Coach Crowe Blog
Most people have heard of the 10,000 hour rule made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. In case you haven’t, briefly, psychologists have studied expert performers in medicine, sports, arts, education, musicians, etc. you get the idea. They asked the question when someone is an expert at a given thing, what is it that actually makes them an expert? They discovered the idea that talent is overrated and practice is what separates the proficient from the inexpert.
Gladwell popularized the term 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything. One of the most preeminent research psychologists Anders Ericsson, has further determined that within that 10,000 hours of practice there must be hours devoted to what he calls deliberate practice. Ericsson describes deliberate practice as “involving improving some aspect of the larger performance and requires the practice to take place outside of the participants comfort zone, trying things just beyond their current abilities. It demands the effort to be near- maximal to make the adaptions necessary for improvement.” Now you are saying what does all of this have to do with running? I would point this as evidence for the need of consistency in your training.
If you are trying to become a faster runner, an expert in your field, you need to log hours of running consistently and specific running to achieve this. The idea of deliberate practice demonstrates the need for threshold runs and workouts to the training regimen. Running 4 to 6 miles every day is great for health and fitness but will it make me a faster runner? No, runners need to train outside of their comfort zone at least a couple of times during the week to achieve the adaptions needed to run faster. It is important to understand that each of us is an experiment of one. Finding the correct combination of quality, quantity, and recovery for my runners is the most challenging and rewarding aspect of coaching for me. A coach and an athlete share a unique partnership built on trust and knowledge. I love the challenge and the opportunity to share my over 50 years of expertise as a runner and a coach.
