Deliberate Practice as Defined by the Expert on Experts Anders Ericsson
“Deliberate practice is a very specialized form of practice.” The late great psychologist Anders Ericsson wrote these words in his book Peak before he passed away at the age of 72. Ericsson was the expert on how to become an expert. Moreover, deliberate practice is what Ericsson’s research proved as the pathway to becoming an expert.
Deliberate practice as a specialized form of practice is practice to improve a very particular aspect of performance. This type of practice requires meticulous planning to make sure it fits a specific person’s needs. Moreover, this planning must draw from a highly developed body of knowledge about the best way to improve the aspect of performance that needs addressing.
As a result, rarely can one satisfy the requirements of deliberate practice in a group setting. Group practice session are what Ericsson calls generic practice. Generic practices can help a group improve the performance of the overall group. However, generic practice doesn’t target individual performance gaps the same way deliberate practice does. In addition, generic practice can’t make an individual an expert performer.
Private Coaching is a Requirement of Deliberate Practice
Subsequently, private coaching is a must for deliberate practice, which in turn leads to achieving expert performance. The private coach may or may not have been an expert performer him or herself. That is not a requirement. But the private coach must be an expert teacher of deliberate practice techniques. For the private coach to be an expert teacher of deliberate practice techniques the coach must:
- Have a deep understanding of what skills enable the best to be the best.
- Know in detail the training techniques that allow a novice to learn how to master those skills using a progressive, synergistic, step by step process.
- Have the emotional intelligence and patience to work with novice, intermediate, and expert performers over many years.
In addition, because private coaching is so expensive, one must also invest thousands of hours into solo practice. As the 10,000 hours rule of thumb suggest, it takes an absurd number of hours of deliberate practice to become the best at something. It’s just not possible for most people to afford to pay a private coach for that many hours.
Therefore, one must be willing to use the deliberate practice instructions from the private coach during their time practicing alone. This time alone following the deliberate practice instructions from the coach is where most of the work hours to improve must be done.
It’s only through this combination of private coaching and thousands of hours of solo practice using deliberate practice methods that makes expert performance possible.