I got this last Christmas and read it quite quickly, it's a fairly straightforward interesting read. It starts out by questioning the 10 000 hour rule and looks at people that have bucked the trend by being as diverse as possible up to a certain point or beyond.
A few things stuck with me, some of which I use in my day job as a maths teacher. The point of the whole book though, together with some personal experiences, made me reflect upon what I was doing as a club coach.
I was reading this thinking of Chloe's slalom thinking "That's great, Chloe does a range of activities, not just paddling, and even her paddling we try to keep varied so not just limited to slalom." Then I reflected on Chloe's experience at the local (but well-respected) gymnastics club. She started at a really young age, as a lot of girls do, but over time grew increasingly frustrated that she wasn't getting to work on the things that she needed to in order to move up the groups and onto new challenges. One of the reasons we attributed this to was that the club were not invested in her as she didn't attend competitions (often all day Saturday and clashing with a slalom). So inevitably she dropped out.
This made me think badly of the club, surely they should accommodate and stretch every member regardless of whether or not they want to compete? Then I thought about how I had felt about the kids at canoe club that turned up to training week in week out during the summer months, and a hardy few that kept going through the winter, but rarely made it to competition. I had been dismissive of them, reluctant to let them join in with the coaching I was doing with Chloe as they weren't (in my eyes at the time) motivated. Now I realise they are motivated, they just have different motivations. They still want to paddle, they still want to improve. They may or may not wish to compete regularly - a lot of kids are limited by what their parents are willing to do. Slalom may or may not be their main sport. it may be their only exercise each week. So it is my job as their coach to make that time on the water as fun and meaningful as possible, regardless of the outcome in terms of ranking points. And maybe if the kids go home each week with a bit more of a smile on their face, they'll be more likely to carry on into November when it's dark, and getting colder. maybe they'll be motivated to turn up to more races. Maybe not, but at least in some small way at the moment I'm contributing to their "Range".
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