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Deliberate practice in sports

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Sports, and particularly soccer, have always been an important part of my life. Maybe that’s why it’s the first thing I think of when thinking about deliberate practice, because I did A LOT of extra practicing during my years on a competitive soccer team. Most of the time it wasn’t very much fun as many of the drills were repetitive exercises focused on perfecting techniques for things like ball control and passing accuracy. It was the game that I loved, and so I learned to see the tedious practicing as a means to an end, to improve technical skills so that my performance in the game itself would improve. I think it was actually in practicing soccer that I really learned to focus and apply my energies most efficiently to accomplishing a goal, rather than in the classroom.

And it worked! Even though it was so much of my free time, I could feel myself improving every week. I was certain I could do anything, even make a starting spot on a college team, if I just practiced enough. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but it wasn’t for lack of practice or experience (I had 12 years at that point), it was just a matter of bad luck: I got injured. A back injury that required surgery, that I was told was not just the end of my soccer career but maybe the end of any future participation in sports. As you can imagine, it was devastating for me.

But the great thing is, that’s not the end of the story. After the surgery, I was referred to a physical therapist named Julie. She really could have been the spokesperson for deliberate practice. She told me that if I worked hard enough, and concentrated on executing my assigned rehab program exactly as instructed, that there was no reason I couldn’t retrain my body to be able to handle sports again. She was relentless in advocating discipline and attention to detail when I was performing the various exercises, and I took that attitude home with me. By deliberately and repeatedly practicing the exercises, I gradually built up new strength and a few years later I finally had the confidence to start running again, and eventually in grad school I started playing soccer again.

For me, perhaps the reason I thought to write about this was also an effort to remind myself of this process, after suffering a possibly-serious knee injury this weekend. But I guess the more general message of this story is that deliberate practice and the determination and focus that come with it, are powerful tools for learning or re-learning skills, and also for overcoming obstacles. The hardest part is getting started, and the second hardest part is not giving up or getting lazy. For me, outside encouragement and support from others was critical, and I think this is also something to think about when promoting deliberate practice in classroom settings.


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