The Importance of Practice in Sports: 3 Key Advantages

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Can practice override innate ability? What role does practice play in sports performance?

While practice alone cannot determine outcomes in sports (there’s also a strong genetic component), its importance cannot be underestimated. Practice builds sport-specific wisdom, allows you to react quickly, and makes you “unconsciously competent.”

Keep reading to learn about the importance of practice in sports success.

Benefit #1: Practice Builds Sport-Specific Wisdom

By the time athletes reach the elite level, most have spent so much time playing and practicing that they know their sport backward and forward. Because they know the sport so well, elite athletes can make sense of the information they see on the field more quickly than the average player. Studies have shown that experts’ eyes move faster through visual information from their field of expertise than the average persons’.

Elite chess players, field hockey players, and basketball players can accurately recreate the setup of an entire board or field after looking at a photo for just a few seconds.
Elite volleyball players can discern whether the ball is present in a snapshot of a game after a 16-millisecond glance (what would just look like a flash of light for most of us).

This is not because every professional chess, volleyball, and baseball player has a photographic memory. In fact, when chess pieces were set up randomly, the elite players’ ability to recreate the board was no better than anyone else’s. It is because rather than trying to memorize individual pieces of information, experts focus on the relationships between those pieces to make their next move. This strategy is called “chunking.” By breaking the information into meaningful chunks, and having enough experience to know how chunks fit together, athletes are able to predict what is coming next and react accordingly.

“Mirror Neurons”

An article from Grantland shows how the brains of experienced athletes process information differently than the brains of novices. It describes a study testing “mirror neuron” activity (neurons that fire when we see someone perform a familiar action) in professional basketball players, basketball coaches and journalists (“experienced watchers”), and people who had never played the game. The three groups watched video clips of people shooting free throws. The video was stopped several times throughout the shot, and the participants made a prediction about whether the ball would go into the hoop. The results showed that: The players made the most accurate predictions overall. The difference in frequency of players’ correct predictions versus correct predictions from the other groups was greatest when the video was stopped before the shooter’s hands released the ball.

These results support Epstein’s discussion of practice building mental models. The player’s mental model of what a successful shot should look like allowed them to make more accurate predictions. Even more intriguing: only the professional players showed increased firing of neurons associated with hand muscles (specifically the muscles in their pinkie fingers). This response was greatest when they watched missed shots, suggesting that the players were unconsciously trying to correct the technique they were watching on the screen.

Benefit #2: Practice Allows You to React Quickly

Epstein explains that the reaction times of elite athletes are about the same as the rest of the population. But at the elite level, most sports are played fast. In a sense, elite athletes can predict the future when it comes to their sport because they can read the field well enough to anticipate what is coming next. The more experience (practice) an athlete has, the more extensive their mental database of sport-specific knowledge, and the more meaning they can quickly make from what they see. As Epstein notes, this sport-specific wisdom cannot be replaced by raw athleticism.

A tennis player could have a technically perfect forehand shot, but it is of little use if she cannot forecast where the ball will be. Elite tennis players can tell if a serve will be forehand or backhand by just looking at the torso of their opponent, clearly an advantage when serves can travel at 130 mph.
It doesn’t matter how powerful your baseball swing is if it does not contact the ball. Baseball players need to decide on their swing before the ball is halfway to home plate. In addition to watching the pitcher, they can tell what sort of pitch is coming by watching the movement of the threads on the baseball. Deciding on the swing early is critical when the ball is traveling at over 100 mph.

Epstein illustrates the idea of natural ability needing the wisdom of practice with Jennie Finch’s (Olympic gold medalist in softball) ability to strike out Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, and other famous MLB players with her softball pitches. Even though her pitches are slower and thrown closer to home plate than baseball pitches, the difference between a baseball pitch and a softball pitch is enough to stump even the best baseball players. Her pitches are not part of baseball players’ mental databases. They cannot forecast how her pitches will travel, and their athleticism does not stop them from striking out.

What About “Straightforward” Sports?

Epstein discusses practice in sports in general terms, but sports have vastly different levels of complexity, physicality, and strategy. Football can be likened to a game of chess much more readily than running can. Not only do football players have to train their bodies, but they need to learn all of the rules and study the strategy of their game. Not to mention, on game day, football players have another team of equally well-trained players trying to stop them from doing the exact thing they are trained to do. On the other hand, the marathon is a much more straightforward event (not to say that there is no strategy involved).

Adding a ball to a sport adds a level of complexity and unpredictability. Playing on a team also adds confounding elements of anticipation, awareness, and collaboration not found in endurance sports. Sports like rowing and cycling are complex in their own right, but athletes in these sports are able to focus on their technique without many of the variables present in “ball sports.” Sports like weightlifting are even more straightforward, with each athlete having their own equipment, space, and time to execute their craft.

The complexity of a sport adds another layer to the debate around the 10,000-hour rule. Perhaps, in certain sports, the amount of time spent thinking about and studying the sport does have more impact on eventual success than in others. After all, the study which originally sparked the 10,000- hour-rule debate was based on musicians, a largely cerebral discipline.

The Importance of Practice in Sports: 3 Key Advantages