here it is below...it is also worth watching the 'making of' series which is just as hilarious.



Well they are back with Golf Boys '2.Oh!' this is really slick and the lyrics are really clever.

Enjoy and share

Rudy Duran - A master coach in every sense of the word, the ultimate unsung hero

I was once fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to listen to a gentleman called Rudy Duran talk about his coaching. You maybe forgiven for not knowing who Rudy Duran is as not many people have heard of him, he was Tiger Wood's golf coach from the age of 4 to 10. Firstly, I have to say that you can not imagine a more self effacing, humble and genuine person. Rudy was honest and open and prepared to admit the mistakes he made as much as the good things he did. In many ways he underplayed his involvement in Tiger's development often just suggesting that all he did was get out of the way of a genius being nurtured. For me he played an absolutely critical role in enabling Woods, who was undoubtedly well above average in his golfing abilities as a four year old (much of this can be put down to his early experiences with his father who was a recent convert to golf and a total golf nut) as Rudy recalls, "not many 4 year olds can read their own putts".The amazing thing is that I'm not even sure if Rudy himself, fully appreciates the role he played.To me the story is a fascinating one because, as with most stories about exceptional talent or outliers there are so many aspects that contribute to the development of Woods. It is my belief that Rudy Duran was at heart of many of them, I will try to list them as best I can below:

1. Rudy's coaching philosophy is based on the fact that he believes golf is a pretty easy game to play. With a little time and practice most people will improve quickly. The game is very hard at the elite level with tiny margins deciding success and failure but the key for Rudy is to let people experience the joy of the game so that they develop a love for the activity which will then drive them into lifelong participation. The rest takes care of itself. - Rudy wants his pupils to fall in love with the game - a critical ingredient to intrinsically motivated future improvement. 

2. Rudy was the owner operator of an 18 hole par 3 public golf facility in southern calafornia, as such he had complete control over timetabling of the course and was so committed to junior golf that he would block out the 1st tee on a Saturday morning for junior competitions even though he could have sold the green fees to adult players 3 times over. As the owner operator his income was mostly derived from green fees, coaching was a sideline and something he did mostly for fun. In this respect taking 2 hours or so at a time to coach Tiger and play golf with him was no problem and meant that Tiger had a unique  opportunity to play alongside his coach, observe, experiment and explore. Rudy had such freedom that he would often play games with Tiger that involved curving the ball around the club house or hitting a shot under a picnic table! -How many kids get the opportunity to play games with their coach and to have the freedom to experiment with a guide at their side? 

3. Rudy's coaching took place 85% of the time on the golf course and 15% away from the course on the practice areas. On the infrequent occassions when they were on the range they would be going through all aspects of the game working backwards from the putting green to the full swing. . - Tiger learned to play the game and to develop his own solutions to getting the ball in the hole, he learned this before he tried to refine his technique and as such he developed the ability to score and play instead if just learning skills outside of the context of the game which can often be the experience of many youngsters.

4. Tiger, his father and Rudy would spend about an hour after each session chatting about the session and Tiger's game. These post game chats were also described by Rudy as 'brainstorming' sessions where they would create practice programme designed to enable Tiger to play his best in competitions. There were typically 5 or 6 sessions per month sometimes more if Tiger was leading to one of the major junior tournaments which were 8 to 10 a year. - Rudy ensured that Tiger took his learning away with him and work on things when Tiger was at home. This way he was able to guide the Tiger's practice time between coaching sessions and make that practice time more deliberate. 

5. Rudy said that his coaching was based on challenging Tiger to achieve certain goals. An example of this was the way Rudy created Tiger's 'personal par' where Tiger would be trying to play a hole in less shots than the number set for him by Rudy. Rudy says that the biggest difficulty for him in this was to kep coming up with things that pushed Tiger enough to maintain his interest. - By setting challenges and obstacles for Tiger to overcome he maintained his motivation and also allowed him to develop skill more rapidly through guided experimentation.

6. Rudy describes his coaching style as "waiting for the coachable moments" where he would wait for Tiger to stumble at something and then ask him questions about how what he could do to acheive the goal. - this questioning approach has been shown to be a route to giving the player/athlete ownership of their development which means that they learn new tactics and skills and they reatin the knowledge much more effectively than if they are merely told how to solve the problem. 

To me, so much of what Rudy Duran explained about the way he approached coaching Tiger Woods points to him being a highly accomplished coach of children as well as being a high performing coach of talent. I find it difficult to imagine that these early experiences did not provide the foundations for Tiger's future development and gave him a major headstart over so many of his contemporaries. I often wonder what might have happened if Tiger hadn't found Rudy. 

When is a coach a good coach? When they talk less....

Those of you who follow my posts will know that I coach a hockey team as well as work with performance golfers. Well this season my team has been struggling...well by struggling I mean we are rock bottom of the league. I have been busy with work and haven't really been able to do enough with them or be focussed enough to get them to understand what needs to be done. They are talented but young and  inexperienced and we are losing games that we should be winning because they are not really able to execute game plans effectively. Anyway, I haven't been doing the rounds of the blogs that I follow very much recently and I have been missing out on some really good bits of information consequently.

Here is another great nugget from Dan Coyle author of The Talent Code on how great coaches communicate. http://thetalentcode.com/2011/11/08/a-word-of-coaching-advice-talk-less-matter-more/

I know I am going to be applying this from now on and hopefully our fortunes might change around.

Happy reading. 

PDS Performance Coach Training - Amazing coach development

I have been doing some personal development recently and I am 2/5 of the way through the Performance Coach course run by Mark Bennett MBE from Performance Development Systems and I have to say that it is one of the most transformational coach development experiences I have had to date.

The focus of the PDS programme is all about the human aspect of coaching and really looks in depth at the interaction between the coach and the participant. One of the main drivers behind the programme is getting people to take action and to get them motivated to take action, by utilising a number of highly skilful communication tools and by exploring how and when to use these tools most effectively I have found that my coaching is now 100% better than it was previously. I thought I was a good communicator and considered this to be one of my strengths, through this course and through watching Mark at work I have discovered that I am about 20% of where I should be in order to be truly effective.

I know that in the past I have looked for the technical or tactical or physical aspects when looking at coach development options. I realise now that I should have spent much more time on how I engage with the players I work with as the results I am getting now are so much better than previously.

It is truly powerful stuff and something that I would recommend to any coach looking to develop themselves and to work with high performance players.

The EGU has formed a partnership with PDS to enable coaches working in the England Talent Pathway (county academy, county, regional, national) to access the course at a 40% discount. Courses are running at the end of October, go to the PDS website to find out when the next course is running near you.

look at the skill of these guys!!

This is really good to see and shows just how skilful these guys are. Watch how close they are on so many of the shots...

The W.I.G. Game

Here is a practice game I got from Dave Alred (www.davealred.com or www.performingunderpressure.com) at a seminar recently. For those of you who don't know Dave he is Johnny Wilkinson's kicking coach and since he has stopped working with England Rugby full time he has become a free lancer working with quite a few performance athletes including a couple of performance golfers. Dave is also a part of the British Olympic Association elite coaching team that is headed by Clive Woodward...they did some pilot work with one of our leading amateurs Melissa Reid who has since gone on to turn professional and is having a lot of success on the LET.

Dave says that he designed the WIG game (which stands for 'WOW I'm Good') as a game which helps players learn what they are capable of and develops their belief in themselves. In the WIG game the player has an allocated number of attempts at each shot (in this case 3). The player takes their tee shot and ask themselves if they could play that shot any better, if the answer is yes they put an X on their scorecard and try again, if they think  they could improve on that they record another X and try again, the 3rd shot they must take the result of regardless.

The player continues like this for the entire round recording the Xs as they go.

Having 3 attempts at each shot means that players are likely to record a pretty good score which builds confidence and belief. The player works to improve by reducing the number of Xs on their card over time and getting into a state when they can hit the right shot first time.

Good luck with it and enjoy.

Titleist Performance Institute on LTAD

Here is a presentation on Long Term Athletic Development from Dr Greg Rose at the Titleist Performance Institute. It is interesting stuff and exactly in line with the philosophy and model we are adopting in the County Academies. Greg puts it across much better than I could so here he is.

ParentNightVideo

See more presentations by tpigreg | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

Becoming a champion - what it takes!

Check out this snapshot of the training regime of Apolo Anton Ohno, a World champion and Olympic Champion short track speed skater. I wonder how many young golfers, who have aspirations to make it on the world stage, realise what it takes to achieve greatness!

How Coaching Works

I love this, it kind of puts the process in a nutshell for me!! It is based on the emerging 'life-coaching' industry but it isn't hard to see the parallels between this and the work that we all do. It does make you think whether you effectively go through this process with every player you work with though!!

What does a coach make?

We are lucky as coaches that we we are seen in relatively high esteem by the public...Teachers have somehow gone down in people's estimation even though what they do is so important to the future of our society.

Coaches play an important role in kids lives too...anybody want to have a go at writing something like this for coaches?

Want to develop skill? Define your own performance measures!!

More stuff from the Talent Code Blog....

Instant proverb of the day:
You are what you count.


Many of the talent hotbeds I visited for the book don’t rely on conventional performance yardsticks. Instead, they design their own.
The other day I met Graham Walker and Steve Robinson, who coach many of England’s fast-rising crop of junior golfers. Their most important teaching tool? A long piece of rope, which they use to mark off distances for accuracy-improving games they’ve designed. For instance, players make a series of wedge shots from 10, 20, and 30 yards, marking each result on specially designed scorecards.
Or there’s the technique of Pinchas Zuckerman, the great Israeli violinist, whose practice method consisted of a two jars and a bunch of marbles. Each time he played a piece perfectly, Zuckerman transferred a single marble from one jar to the other. When the second jar was full, he was ready.
In both cases, the strategy is the same: to realize that conventional measures (scoreboards, for instance, or hours of practice time) are far too loose and vague, while homemade yardsticks connect to real practice goals — improving accuracy or perfect repetition. All well-designed yardsticks share a few common features:

• Clarity. There are no gray areas; just cool, inarguable, trackable numbers.
• Stretchiness. A well-designed yardstick can accomodate a variety of abilities, and there’s an improvement ladder implicitly built in.
• Ownability. Feedback is direct, not filtered through a higher authority.

It’s not just what you keep track of — it’s also what you don’t keep track of. Unlike virtually every other company in the world,  dot-com shoe company Zappos doesn’t keep track of how long its employees talk to each customer. Instead, it actively encourages its employees to spend as much phone time as they need to make their customers happy — even to the point of helping arrange a pizza delivery to a hungry customer. The longest call so far? Four hours

Thoughts from The EGU Director of Coaching on County Coaching networks

Hi all, 


I thought I would share these thoughts from Peter Mattsson the EGU Director of Coaching with you all. He was invited to deliver a session for the coaches in Sussex and this is what he had to say afterwards...


"Last night I did a session for the so called Sussex County Coaches network. This network is part of the initiatives supported by the County Golf Partnership which in turn is supported by funding from Sport England through the England Golf Partnership. Pretty much each county that has formed a partnership should have one of these networks, designed to train, educate and develop the coaches and the coaching that operate within the county. What last night’s session made me realise is what a complete paradigm shift this is. Coach education has always been considered the job of the PGA by the amateur bodies. Even though it still is, these amateur bodies like the county unions and the national unions are now starting to realise that if we want the world’s best players, we will need the world’s best coaches. What I found last night was a group of young, aspiring, motivated and willing to learn people that almost without exception work full time in coaching. The times of the pro running the pro shop and giving lessons for a few hours per week are gone, at least if you really want to get into coaching. Coaching is a full time job that requires specialist training!"


I couldn't agree more!!

Subtle ways we can create and nurture talent

You might want to check out this link from the Talent Code website. Daniel has an interesting take on how talent is inspired and nurtured and I think it points to ways in which we can do the same.

Lighting Fires � The Talent Code

Take the England Golf 'Attitudes to coaching survey' - you could win an 'England Experience' at the National Golf Centre, Woodhall Spa

Hi all,

England Golf is conducting a survey of peoples attitudes towards coaching. It should only take 5 minutes and everybody who provides their opinions will go into a draw to win a unique coaching experience at Woodhall Spa with the England national squad coaches.

Click the link below to go to the survey

Click here to take survey


Thanks 


Stuart

The Toyota Way - 14 Management principles

I have a friend who works for Toyota, he is a mid level manager and has been there for a good number of years. He lives and breathes the Toyota management philosophy and whenever I get together with him we will chat about the principles behind the philosophy and he will give me his latest insights into how this amazing organisation puts these principles into practice.

I thought I would share this slide show with you as it gives an interesting insight that I think would benefit us all an whatever area we work, hope you find it interesting.

The Toyota Way- 14 Management Principles

View more presentations from C.K. Vishwakarma.

Deep practice in action

Hi all,

I thought I would share a blog I am following with with you. The following passage is from a blog called 'The Angle of Reflection' by Michael Reddick. Michael is on a 2 year journey to transform himself into a professional pool player. The blog URL is www.angleofreflection.wordpress.com if you are interested in reading more about his mission.

Anyway onto Michael's story....

"I recently experienced a set of events so profound, which excited me so much, that it took me a full two days to calm down enough to allow me to sit and write about it.  Where do I begin with this story?

In Daniel Coyle’s book The Talent Code, Daniel describes a curious phenomenon that he refers to as the HSE (Holy Shit Event).  If you’ve read chapter 4 of his book, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  The HSE is the feeling you get when a person who is “just like you” suddenly displays a quantum leap in skill level.  It’s the feeling of, “Where did that come from?”  Daniel describes the scene well:  A person in the process of developing talent is being watched by an outside observer, and the outside observer, while watching, is “…dumbstruck, amazed, and bewildered, while the talent’s owner is unsurprised, even blasé.”

I experienced a mini-HSE event on Monday afternoon, then another one on Tuesday.  As described in my blog posts from last Friday and Saturday, I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about shot making fundamentals and practicing away from the table (see October 28 & 29 posts).  This Saturday, I conducted a two hour deep practice session at Santa Clara Billiards working primarily on my stance, stroke, and bridging as they relate to rail shots (see my November 28 post).  The Saturday deep practice session was fantastic, and I thought about it all day Sunday.  On Monday, I stopped by Edgie’s Billiards in Milpitas, CA with the intention of doing another hour of follow-up work from the Saturday session.  When I walked into the room, guess who was already waiting for me?  Mike! (See my post “Eating Humble Pie” from November 16).

The Eureka Shot

Mike asked if I wanted to play a few games.  I had originally intended to do some deep practice work that day, but I didn’t want to be antisocial, so I accepted.  I broke the first rack but didn’t make any balls.  Mike made a couple balls, calculated that the table was too difficult to run, and decided to play a safe and leave me with a very difficult shot.  The shot that he left me is diagrammed to the right.  (There were other balls on the table, but they aren’t relevant for this discussion.)   I stood from my chair, walked to table, and an eerie calm feel over me.  I thought, “Hummm. This shot looks familiar doesn’t it?” It was almost the exact same shot that I had practiced on Saturday; it’s my “new friend”!   I carried out the exact same pre-shot routine that I conducted during my deep practice session; focusing on the approach, foot positioning, stance, level cue, rock solid rail bridge, smooth calm stroke, and then I pulled the trigger.  Cue tip and cue ball collided, the cue ball traveled up the table, cue ball and object ball met with a gentle click, the object ball rolled slowly up table at “pocket speed,” traveling to the far right corner pocket without touching any rails and with just enough energy to barely fall into the pocket.  A perfectly executed very difficult shot!  But here’s the funny thing: I wasn’t at all surprised; I was just doing what I had practiced on Saturday.  I stood up without saying a word, walked around the table, and kept shooting, and shooting, and shooting.  An hour later I looked up, and I was leading 8-1.  It wasn’t until I started unscrewing my cue stick that I realized that I had just played a nearly perfect match.

I know there will be good days and bad days.  I had a couple bad days recently, but after the Saturday practice session, it seems that I’ve somehow magically rewired my circuits.  My arm and body seem to be listening to my brain much better than before, almost on autopilot.  I had difficulty falling asleep Monday night.  When I woke up on Tuesday, it seemed almost like a dream.  I thought to myself, “Is it really possible to turn yourself around that quickly?  Surely not.  Probably just a fluke”. I was itching to get back to Edgie’s and practice more.  When I arrived the next day during my lunch break, Mike was not there, so I warmed up and hit practice shots for thirty minutes.  Everything seemed fine.  Everything was clicking.

Then for fun, I did something that I know I’m not supposed to do.  I grabbed two handfuls of balls, threw them out on the table, and started practicing run outs.  Usually when I practice run outs, I throw five or six balls out on the table, then try to pocket them in numbered order, similar to a game of nine ball.  This is one way to judge your progress and ascertain where you are in your skill development, but not necessarily the best way to practice.  I can usually run out about 40-60 percent of the time with six balls on the table, depending on how seriously I’m concentrating.  I looked at the spread in front of me, and realized that I had thrown out eight balls instead of six.  I have occasionally run out eight balls, but the percentages are very low, probably in the range of 2-10 percent.  “Oh, what the heck,” I thought.  I approached the table and started shooting.  I ran the table.  “Hah!  Bet you can’t do that again!”I chided myself.  I threw out eight more balls, and started shooting in order.  I ran out again.  A slight increase in heart beat.  A shortness of breath.  I threw out eight more balls.  I ran the table for a third time in a row.  Unbelievable.  I threw out eight more.  When the balls settled, two of them rolled up next to each other to form a cluster.  I was unable to break the cluster during my run, so I couldn’t run the fourth set.  I threw out another eight, and ran it out.  Now I’m freaking.  I stopped, sat in a chair, and looked around.  No one else was in the room, except for a handful of three-cushion players who weren’t paying me any attention.  I looked at my watch.  My lunch break was over, and I had to go back to work.  I guess it’s better to quit while I’m ahead."

I think this is a fantastic example of how deep practice can transform an individuals skill level as well as transform their beliefs and give them real confidence as they begin to develop that 'unconscious competence' that is so critical to the performance of skills in the sporting domain. It is clear to me that Michael has been able to really challenge himself in certain areas to take himself out of his comfort zone (Daniel Coyle would describe this as the 'sweet spot', the challenge that is just beyond our reach but not beyond our possibilities) which has made other areas of his game seem straightforward.