Owen Lewis is a performance advisor at , working to enhance the development and performance of Wales’ talented athletes.
Here he gives an insight into what talent is and how identifying talent earlier can help keep Welsh athletes aiming for the world podium.
Talent is something that is developed through a combination of nature (qualities that you’re born with) and nurture (experiences you go through) and how the two interact with each other. Genetics and gene expression is an inherently complicated area but the practicalities of how to develop talent don’t need to be.
Talent isn’t something you’re born with. You might possess certain qualities that give you an advantage in certain sports but no one is born pre-determined to be the best in the world. The different experiences that you’re exposed to through life, sport and other environments all determine the talent you will develop.
Imagine it a bit like a bucket. In simple terms, nature determines how big your “talent” bucket is and nurture determines how full you fill it. Except it’s a bit more complex that that because the bucket you’re born with can be stretched. The experiences you undergo as a person and an athlete determine how big your bucket of potential will be as well as how full you’re going to fill it.
So experiences are really important. As a youngster, you can’t have too many experiences of sport so long as it’s enjoyable, fun and teaching you the basics. advocates a multi skills approach at a young age as these different experiences offer the best exposure for developing talent. Incidentally, if you weren’t exposed to a multi skills approach as a youngster, it’s never too late to learn although it is harder as we’re generally better at learning skills when we are young.
Mindset
Mindsets and environments are critical in developing talent. Great mindsets help create great environments and great environments create great mindsets – it’s a virtuous circle.
Current research suggests that having a growth rather than a fixed mindset offers a far better chance of developing talent. And it’s possible (although not easy) to teach parents, athletes and coaches to adopt a growth mindset. Growth mindset is characterised by wanting to learn rather than wanting to display mastery. Some kids want to desperately show off a skill but only if they know they are really good at it. Other kids who might try a skill and make a complete mess of it but they don’t care as long as someone is teaching them to get better at it. That latter mindset is the one you want to encourage. Think of encouraging kids to say “I can’t do that skill yet, but I’ll be able to if I practice” rather than “I’m just not good enough to do that skill.”
When it comes to selecting talent, the biggest mistake that’s made is selection based on current performance rather than on future potential. It’s understandable; current performance is black and white whereas future potential is more difficult to define. Do you go for what looks good now or what could look even better in the future?
Age doesn’t mean talent
Take relative age effect, for example, an area which has been thoroughly researched. We often see representative teams or squads packed with young people whose birthdays are September to December – the oldest in the age group. When you’re 11, six months is still a relatively big portion of your life. Older kids in the same year group are often bigger and taller and have the benefit of more experiences. Because they get picked out at an early age, they often then get better coaching, better experiences and maintain or increase the advantage they started with. But who’s to say that a child in the same age group but a few months younger wouldn’t benefit from the same experiences and become better in the long term?
Understanding the history of the athlete is also important. Take golf as an example. In selecting the most talented out of two young golfers it would seem obvious that you pick the player with the lowest handicap. But imagine player A has got a handicap of five and player B has got a handicap of three. Player A has had 150 hours of professional coaching, lots of structured development and very supportive, financially able parents. Player B has played golf 20 times, plays off their own enthusiasm and has no real structure.
If you didn’t know these factors and selected player A as the better talent, gave them more and better coaching, sports science support, competition opportunities and everything else needed to develop they are going to get better than player B, which seems to justify the selection. Who knows what child two could have achieved though?!
The safety net
So in terms of selecting talent, maybe we need to cast the net a little wider and leave it wider for a little longer. Or at the very least, leave a safety net in place so that good environments and experiences are still available to those who aren’t picked out as talented. You don’t want them to think at that young age that that’s as far as they are going to get because they could still be a future superstar.
It’s also worth remembering that physical characteristics aren’t the only predictors of the ability to develop talent. Character is also extremely important. So it’s worth considering that if a young athlete is willing, ready and keen to put in the hard work, go with that rather than the physical ability.
Elite Competition
Competition on the world level is now so intense, the press to succeed so great, that the whole of the athlete’s journey is important. It is why working deeper in our sporting system is key and potentially where the competitive advantage lies. If we can make the experiences athletes get in the early stages of their development better than their counterparts in other countries then we can enhance their potential and make them more likely to win medals. We are working closely with UK Sport and our home nation colleagues to put in place a pathway of experiences that will give athletes the best chance of reaching their potential.
It’s important to start with the end in mind. What does it take to win at the highest level and how can we work backwards from this? Consider that the same end point can be reached in various different ways and from different start points. There isn’t a prescriptive way of developing talent. And while this doesn’t make things easy, it does make sense. Talent is a unique combination of traits and how these interact with the experiences you are exposed to so a different mix of characteristics can achieve the same point of excellence.
What’s the take home message? Talent isn’t something that’s just there, it has to be developed. It’s a journey, not an attribute.
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