Deliberate Practice

If you’re serious about improving at your sport (mine’s squash) you need to start practicing and training deliberately. Deliberate practice is a concept that you’ll hear a lot more about in the next few weeks and months. Anders Ericsson, an expert in Expertise and Expert Performance is the world’s penultimate specialist in this field of research. You can find the reference to this book on my Linked In Profile, look at Marc Dussault’s Reading List on my profile page – it’s on the right-hand side of the page, below the fold, which means you’ll need to scroll down to see it.

Let’s get back to deliberate practice… Simply put, it means having a SPECIFIC outcome and focus WHILE you practice. Having a deliberate intent and focus is essential for on-going improvement that I call the 1 percent improvement doctrine.

For today, just make a list of what you’re focusing on.

For your information, right now I am focusing on NOT making any unforced errors. That means I only go for the kill shot winner WHEN it is in my strike zone and I can feel I have a 90+% chance of hitting the perfect winner. If the ball is not in my ‘kill zone’, I place it strategically to keep my opponent running, off balance and force HIM to make the ERROR.

That is my deliberate practice outcome.

HOW I am doing that right now is explained in my previous post.

You can now start to see how a champion goes about practicing and training.

Share with me your lessons, victories and defeats by posting comments on this blog. I am interested even if it’s another sport!

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