Prize-winning athletes may have been slow to develop their skills
Michael Steele/Getty Images
International chess masters, Olympic gold medalists and Nobel Prize-winning scientists were rarely child prodigies, a study reveals. Likewise, early childhood achievements and intense training programs have rarely led to high-level global achievements in the adult world.
The analysis – based on 19 studies involving almost 35,000 high achievers – shows that the vast majority of adults who top global rankings in their area of expertise grew up participating in a wide range of activities, only gradually developing their most proficient skills.
The results contradict the popular belief that reaching top international performance levels requires intensive and highly focused training during childhood, says Arne Güllich of the RPTU Kaiserslautern in Germany. “If we understand that most world-class performers were not that remarkable or exceptional in their early years, this implies that early exceptional performance is not a prerequisite for long-term world-class performance. »
Much research has closely linked the intensity of a child’s training program in specific activities – such as music and athletics – to competitive performance in those activities during adolescence or young adulthood. But studies of older, world-class athletes have shown contrary trends. For example, 82 percent of international-level junior athletes do not become international-level adult or senior athletes, and 72 percent of international-level senior athletes never reach the junior international level.
The track records of famous international experts also suggest that the link between childhood success and adult success is not as strong as it seems. For example, although composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, golfer Tiger Woods, chess player Gukesh Dommaraju, and mathematician Terence Tao were all child prodigies, composer Ludwig van Beethoven, basketball player Michael Jordan, chess player Viswanathan Anand, and scientist Charles Darwin were not.
The studies reviewed by Güllich and colleagues included analyzes of the life histories of Olympic athletes, Nobel laureates in science, the world’s top 10 chess players and most renowned classical music composers, as well as international leaders in other fields.
In various specialties, early high achievers and later world-class performers were very different people. Indeed, only about 10 percent of those who excelled as adults were high achievers in their youth, and only about 10 percent of high-achieving young people continued to excel as adults.
The team also compared their results with data from 66 studies on the coaching histories of young people and “sub-elite” – those who reach high local levels or junior championships but not necessarily the world’s best as seniors. They noted that the characteristics that distinguish high-achieving young people, such as early specialization, rapid progress, and abundant practice in a specific discipline, are largely absent – or even reversed – among world-class adult performers.
This could be because children who gain broader experience in various activities from a younger age end up developing more flexible learning skills and finding the activities that suit them best. “In essence, they find an optimal match between disciplines and improve their learning capital for future long-term learning,” explains Güllich.
Additionally, having a less intense training schedule during childhood and adolescence could potentially help prevent burnout or career-threatening injuries in the long term. “There is an increased risk of getting stuck in a discipline that you no longer enjoy and have no alternative to change,” says Güllich.
The study fills a long-standing gap in research by clearly separating early success from long-term elite performance, says David Feldon of Utah State University. He says there is still a trend toward encouraging children to focus more on learning and practicing a particular skill. “It certainly develops expertise and leads to quick wins,” he says. “But I don’t know if that’s ultimately productive for people throughout their lives.”
For Feldon, who is also a children’s wrestling coach, the exam has important implications for those who work with children to help them develop their skills. “It’s not just about helping to foster very high levels of expertise, but doing it in a way that is healthy and productive, and that leads to the betterment of people in a broader sense, not just in achieving very limited results. »
Programs designed to identify and accelerate early stars could thus leave out many future better performers, while favoring paths that optimize short-term success rather than long-term excellence, Güllich adds. “Those elite training programs, gifted programs, scholarship programs, etc., that typically focus on very young ages and a single discipline? Well, as we now know from recent evidence, it will be more promising to encourage young people to do at least one, if not two, other disciplines over several years.”
Topics:
