It Doesn’t Take 10,000 Hours to Become an Olympian
According to several studies that extrapolate as if they could explain success in any skilled profession (and they can’t ), it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice to become a world-class musician. So what does it actually take to become an Olympic caliber athlete? The new analysis gives us some clues.
But first: as you might have guessed, elite athletes are different from the rest of us. They have great genetics and have managed to find a huge amount of time and money to devote their (usually young) life to training. According to a review by Vladimir Issurin of the Wingate Institute, elite athletes are also unusually motivated, determined, determined, persistent and creative. They are trainable, they improve quickly, they are willing to work longer and try even harder.
In endurance, strength and martial arts sports, athletes have achieved world-class status in four to seven years and 3,000 to 7,000 hours of “focused training.” Olympic gymnasts were closer to the rules of thumb, averaging 9.7 years and almost 9,000 hours of training. Rhythmic gymnasts dancing with ribbons had even more.
To get these hours of training as a teenager, you need to specialize at an early age, but this only helps in sports where people compete at a young age (like gymnastics and figure skating). For other sports, age is less important. And practice does not have to focus on the skills of the athlete’s eventual discipline; Most Olympians have trained in two or three other sports before finding one to practice at a higher level.