How to Know if Youth Sports Competition is Too Easy or Too Hard
Youth athletes can learn from success and failure. However, if they win too much or lose too much, they will miss the opportunity to learn. In other words, competition that is too easy or too hard is a waste of time. Youth athletes can only get to their optimal level of performance when they compete against optimal competition.
Therefore, the question coaches and parents must answer is what does optimal competition look like? While there is no precise answer to this question, a good reference point to use as a rule of thumb is The Eighty Five Percent Rule for Optimal Learning. In short, this research suggests that “the optimal error rate for training is around 15.87% or, conversely, that the optimal training accuracy is about 85%. “
While this research is not specifically for athletes, the concepts are relevant and beneficial to use for guidance. Developing athletes is an art, but whenever you can use science to guide this art, it would be smart to do it.
There is no doubt that athletes must be put in a position to learn from both success and failure. In fact, research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business strongly supports that we learn more from success than failure. On the other hand, if an athlete never fails then they can’t develop their blind spots. This is why the “Eighty Five Percent Rule” is a good rule of thumb to use as a gauge for increasing or decreasing an athlete’s level of competition.