10,000 Hours Myth?
Be The Best You Can Be at Football Future Pro Coaching Academy, at School, at your Club and all other sessions/games. If it takes 10,000 hours, great, someone may sell a few more books. Chances are, that if you prepare consistently to your full potential it will take a whole lot less.
10000 hours to make a champion??? What rubbish!
This “10000 hours to build a champion footballer” stuff seems to have popped up in a lot of places recently. Just goes to show how many people in the world can write stuff about sport without knowing anything about it.
- The Golden Rule….there isn’t one.
- The Golden rule about producing champions is that there are no golden rules.
- There are no “always” have to…
- There are no “must” do this…
- There are no “can never” do that…
- And there are no magical, miraculous numbers of hours required to produce greatness.
The Search for “The Formula”
Everyone in football is searching for “the Formula” - a set of training routines, skills, drills, supplements, equipment and systems which will guarantee success.
Just look at the recent “power-band” debacle! People wanted something which would guarantee performance enhancement for everyone who purchased one.
The search for a 100% guaranteed, never fail, always successful system which will produce winning footballers and teams is like the “diet” industry: everyone is looking for an easy solution which is guaranteed to work every time for every body but ultimately it takes a lot of hard work and even then nothing is certain.
Ten Reasons Why The Ten Thousand Hours is Rubbish.
- Not all footballers learn, grow, adapt and improve at the same rate;
- Not all footballers learn, grow, adapt and improve the same way;
- Each footballer has a different capacity to recover;
- The level of engagement determines the effectiveness of the training activity;
- Why 10000? Why not 11000? Why not 8000? Why not 83456.72 hours?
- Training environments are incredibly different;
- The Quality of coaching is incredibly variable;
- Potential to perform;
- Passion to prepare, drive, enthusiasm…….
- Being unique, being different, being individual……….that’s what makes champions champions.
There is a secret to success - but it isn’t a piece of equipment, a special diet, a gym membership or a mythical number of hours of preparation. The secret to success is – as it always has been- is to make the most of every opportunity (i.e. every training session, every recovery session, every competition) and prepare to the full extent of your potential every day.
