We can all agree that path towards excellence, peak performance or mastery in any domain of human functioning is amongst others, chronologically long, demanding on the bio-psycho-social domain of human functioning, and filled with various constraints required to be overcome. Just the
linearity of hypothetical Deliberate Practice Theory (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer 1993, 368) and its ten years, or the proposed “magic number” of 10,000 hours from the book written by Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, indicate that a lot will be happening and be thrown towards us.
To reach excellence or expert status however goes beyond the linear simplicity of marking down spent hours/years on performance domain and waiting for something to happen. Hambrick et al (2014) found evidence contradicting deliberate practice to be main factor on such path. Analysis showed variances in the amount of time devoted in practice of experts. One case stood out, perhaps finding even over-exaggerated evidence against deliberate practice ideology, nevertheless reasonable. It took one chess player 26 years to reach same level of expert performance as his counterpart did in two years. Revision of other studies further indicated that no matter the effort and time put in, some just could not reach same level compared to others who have done it in short period of time. Time spent on deliberate practice has been after all found to account for about onethird of variance in expert performance attainment (Hambrick et al. 2011). So, what else can there be explored to potentially find the answers on why some make it and others don’t?
Let’s face it. On the path we are and will be continuously experiencing trauma in any shape possible. That’s just how the world and life is. A sarcastically – ruthless opponents who don’t care about what our goals or dreams are. Both opponents just want to keep on throwing rocks at us, wanting to push us back. They leave us with two choices: either “we let the rock hit us”, or “we catch it every time and throw it back with all the force we have”.
We need to make ourselves ready! When we fall behind others after bad performance, or improvements in our development do not happen at the rate we wanted, perhaps period of stagnation occurs, …we are exposed to traumatic experience (constraints/an incoming flying rock) required to be overcome. Due to negative emotional impulses which arise from it, we start to hold ourselves on to the solution phrases such as “try harder” or “I have to /should have practiced more”, hoping to make and easy unmeaningful solution a meaningful one. All those phrases represent for us logical solution as they construct a subset for the idiomatic and proverbial expression “practice makes perfect”, preached to us throughout time by parents, grandparents, teachers. While it might sound as an appropriate thing to do, that is rarely a solution assisting us in attempts to catch the rock and successfully throw it back with the full force.
You might be asking yourself now: “How come?” Let’s stop and think a bit about it for a second. Repeated practicing of the same skill simply cannot be a long-term solution. Practicing over and over again same thing, brings us only a medium level of success. A solution to maybe throw rock back once. When we start to practice, progress will indeed spike, however it will soon go into stalling, reaching plateau and eventually halt. When average level of competence is reached, our abilities by nature stop being “work-in-progress” and become “automatic” reflex. In other words, we start to maintain skill and not building on it.
Let’s take cooking of pasta as a skill for example. At a young age we were taught by parents or have learned by ourselves on how to cook it. After numerous attempts and practicing (getting repetitions in), we come to a point where we are finally able to cook perfect pasta to our liking. However, that doesn’t make us experts or masters of cooking. We just became proficient.
If we want to truly excel and take the next step (becoming a serious rock throwing opponent for life and environment), we have to push ourselves through complacency and out of our comfort zone. We are required to continuously improve, take apart the pieces of skill and merge or even connect it with others. This requires from us, that we take our practice to the edge of our ability, even leap beyond it. We achieve that by breaking down pieces of our skill-set and putting them back to create something better. Performing certain skills which we already know is indeed satisfying however it sure does not enhance the skill level we have.
We come to realize, that the deliberate practice after all is not just about repetition volume like indicated by researchers. It’s more structured, thoughtful and strategic than it is described in literature. Constant thought on how we will spend our hours or years of learning, emphasizing the
quality over quantity with focused, motivated and consistent goal-oriented practicing/learning, process monitoring and reflection is essential. Process is not comfortable as we need to make ourselves intensively engaged, testing on what we are and are not able of doing, become a selfregulated pro-active learner.
All this can be achieved by moving beyond the cognitive learning presented to us by environment into the areas of the metacognition. Specifically, into the development and deliberate integration of metacognitive skills of cyclical self-regulated learning with underpinned sub-processes.
Metacognition to rock catching and throwing
The theory of self-regulated learning (Zimmerman, 1986), constructed from the deployment of interconnected behavioral and task-related processes to optimize and control personal learning events by individual, is not a new one. It proposes, that one’s ability to continuously use cyclical process of situational-related intellectual, emotional, and motoric learning process inside an environment, will assist in structuring personal opportunities for continuous learning, eliciting selfinitiative behavior. This will lead to effective engagement in the learning process to achieve required skill improvement with greater effect. For this to happen, we are required to move progressively through three phases (Figure 1) effectively and thoroughly.
All starts with the forethought phase where processes for enhanced learning underpinned with personal beliefs in connection with topic to be learned are identified. It is the stage where effort for
learning is not yet exerted, and attention is put towards goal setting, strategic planning, outcome
expectations, task values, self-efficiency, etc. We than move on to performance phase, demanding from us serious investment of own effort into learning. Self-controlled deployment of mechanisms and methods identified in previous phase are need to be assisted with utilization of imagery, self-instruction, control of attention, and task strategies. In order to really maximize the efficiency, self-observation (self-monitoring) of cognitive functioning in order to obtain optimal solutions for knowledge attainment, play an integral role as well. Before self-regulation process becomes completed, a phase of self-reflection is initiated. It is at this stage where analysis and evaluation of own performance happens, reasons for failure or success become identified, leading us to identification of new strategies for positive outcomes in future. (Zimmerman 2002, 68; 2013,143) Figure 1 Phases and subprocesses of Self-regulation (Zimmerman 2013, 142)
Scholars have found that the expert and non-expert athletes differentiate in the quality of selfregulation deployment levels (Cleary & Zimmerman 2021,204). Expert athletes have developed
know how on creation of specific goals, possess greater capabilities to select better and appropriate development strategies as well as display increased self-efficacy compared to their counterparts.
Difference has been observed as well when comparing national and international athletes. Reflection (3 rd sub-phase) is considered to be a key factor in development of sport expertise, having a predictive weight for those athletes with the best chance for senior international status. Especially the ones who are closer to the moment of transition. Results showed as well that some of the talented athletes have failed to reached senior international status, all due to an insufficient use of their reflective skills on the road towards excellence. (Jonker,2011)
Successful throwback
In the process of reaching the next level and making a step closer towards expert performance we are required to persevere when trying to find “The Devil in details”. The attainment of the level relates more to what is brought by us to the challenges faced than what we experience (Collins et al, 2016) in other words getting thrown at us by opponents. Once we are able to effectively & continuously develop and integrate them on our road to excellence, it we will allow ourselves to
construct a sense on what and why something is happening, assist us in plan creation process for
faced constrains, and design a road to monitor the progress… giving us a chance to prevail in the
fight against our opponents. Nevertheless, briefly presented self-regulated learning and its
metacognitive skills seem like and appropriate answer to aforementioned and the Hambrick’s et al.
(2011) question on what else can fill the shortcomings of deliberate practice in contribution to
expert performance attainment.
From the eyes of the sport practitioner working with aspiring athletes, we are required to expand
our coaching practice offered to our athletes beyond the cognitive approaches. It should allow them as well the development of their reflective capacity and mastery of self-regulation in order to
maximize the potential of transitioning to senior competition. Created environment has to support
personal and athlete-centered approaches, where they are encouraged to take the development in
their own hands and with our assistance stimulate shared reflective thinking through joint
assessment of the development process.
Let’s get ready to throw some rocks back and reach the excellence with the help of metacognition.
Lovro Bajc, Development coach at KooKoo Hockey Oy & U20 Slovenian National Team Head Coach and and Master´s Degree programme in Sports Coaching and Management Haaga-Helia