9781422286777

Chapter 1

athletes

F or as long as sports have been around , fans and experts have wondered: What makes a great athlete? Is he or she born with all that talent? Or is it a mat- ter of “practice makes perfect”? In his 2008 best-selling book, Outliers: The Story of Suc- cess , Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell suggested the “10,000-Hour Rule.” He said that it worked for any field—business, the arts, or sports. The rule simply means that working at a task for 10,000 hours over the course of a lifetime leads to success. For in- stance, Gladwell believes that he is a success- ful author because he spent more than 10,000 hours working on stories for newspapers

How many more hours will this player need before he has “mastered” his skills?

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