How Much Practice Is Too Much?

By Annie Murphy Paul
Posted: February 17, 2012
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/02/how-much-practice-is-too-much/

Why do I have to keep practicing? I know it already!”

That’s the familiar wail of a child seated at the piano or in front of the multiplication table (or, for that matter, of an adult taking a tennis lesson). Cognitive science has a persuasive retort: We don’t just need to learn a task in order to perform it well; we need to overlearn it. Decades of research have shown that superior performance requires practicing beyond the point of mastery. The perfect execution of a piano sonata or a tennis serve doesn’t mark the end of practice; it signals that the crucial part of the session is just getting underway.

New evidence of why this is so was provided by a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience earlier this month. Assistant professor Alaa Ahmed and two of her colleagues in the integrative physiology department at the University of Colorado-Boulder asked study subjects to move a cursor on a screen by manipulating a robotic arm. As they did so, the researchers measured the participants’ energy expenditure by analyzing how much oxygen they inhaled and how much carbon dioxide they breathed out. When the subjects first tackled the exercise, they used up a lot of metabolic power, but this decreased as their skill improved. By the end of the learning process, the amount of effort they expended to carry out the task had declined about 20 percent from when they started.

“The lesson here is keep on practicing, even after it seems the task has been learned.”
Whenever we learn to make a new movement, Ahmed explains, we form and then update an internal model—a “sensorimotor map”—which our nervous system uses to predict our muscles’ motions and the resistance they will encounter. As that internal model is refined over time, we’re able to cut down on unnecessary movements and eliminate wasted energy.

Over the course of a practice session, the subjects in Ahmed’s study were becoming more efficient in their muscle activity. But that wasn’t the whole story. Energy expenditures continued to decrease even after the decline in muscle activity had stabilized. In fact, Ahmed and her coauthors report, this is when the greatest reductions in metabolic power were observed—during the very time when it looks to an observer, and to the participant herself, as if “nothing is happening.”

What’s going on here? Ahmed theorizes that even after participants had fine-tuned their muscle movements, the neural processes controlling the movements continued to grow more efficient. The brain uses up energy, too, and through overlearning it can get by on less. These gains in mental efficiency free up resources for other tasks: infusing the music you’re playing with greater emotion and passion, for example, or keeping closer track of your opponent’s moves on the other side of the tennis court. Less effort in one domain means more energy available to others.

While Ahmed’s paper didn’t address the application of overlearning to the classroom, other studies have demonstrated that for a wide variety of academic activities–from recalling vocabulary words to solving math problems–overlearning reduces the amount of effort required to carry out the job at hand.

“The message from this study is that in order to perform with less effort, keep on practicing, even after it seems the task has been learned,” says Ahmed. “We have shown there is an advantage to continued practice beyond any visible changes in performance.” In other words: You’re getting better and better, even when you can’t tell you’re improving—a thought to keep you going through those long hours of practice.

Annie Murphy Paul, the author of Origins, is at work on a book about the science of learning.

Being A Team Player Matters

By: Miranda Romero

Standard-Examiner TX correspondents

Posted: Mon, 10/01/2012 - 7:42am

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, nearly 8 million high school students participated in school athletics in the 2011-2012 school year. 

The number of high school athletes has drastically increased over the years, especially since Title IX took effect back in 1971, allowing girls to participate more fully in sports. The number of student athletes will continue to increase each year.

So why are students so eager to join sports? How does it change their high school experience?

Being on a team 

Playing a sport means being a part of a team. When you're on a team you are a part of something bigger than yourself. Each member on a team has different strengths, and as you get to know your teammates through an entire season, you learn about what they bring to the team. You can come from completely different backgrounds, have different friends, but in the end you're all working toward a common goal.

"After five months of training together, my wrestling team is practically a family; my teammates become brothers to me," says Christian Kodele, a senior at Clearfield High School who participates in wrestling as well as cross country.

It's important to trust your teammates so that you can succeed at your sport. Playing a sport and being on a team brings a sense of belonging, trust and friendship.

Setting goals

With sports comes goal setting, an important life skill everyone needs. Whether it is winning state, becoming a better team, or just personally improving, an athlete can benefit from making goals.

Coaches push you to be the best player you can be and the harder you work, the better you become. Practice is the place where you can take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Playing a sport teaches you self discipline and goal setting. 

Motivation to become a better student

To be eligible to participate in high school sports, there are certain academic requirements a student must meet and standards one must maintain. You have to maintain a certain GPA and have good attendance as well as citizenship. It's good motivation to get things done and be responsible. It allows you to be more focused at school, so that you can do your best on game day. Also, you have to be a good person on and off the field because you are representing your team.

Stress relief

Most importantly students participate in school sports because they're fun. When you spend months training with teammates, you make some really great friends. You can have a really bad day at school and relieve your stress at practice. When you're in a game it's like you're in a different world and nothing else matters, you just live in that moment and play at your best level. 

"It feels great to go exercise while having fun with your friends and working towards something you know who you love doing," says Caity Nielsen, a junior at Bonneville High School who plays basketball and golf.

Health

The recommendation is that teenagers get at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day to maintain good health. Playing sports gives you this opportunity through practice and game days. Conditioning is a big part of playing sports and can help you to stay in shape. Not only are sports good for your physical health, but they also help you mentally. You learn sportsmanship and a good attitude when playing on a team. 

Competition

Sports are competitive and they can inspire you to become a better athlete.

Zach Johnstun is a senior at St. Joseph Catholic High School who has participated in basketball, cross country, and track and field since his freshman year.

"Sports feed my competitive side, but above all sports allow me to better myself," he says. "My competitiveness allows me to gather initiative so I can improve my game and beat my opponent."

If your team knows they're up against tough competition, everyone gets motivated to work harder.

Scholarships

If you play a sport that you're very passionate about, there is a chance you can continue to play in college, if you're good enough. The best part about this is that a college can pay you to come play on their team by giving you a sports scholarship. This can cover some of your college fees or all of them depending on how skilled you are. Playing a sport in college gives you the opportunity to take your athletic talent to the next level. 

You only have four years to make high school a memorable experience and playing sports is a great way to take advantage of the time you have. Athletics brings a sense of belonging, friendship, stress relief and motivation to become a better athlete as well as a better student.

Miranda Romero is a senior at St. Joseph Catholic High School. She loves volleyball, cheerleading, and track and field. Contact her at mpc127_@msn.com.

The Single Greatest Letter Ever Sent to Sports Parents, Revisited

By Daniel Coyle

 

A while back, I wrote about an absolutely tremendous letter which a Little League baseball coach and former major leaguer named Mike Matheny sent to the parents of his players. Since Matheny is now coaching the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series against the Boston Red Sox, I thought I’d observe the occasion by reposting a few key passages of what’s become known as the Matheny Manifesto. (For more, I recommend you check out the whole thing here.)

Dear [Parent],

I always said that the only team that I would coach would be a team of orphans, and now here we are. The reason for me saying this is that I have found the biggest problem with youth sports has been the parents. I think that it is best to nip this in the bud right off the bat. I think the concept that I am asking all of you to grab is that this experience is ALL about the boys. If there is anything about it that includes you, we need to make a change of plans. My main goals are as follows:

(1) to teach these young men how to play the game of baseball the right way,

(2) to be a positive impact on them as young men, and

(3) do all of this with class.

We may not win every game, but we will be the classiest coaches, players, and parents in every game we play. The boys are going to play with a respect for their teammates, opposition, and the umpires no matter what.

Once again, this is ALL about the boys. I believe that a little league parent feels that they must participate with loud cheering and “Come on, let’s go, you can do it”, which just adds more pressure to the kids. I will be putting plenty of pressure on these boys to play the game the right way with class, and respect, and they will put too much pressure on themselves and each other already. You as parents need to be the silent, constant, source of support.

I am a firm believer that this game is more mental than physical, and the mental may be more difficult, but can be taught and can be learned by a 10 and 11 year old. If it sounds like I am going to be demanding of these boys, you are exactly right. I am definitely demanding their attention, and the other thing that I am going to require is effort. Their attitude, their concentration, and their effort are the things that they can control. If they give me these things every time they show up, they will have a great experience.

I need all of you to know that we are most likely going to lose many games this year. The main reason is that we need to find out how we measure up with the local talent pool. The only way to do this is to play against some of the best teams. I am convinced that if the boys put their work in at home, and give me their best effort, that we will be able to play with just about any team.

Isn’t that great? And is it any coincidence that Matheny has gone on to succeed at the highest level?

I think it goes to underline a simple truth: great coaches are first and foremost great communicators. They’re not like heroic ship captains, always knowing where to steer. They’re more like radio stations, adept at sending the right signal at the right time to enable people to steer themselves.

PS- GO CARDS!!

This entry was posted on www.TheTalentCode.com on Friday, October 25th, 2013 at 6:54 am.

Interest v. Commitment

There's a difference between INTEREST and COMMITMENT.

When you are INTERESTED in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient.

When you are COMMITTED to something, you accept no excuses, only RESULTS.

- Ken Blanchard

Coping with Adversity: Understanding the Positive Aspects of Defeat

POSTED BY RICK WOLFF ON OCTOBER 09, 2013 AT WWW.AskCoachWolff.com

How Today’s Losses Let Adults Teach Children How to Win in Life

By Doug Abrams

On September 25, writer Ashley Merryman published a New York Times op-ed column, “Losing Is Good For You.” She urged parents and coaches “to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed.”

The Foundation of Skills Development

Ms. Merryman’s point is well taken. Too many adults impose unhealthy pressure on themselves and their youth leaguers because they mistakenly liken defeat to failure. Losing is a natural, inevitable and ultimately healthy part of growing up with sports. Every week of every season, half of all youth leaguers competing in America lose.  Each one returns to play another day.

A colleague once explained to me how working their way through defeat helps children win. Players on a winning streak, he said, sometimes lapse into complacency and take success for granted. When the team plays its best but drops a few games, however, players are more likely to begin healthy self-criticism. “What are we doing wrong, and how can we do better to win next game?” The answers can hasten individual skills development and improve overall team performance.

Adversity and Resilience

Children win even greater victories, however, when parents and coaches use today’s losses to teach youngsters resilience when things do not go their way.  Youth leaguers need this lesson because, like it or not, frustration and thwarted ambition help define adulthood for nearly everyone.  Youth sports provides early experience with setback, when the stakes are much lower than they sometimes will be later on.

Child psychologists warn that when parents make excuses for defeat or cast blame on the referees or others, they leave their children ill-prepared for the challenges of adulthood. Parents naturally want their children to succeed more often than they fail — to win more often than they lose — but children also learn plenty when adults guide them through tough times.

During the first class session each semester, I tell my law students that the most valuable lesson their parents ever taught them was how to live on their own when parents no longer peer over their shoulders and supervise their lives.   Each year, I watch law students face the inevitable stumbles as they struggle to master their coursework, maintain their grades, and navigate a difficult job market. I sense that the ex-athletes often display better coping skills than their classmates, perhaps because overcoming losses in sports taught them how to get up off the floor and move ahead.

Conclusion: Making Lemons Into Lemonade

Every parent, coach and youth leaguer knows that winning is preferable to losing. Except at the youngest age levels when scores should not matter, sports depends on competitors who want to win every game within the rules. Wanting to win is why athletes compete. An athlete unconcerned about the score disrespects the game and denies opponents the spice that comes from sports.

But toughness in the face of defeat is also central to the learning process because no youth league team wins every game and no athlete in individual sports wins every match or meet.  Learning how to rebound from losses is a lasting dividend of youth sports, and adults do their children no favor when they routinely withhold that dividend by bubble wrapping players in a misguided effort to shield them from temporary disappointment.

[Sources: Ashley Merryman, Losing Is Good For You, N.Y. Times, Sept. 25, 2013, p. A29; Douglas E. Abrams, The Challenge Facing Parents and Coaches in Youth Sports: Assuring Children Fun and Equal Opportunity, Villanova Sports & Entertainment Law Journal, vol. 8, pp. 253, 268-69 (2002)]

Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results

By JOANNE LIPMAN
From www.wsj.com

Posted September 27, 2013

I had a teacher once who called his students "idiots" when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, "Who eez deaf in first violins!?" He made us rehearse until our fingers almost bled. He corrected our wayward hands and arms by poking at us with a pencil.

Today, he'd be fired. But when he died a few years ago, he was celebrated: Forty years' worth of former students and colleagues flew back to my New Jersey hometown from every corner of the country, old instruments in tow, to play a concert in his memory. I was among them, toting my long-neglected viola. When the curtain rose on our concert that day, we had formed a symphony orchestra the size of the New York Philharmonic.

I was stunned by the outpouring for the gruff old teacher we knew as Mr. K. But I was equally struck by the success of his former students. Some were musicians, but most had distinguished themselves in other fields, like law, academia and medicine. Research tells us that there is a positive correlation between music education and academic achievement. But that alone didn't explain the belated surge of gratitude for a teacher who basically tortured us through adolescence.

We're in the midst of a national wave of self-recrimination over the U.S. education system. Every day there is hand-wringing over our students falling behind the rest of the world. Fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. trail students in 12 other nations in science and 17 in math, bested by their counterparts not just in Asia but in Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands, too. An entire industry of books and consultants has grown up that capitalizes on our collective fear that American education is inadequate and asks what American educators are doing wrong.

I would ask a different question. What did Mr. K do right? What can we learn from a teacher whose methods fly in the face of everything we think we know about education today, but who was undeniably effective?

As it turns out, quite a lot. Comparing Mr. K's methods with the latest findings in fields from music to math to medicine leads to a single, startling conclusion: It's time to revive old-fashioned education. Not just traditional but old-fashioned in the sense that so many of us knew as kids, with strict discipline and unyielding demands. Because here's the thing: It works.

Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores.

All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization—derided as "drill and kill"—are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles—a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research—explain why.

1. A little pain is good for you.

Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson gained fame for his research showing that true expertise requires about 10,000 hours of practice, a notion popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers." But an often-overlooked finding from the same study is equally important: True expertise requires teachers who give "constructive, even painful, feedback," as Dr. Ericsson put it in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article. He assessed research on top performers in fields ranging from violin performance to surgery to computer programming to chess. And he found that all of them "deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance."

2. Drill, baby, drill.

Rote learning, long discredited, is now recognized as one reason that children whose families come from India (where memorization is still prized) are creaming their peers in the National Spelling Bee Championship. This cultural difference also helps to explain why students in China (and Chinese families in the U.S.) are better at math. Meanwhile, American students struggle with complex math problems because, as research makes abundantly clear, they lack fluency in basic addition and subtraction—and few of them were made to memorize their times tables.

William Klemm of Texas A&M University argues that the U.S. needs to reverse the bias against memorization. Even the U.S. Department of Education raised alarm bells, chastising American schools in a 2008 report that bemoaned the lack of math fluency (a notion it mentioned no fewer than 17 times). It concluded that schools need to embrace the dreaded "drill and practice."

3. Failure is an option.

Kids who understand that failure is a necessary aspect of learning actually perform better. In a 2012 study, 111 French sixth-graders were given anagram problems that were too difficult for them to solve. One group was then told that failure and trying again are part of the learning process. On subsequent tests, those children consistently outperformed their peers.

The fear, of course is that failure will traumatize our kids, sapping them of self-esteem. Wrong again. In a 2006 study, a Bowling Green State University graduate student followed 31 Ohio band students who were required to audition for placement and found that even students who placed lowest "did not decrease in their motivation and self-esteem in the long term." The study concluded that educators need "not be as concerned about the negative effects" of picking winners and losers.

4. Strict is better than nice.

What makes a teacher successful? To find out, starting in 2005 a team of researchers led by Claremont Graduate University education professor Mary Poplin spent five years observing 31 of the most highly effective teachers (measured by student test scores) in the worst schools of Los Angeles, in neighborhoods like South Central and Watts. Their No. 1 finding: "They were strict," she says. "None of us expected that."

The researchers had assumed that the most effective teachers would lead students to knowledge through collaborative learning and discussion. Instead, they found disciplinarians who relied on traditional methods of explicit instruction, like lectures. "The core belief of these teachers was, 'Every student in my room is underperforming based on their potential, and it's my job to do something about it—and I can do something about it,'" says Prof. Poplin.

She reported her findings in a lengthy academic paper. But she says that a fourth-grader summarized her conclusions much more succinctly this way: "When I was in first grade and second grade and third grade, when I cried my teachers coddled me. When I got to Mrs. T's room, she told me to suck it up and get to work. I think she's right. I need to work harder."

5. Creativity can be learned.

The rap on traditional education is that it kills children's' creativity. But Temple University psychology professor Robert W. Weisberg's research suggests just the opposite. Prof. Weisberg has studied creative geniuses including Thomas Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright and Picasso—and has concluded that there is no such thing as a born genius. Most creative giants work ferociously hard and, through a series of incremental steps, achieve things that appear (to the outside world) like epiphanies and breakthroughs.

Prof. Weisberg analyzed Picasso's 1937 masterpiece Guernica, for instance, which was painted after the Spanish city was bombed by the Germans. The painting is considered a fresh and original concept, but Prof. Weisberg found instead that it was closely related to several of Picasso's earlier works and drew upon his study of paintings by Goya and then-prevalent Communist Party imagery. The bottom line, Prof. Weisberg told me, is that creativity goes back in many ways to the basics. "You have to immerse yourself in a discipline before you create in that discipline. It is built on a foundation of learning the discipline, which is what your music teacher was requiring of you."

6. Grit trumps talent.

In recent years, University of Pennsylvania psychology professor Angela Duckworth has studied spelling bee champs, Ivy League undergrads and cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.—all together, over 2,800 subjects. In all of them, she found that grit—defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals—is the best predictor of success. In fact, grit is usually unrelated or even negatively correlated with talent.

Prof. Duckworth, who started her career as a public school math teacher and just won a 2013 MacArthur "genius grant," developed a "Grit Scale" that asks people to rate themselves on a dozen statements, like "I finish whatever I begin" and "I become interested in new pursuits every few months." When she applied the scale to incoming West Point cadets, she found that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as "Beast Barracks." West Point's own measure—an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and physical aptitude—wasn't able to predict retention.

Prof. Duckworth believes that grit can be taught. One surprisingly simple factor, she says, is optimism—the belief among both teachers and students that they have the ability to change and thus to improve. In a 2009 study of newly minted teachers, she rated each for optimism (as measured by a questionnaire) before the school year began. At the end of the year, the students whose teachers were optimists had made greater academic gains.

7. Praise makes you weak…

My old teacher Mr. K seldom praised us. His highest compliment was "not bad." It turns out he was onto something. Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck has found that 10-year-olds praised for being "smart" became less confident. But kids told that they were "hard workers" became more confident and better performers.

"The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and motivation, but both were gone in a flash," wrote Prof. Dweck in a 2007 article in the journal Educational Leadership. "If success meant they were smart, then struggling meant they were not."

8.…while stress makes you strong.

A 2011 University at Buffalo study found that a moderate amount of stress in childhood promotes resilience. Psychology professor Mark D. Seery gave healthy undergraduates a stress assessment based on their exposure to 37 different kinds of significant negative events, such as death or illness of a family member. Then he plunged their hands into ice water. The students who had experienced a moderate number of stressful events actually felt less pain than those who had experienced no stress at all.

"Having this history of dealing with these negative things leads people to be more likely to have a propensity for general resilience," Prof. Seery told me. "They are better equipped to deal with even mundane, everyday stressors."

Prof. Seery's findings build on research by University of Nebraska psychologist Richard Dienstbier, who pioneered the concept of "toughness"—the idea that dealing with even routine stresses makes you stronger. How would you define routine stresses? "Mundane things, like having a hardass kind of teacher," Prof. Seery says.

My tough old teacher Mr. K could have written the book on any one of these principles. Admittedly, individually, these are forbidding precepts: cold, unyielding, and kind of scary.

But collectively, they convey something very different: confidence. At their core is the belief, the faith really, in students' ability to do better. There is something to be said about a teacher who is demanding and tough not because he thinks students will never learn but because he is so absolutely certain that they will.

Decades later, Mr. K's former students finally figured it out, too. "He taught us discipline," explained a violinist who went on to become an Ivy League-trained doctor. "Self-motivation," added a tech executive who once played the cello. "Resilience," said a professional cellist. "He taught us how to fail—and how to pick ourselves up again."

Clearly, Mr. K's methods aren't for everyone. But you can't argue with his results. And that's a lesson we can all learn from.

Ms. Lipman is co-author, with Melanie Kupchynsky, of "Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations," to be published by Hyperion on Oct. 1. She is a former deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and former editor-in-chief of Condé Nast Portfolio.

Losing Is Good For You

By ASHLEY MERRYMAN

Published: September 24, 2013
www.nytimes.com

LOS ANGELES — AS children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program.

Trophies were once rare things — sterling silver loving cups bought from jewelry stores for truly special occasions. But in the 1960s, they began to be mass-produced, marketed in catalogs to teachers and coaches, and sold in sporting-goods stores.

Today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a given, as children are constantly assured that they are winners. One Maryland summer program gives awards every day — and the “day” is one hour long. In Southern California, a regional branch of the American Youth Soccer Organization hands out roughly 3,500 awards each season — each player gets one, while around a third get two. Nationally, A.Y.S.O. local branches typically spend as much as 12 percent of their yearly budgets on trophies.

It adds up: trophy and award sales are now an estimated $3 billion-a-year industry in the United States and Canada.

Po Bronson and I have spent years reporting on the effects of praise and rewards on kids. The science is clear. Awards can be powerful motivators, but nonstop recognition does not inspire children to succeed. Instead, it can cause them to underachieve.

Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they’re talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they’d rather cheat than risk failing again.

In recent eye-tracking experiments by the researchers Bradley Morris and Shannon Zentall, kids were asked to draw pictures. Those who heard praise suggesting they had an innate talent were then twice as fixated on mistakes they’d made in their pictures.

By age 4 or 5, children aren’t fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren’t recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.

It turns out that, once kids have some proficiency in a task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition may become the activity’s very appeal.

If children know they will automatically get an award, what is the impetus for improvement? Why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?

If I were a baseball coach, I would announce at the first meeting that there would be only three awards: Best Overall, Most Improved and Best Sportsmanship. Then I’d hand the kids a list of things they’d have to do to earn one of those trophies. They would know from the get-go that excellence, improvement, character and persistence were valued.

It’s accepted that, before punishing children, we must consider their individual levels of cognitive and emotional development. Then we monitor them, changing our approach if there’s a negative outcome. However, when it comes to rewards, people argue that kids must be treated identically: everyone must always win. That is misguided. And there are negative outcomes. Not just for specific children, but for society as a whole.

In June, an Oklahoma Little League canceled participation trophies because of a budget shortfall. A furious parent complained to a local reporter, “My children look forward to their trophy as much as playing the game.” That’s exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of “Generation Me.”

Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it’s part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who’ve grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don’t see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

In life, “you’re going to lose more often than you win, even if you’re good at something,” Ms. Twenge told me. “You’ve got to get used to that to keep going.”

When children make mistakes, our job should not be to spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children’s lives.

This school year, let’s fight for a kid’s right to lose.

Ashley Merryman is the author, with Po Bronson, of “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children” and “Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 25, 2013, on page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Losing Is Good for You.

Practice Attendance

Blue and Senior Group Parents -

 

Now that we have concluded our parents meetings and are heading into another great season, I wanted to reach out to everyone again with some thoughts on practice attendance that the staff and I have deemed vitally important to each athlete's success.  Some of you have seen this information before, some of you have not, but either way I would encourage you to take note, as some has changed, and to pass along this information to your swimmers as well.

 

In my 30 years of experience here at NAC, I have found that with very few exceptions, the athletes with the best attendance were the ones that avoided the "common" swimming injuries with their shoulders and other upper extremities, as well as their knees and ankles.  At the Senior group level, we provide all of the necessary means by which to support the healthy development of all muscle groups which help to stabilize the upper and lower body.  We employ outside experts in their respective fields to help us plan these preventive measures.  With that in mind, athletes with poor attendance, or athletes that try to add additional workouts outside of the program we provide are the ones that tend to run into injury problems.

 

I think it's truly important to understand that NAC offers a scientifically based, comprehensive, all-inclusive training program designed to help your athlete reach their potential. As such, each component is important, and each day of practice brings important training goals.

 

Athletes with poor attendance open themselves to injury in several ways.  First, as the season progresses from August through November, workouts build in intensity and in volume.  Volume is the amount of swimming that the athletes are doing, and intensity is the speed and strength levels at which we ask them to swim.  Those same basic tenets hold true at the Blue Group level.  We cannot expect an athlete to improve if they don't continually do either more, or do what they were previously doing better.  When athletes miss practice, even 1 or 2 workouts in a row, the volume and intensity will have increased when the swimmer returns.

 

We have many athletes who do a great job of attendance during the week, but oftentimes will take a Saturday morning or a long weekend away from the pool.  These types of breaks put the swimmer in the same boat as athletes who take longer stretches away from the pool!  In many cases, these athletes need several days to simply return to the rhythm of training, and fall behind their peers (and competitors!) who haven't taken a break.

 

Athletes with poor morning practice attendance at the Senior level also open themselves up to injury.  Without performing the necessary stabilization and strengthening exercises done in the morning, athletes no longer have the strength to help them stay injury free, and stress under-strengthened muscle groups with in-water training.  What we are asking them to do in the water is dependent on what they are doing out of the water, and vice-versa.

 

To put this simply, if a swimmer's last practice before a break is a "1", and they take an in-season vacation, extended study break, etc. they may miss the build-up workouts and return to practice when we are at a "3" or "4".  This sudden jump in volume or intensity, without the adjustment period in between is when most injuries arise.  It's like trying to learn how to multiply without first learning to add or subtract... only this process repeats every season as your athlete faces new challenges!

 

Each season, without fail, we see several athletes at the Blue and Senior groups who take "breaks" from the training program and end up injured.  There is often a direct relationship between the injuries that occur and their practice attendance.

 

What if your athlete is young, in the Blue Group, and hasn't been injured?  Or in the Senior Group and hasn't been injured?  Does that mean you're off the hook?  As athletes get older, the repetitions of swimming practice begin to add up.  This means that as they approach the Senior 2 and Senior 3 levels of the program, the preventive exercises and consistent attendance become even more important!  As athletes stop getting stronger simply by getting older, the preventive exercises and consistent attendance is even more important!  Your athlete at 11 or 12 years old is very different from your athlete at 14 years old, and very different at 17 years old.

 

At NAC, our mission is to help our athletes achieve whatever their potential may be.  As the parent of your athlete, it is our hope that you understand the necessity of the practices offered, or the changes dictated specifically for your athlete by your group coach.

 

There is much more information available in our Senior Group Handbook, which I encourage all parents, including our Blue Group parents, to read.  It will give you a great head start on understanding the needs of the Senior training program ahead of time, and help you to prepare!  The Senior Group Handbook is available to all parents online via the website at:  https://www.teamunify.com/Sub TabGeneric.jsp?team=senac&_ stabid_=77635 - please know that you will need to be logged in to your NAC account to access it.

Please let your group coach know if you have any questions, and I'm looking forward to another exciting season of swimming in Nashville!

 

John Morse