Just checking in to see if you’re applying yourself to the 10,000x principle Octo-woman challenged you to in blob https://goingon80.com/2023/06/01/513-taking-on-the-10000x-challenge/
To remind you, in Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: the Story of Success”, the author’s principle states that in order to become world class in any field, you would need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
As for me, I’m still creeping along on my piano practice at 2 hours/day, – am now at 2,944 hours total. Not quite ready for Carnegie Hall, yet.
One of my family members may have exceeded his “10,000 hours of deliberate practice”. Or at least, he must be close!
It’s likely that those hours were helped along with victories and break-throughs, but also with pain, aches, sprains, bruises, lacerations, frustration, loss, sacrifice, disappointments; and, most likely, all of the above were underlined with just plain dogged determination.
In case you didn’t read my earlier blob https://goingon80.com/2023/04/04/506-making-the-impossible-possible/ about my great-great nephew AJ Fitzpatrick, he was born with club foot and a condition called Arthrogryposis which prevented his legs from developing properly.
According to his mother, Elizabeth Bekeris, AJ discovered wheelchair basketball when he was in fifth grade – he must have been about 10 or 11 years old – and he’s been a player ever since. He’s 19 years old now. Let’s try to make a seat-of-the-pants estimate of how many “hours of deliberate practice” that AJ may have chalked up.
Just to make it easy, and since we lack any real-time statistics, let’s say – arbitrarily, of course – that since he was 10 years old when he started on the court, AJ practiced basketball 3 hours per day, 365 days per year, for the 9 years that followed. That would be a rough sum of 9,855 hours of practice. Of course, 3 hours per day would have been unlikely when he was in grade school, but it may be balanced with the longer hours of “deliberate practice” he’s been logging in his later teenage years.
If my seat-of-the-pants guesswork is sort of reasonable, and if Gladwell’s principle is valid, the following is what is currently happening to effect the “world class” status that we might expect to be coming AJ’s way.
Recently our young hero was selected to be on the United States Wheelchair Basketball Team at the sport’s second highest world-wide event for athletes with a disability – the Parapan American Games 2023 in Santiago, Chili. If AJ.’s team should win, they’ll go on to play in the Paralympics in Paris, France in 2024 where winning is the highest possible honor in international wheelchair basketball. You can’t get much more “world-class” than that!
Santiago, Chili has never before in its history hosted an international sport event, and it has spent several years, and over 500 million dollars, in preparation.
The first segment will feature 39 athletic disciplines at the Pan American Games which will be on October 20 to November 5 in 40 venues. It will be followed by the Parapan American Games on November 17 to November 26 when 17 of the same athletic disciplines will be in competition in the same venues but with Para athletes – those who have physical disabilities.
Eight thousand athletes and Para athletes from forty-one countries on our continent will be participating. Among them will be AJ Fitzpatrick.
The Pan American Games are scheduled in Santiago, Chili from October 20 to November 5th. The Parapan American Games will be from November 17 to November 26.
When AJ was chosen to be included among the 11 other members of the Parapan United States Team, he must have found himself in a whole new world.
He appears to be the youngest and least experienced of the other more mature, high performance athletes on the wheelchair basketball team, each of whom is distinguished by a whole array of awards and experience on the world stage.
It seems to me – as one of his fan base, (as well as being his elderly doting great-great aunt) – that the young AJ was chosen not because of his experience, but simply because of talent, promise, and yep!, showing up as a guy who hadn’t been afraid to invest 10,000 hours of dedicated effort to master his craft. And, if so, let that be a lesson to us all, boys and girls! Practice makes perfect! (Along with talent!)
And don’t worry. Judging by related Facebook activity, apparently, AJ still seems to find time for some social life!
The organizing committee in Santiago has promised 2000 hours of free TV broadcasting of the events, but the Panam Sports app is only indicating that it’ll be streaming till November 5th. If you find how to view the Parapan American events starting on November 17th, please give a holler in a Comment below.
In a recent drawing, the United States wheelchair basketball team was placed in Group B along with the countries of Brazil, Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Group A, by the way, will include the countries of Argentina, Canada, Chili, and Venezuela. Of the 8 countries competing in the wheelchair basketball discipline, only the team from one country will win the entry to the Paralympics in France next summer.
To close, here’s a word from AJ about “The push to be better”.
All the drama really begins this Friday, October 2 till October 20, 2023 across 16 regions of Chili. The Torch Relay for the Pan American Games will be November 13-17, 2023 crossing 25 regions of the Metropolitan Region.
Go AJ!