Yes if you are bigger, more mature you are better so you go back more and turns into a virtuous circle. As against that the lack of adaptation of kids who are strong early in sports or school is interesting.
See it in my place when you put people in early twenties into an environment where their peers are at least as clever and some of them struggle with no longer being the brightest as they have been all along through school etc. Confidence gets shaken and they look to blame external factors and you are back to grit/resilience as a predictor of success
Anders Ericsson developed the concept of deliberate practice. I just finished reading his new book. Heās a firm believer that ātalentā is overrated and has a lot of data to back it up.
No, if you give a kid with physical advantages (which is significant in 9-16 age bracket) of a few months more growth, more praise, more confidence, better coaching (elite develooment squads etc) , specific coaching, special decelooment programs etc he is at a massive advantage.
The stats are glaring. The recent u-19 euro championships had a remarkable slant to early months. Gladwell gives some excellent examples of elite teams.
It can be learned at any time. Ideally we should teach kids how to handle not being successful or the best etc before we teach them how to be successful
Resilience can be learned by training people to change now they view events that are difficult or traumatic
Martin Seligman is grandfather of resilience training
Matthew syed is a bit of a dick, who somehow equivalates a parlour game (table tennis) with proper sport.
You need to train and practise, but you canāt polish a turd.
10000 hours wouldnāt get Joan burton into the Olympics.
You need to nurture nature.
Iād add that the age is a huge factor as sport tends to be organised around a single cut off age group the whole way through school years. The older ones tend to be bigger, stronger, and more mature statistically, and so get noticed and picked and mentored better.
I think the UK govt has finally allowed some flexibility in school start dates for summer birthdays.
Mine were both born in late July, and, at some point, Iāll try and hold them back a year as they will be a year older and āwiserā (maybe) when making some of the most critical decisions in their lives as regards exams, university courses (or not) etc.
It does. But sometimes that can even be missing and an individuals grit or indeed other environmental factors and an ability to deal with failure makes them who they are. Any number of boxers, soccer players or American Sport athletes would show this.
But yes generally its the rule rather than the exception.
***not sure why that responded to flatty. It was in response to balbec. Below is response to flatty.
Ya the stats on age mattering follows it around to when they split years so soccer used to be August 1st, same thing happened. Players largly came from Aug-Sep-Oct.
4 or 5 of the supposedly key players on one of the underage trams I manage are incredibly mentally weak and seem to seriously lack heart. Itās very frustrating as a coach, you have to try and encourage them but sometimes they would really try your patience
