Tuesday's Blog- December 13

"It's not about recognizing talent, whatever the hell that is. I've never tried to go out and find someone who's talented. First you work on fundamentals, and pretty soon you find out where things are going."
- Robert Lansdorp, tennis coach of former world number-one players Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Lindsay Davenport. (pg. 159)

So far in the book, The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle, he has addressed skill as a cellular process that grows through deep practice (myelin) and how ignition supplies the unconscious energy for that growth. The chapter I am currently reading, I will meet the rare people who have the mysterious talent and gift for combining those two forces to grow talent in others. He starts of the chapter by getting us intrigued into what we were going to learn. With that being said, the first sentence of the chapter is American bank robbers weren't very skilled. Gangs followed a simple plan: they picked a bank,

waited until nighttime, then blew open the vault with dynamite. By the early 1920s the banks had caught up, bringing in alarm systems and blast-proof vaults. The bank robbers then simply became more skilled. They worked day and night, and it was as if bank robbers had suddenly evolved into a more talented species. Stealing hundreds and thousands of dollars, this evolution could be traced back to the man who lead the gang; Herman "The Baron" Lamm. He was the teacher of the modern bank-robbing skill. He was the "master coach". Lamm organized each bank rob, visiting the bank, sketching out blueprint maps, and holding rehearsals. After his death, (he was shot to death by police) it was taught to John Dillinger. Lamm's system is still employed today because he was able to communicate his ideas and translate them into the performance of a difficult task. He inspired through information and was a master coach.

When we think of a master coach, we think of someone who is a great leader, someone who is committed, battle-tested knowledge, and someone who has power to influence someone else. In the beginning of the book, Coyle says he began visiting tiny places that produce Everest-size amounts of talent. "My journey began at a ramshackle tennis court in Moscow, and over the next fourteen months it took me to a soccer field in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a vocal stuido in Dallas (when he visited Clarissa, the musician who accomplished a months of work in six minutes), Texas, an inner-city school in San Jose, California, a run-down music academy in New York's Adirondacks, a baseball-mad island in the Caribbean, and a handful of other places so small, humble, and titanically accomplished that a friend dubbed them "the chicken-wire Harvards." " He called these hotbeds. When Coyle visited the hotbeds that contained people who have the mysterious talent and gift of combining the two forces to grow talent in others, he found teachers and coaches that were quiet and reserved. They were mostly older, and many had been teaching for forty years. They also were "steady, deep, and unblinking". They listened more then they talked, and when they did talk they were either giving pep talks or inspiring speeches. After Daniel Coyle met all these people, he suspected that they were all related in a way. They were all talent whisperers. They posses deep structure of knowledge, adding to mental work of growing which they have no control over. Basically, coaches are just there to help guide athletes into the right direction and help they get the knowledge they need to grow.

The quote and this blog connects to me, not because I have robbed a bank before, but it connects to me because all of the coaches I've had throughout the years have one plan, to teach me and make me successful. They've never screamed at me (only sometimes), but they have listened to me and look at what I need improvements on and then they teach me more knowledge of that certain sport. My cheerleading coaches always tell me they can't make me better. I have to be dedicated and work hard towards bettering myself. They will guide me to get better but they can't physically make me better. Cheering coaches in college don't go looking for people and scouting out individuals. They make try out dates and each person has to come in and try out for the team. It is like working on the fundamentals and then seeing where things go. Like working up the skills to doing that sport in college.