"If we are hunting the highest version of ourselves, then we need to turn work into play and not the other way round."
Buying the Kotler book just after reading that quote. If I had to describe my coaching, when I'm coaching my best, it would be that quote.
I don't know if you are familiar with Laszlo Polgar, who raised his daughters to be chess prodigies to prove that genius was trainable and went so far as to publicly advertise for a wife to have children with to help him embark on this project. A quest so tiger parent-ish it almost seems to border on abusive.
But what's surprising is that when you read the book he wrote (translated as either Raise A Genius or Bring Up Genius) he basically just talks about how to make playing chess so fun that they will want to play for 5 hours a day... let the kid win... start with simplified end-game puzzles... don't criticize them when they lose just play again... play many quick games rather than one long one... don't worry if they can't always physically control their body while they are thinking because kids think through their body rather than sitting silently... etc
He doesn't use that exact phrase but basically that quote of turning work into play could probably sum it up. Regardless of what you think of the ideological bent of his project of creating child geniuses, it's almost the opposite of what we tend to think of as hardcore intensive "training."
I've read 2-3 of Kotler's books and that's the best one. It is based heavily on Csikszentmihalyi's ideas on flow.
I have heard of Polgar, but not his book. That is similar to Josh Waitzkin's introduction to chess as well. I quote a few of his passages frequently, including one about his first teacher being great because he didn't dampen his enthusiasm for playing and another about starting with the endgame (three pieces I believe) and not the full board to learn the value of each piece, but also that idea of playing short games not one long one.
Also, on my old web site, someone responded to a post and talked about Tiger Woods. People always refer to him hitting on the Tonight Show or something like that when he was like 3 years old and use him as an example of early starts and deliberate practice, but the commenter had worked at the course where he played as a child or knew his first instructor or something and said they'd play par 3 courses and much of his practice was playing, not just hitting at a range. The coach dropping extra balls on the course during a round to practice different shots with different clubs or limiting him to only 3 clubs for a round or whatever...different ways of playing and forcing exploration and trying new things, not the typical rote practice of hating a thousand balls in a row people like to imagine and ascribe to him.
And, I'm sure he did hit thousands of balls at the range...ultimately, it's all of the above, but we like to simplify to one thing to attribute people's success.
Agreed. And early-kid stuff is funky as well. My daughter loves to bump the ball around with mom or dad and has pretty much since she was old enough to walk. Bumping the ball with dad isn't really any different categorically than "partner passing" drills that most teams do. At the end of the day, it's just two people bumping the ball back and forth to each other. The difference is all the qualitative factors: that there's more autonomy in when to start and when to be done when it's in the backyard with mom and dad vs being prescribed start and end times at practice... that the kid is comfortable with mom or dad as a partner instead of unsure with another, sometimes unfamiliar, kid at practice... that an attuned parent (or older sibling, or friend, etc) can sense the right blend between focusing so much that it's not fun and getting so silly you lose control and it's not fun... etc.
In beach volleyball, even more so than indoor, the proportion of great players who learned to play by playing with a parent is so common that it's basically a cliche. If you added up all the hours of "training" they did by playing with that parent, it would often be an order of magnitude higher than your typical "twice a week for 2 hours" club practice arrangement. But the only way you can "train" that much is to have the training be play. I was an assistant for Karch Kiraly and at 50 years old, having won 3 gold medals, you could see (just by the way his face lit up when he talked) that some of his best athletic moments were playing in low-level (and eventually... not so low-level) adult volleyball tournaments with his dad as a kid.
It's funny you mention that about Tiger Woods because as my kid became 2 or 3 years old and I saw how engrossed a young kid can be with a seemingly simple task, often repeating it over and over and over, that I actually did have the thought regarding Woods that rather than being forced to train, he was probably often engaged in the golf equivalent of a kid asking a parent to read Hungry Hungry Caterpillar for the 100th time in a row. (Of course, it would probably be nice if that wasn't the only attention a child received from a parent...)
Ted Kroeten from Joy of the People has a book out soon called The Talent Thief that discusses the importance of early play with parents, among other things, in the development of the elite athletes for those exact reasons.
"If we are hunting the highest version of ourselves, then we need to turn work into play and not the other way round."
Buying the Kotler book just after reading that quote. If I had to describe my coaching, when I'm coaching my best, it would be that quote.
I don't know if you are familiar with Laszlo Polgar, who raised his daughters to be chess prodigies to prove that genius was trainable and went so far as to publicly advertise for a wife to have children with to help him embark on this project. A quest so tiger parent-ish it almost seems to border on abusive.
But what's surprising is that when you read the book he wrote (translated as either Raise A Genius or Bring Up Genius) he basically just talks about how to make playing chess so fun that they will want to play for 5 hours a day... let the kid win... start with simplified end-game puzzles... don't criticize them when they lose just play again... play many quick games rather than one long one... don't worry if they can't always physically control their body while they are thinking because kids think through their body rather than sitting silently... etc
He doesn't use that exact phrase but basically that quote of turning work into play could probably sum it up. Regardless of what you think of the ideological bent of his project of creating child geniuses, it's almost the opposite of what we tend to think of as hardcore intensive "training."
I've read 2-3 of Kotler's books and that's the best one. It is based heavily on Csikszentmihalyi's ideas on flow.
I have heard of Polgar, but not his book. That is similar to Josh Waitzkin's introduction to chess as well. I quote a few of his passages frequently, including one about his first teacher being great because he didn't dampen his enthusiasm for playing and another about starting with the endgame (three pieces I believe) and not the full board to learn the value of each piece, but also that idea of playing short games not one long one.
Also, on my old web site, someone responded to a post and talked about Tiger Woods. People always refer to him hitting on the Tonight Show or something like that when he was like 3 years old and use him as an example of early starts and deliberate practice, but the commenter had worked at the course where he played as a child or knew his first instructor or something and said they'd play par 3 courses and much of his practice was playing, not just hitting at a range. The coach dropping extra balls on the course during a round to practice different shots with different clubs or limiting him to only 3 clubs for a round or whatever...different ways of playing and forcing exploration and trying new things, not the typical rote practice of hating a thousand balls in a row people like to imagine and ascribe to him.
And, I'm sure he did hit thousands of balls at the range...ultimately, it's all of the above, but we like to simplify to one thing to attribute people's success.
Agreed. And early-kid stuff is funky as well. My daughter loves to bump the ball around with mom or dad and has pretty much since she was old enough to walk. Bumping the ball with dad isn't really any different categorically than "partner passing" drills that most teams do. At the end of the day, it's just two people bumping the ball back and forth to each other. The difference is all the qualitative factors: that there's more autonomy in when to start and when to be done when it's in the backyard with mom and dad vs being prescribed start and end times at practice... that the kid is comfortable with mom or dad as a partner instead of unsure with another, sometimes unfamiliar, kid at practice... that an attuned parent (or older sibling, or friend, etc) can sense the right blend between focusing so much that it's not fun and getting so silly you lose control and it's not fun... etc.
In beach volleyball, even more so than indoor, the proportion of great players who learned to play by playing with a parent is so common that it's basically a cliche. If you added up all the hours of "training" they did by playing with that parent, it would often be an order of magnitude higher than your typical "twice a week for 2 hours" club practice arrangement. But the only way you can "train" that much is to have the training be play. I was an assistant for Karch Kiraly and at 50 years old, having won 3 gold medals, you could see (just by the way his face lit up when he talked) that some of his best athletic moments were playing in low-level (and eventually... not so low-level) adult volleyball tournaments with his dad as a kid.
It's funny you mention that about Tiger Woods because as my kid became 2 or 3 years old and I saw how engrossed a young kid can be with a seemingly simple task, often repeating it over and over and over, that I actually did have the thought regarding Woods that rather than being forced to train, he was probably often engaged in the golf equivalent of a kid asking a parent to read Hungry Hungry Caterpillar for the 100th time in a row. (Of course, it would probably be nice if that wasn't the only attention a child received from a parent...)
Ted Kroeten from Joy of the People has a book out soon called The Talent Thief that discusses the importance of early play with parents, among other things, in the development of the elite athletes for those exact reasons.