Deliberate Practice, The Ericsson theory

The main point in Ericsson et. Al.(1993) is that in order to achieve expert performance, one must engage in deliberate practice with the explicit goal of constant improvement. This theory further dismisses to a large extent the role of genetics, in which Ericsson reasons that there has been no great correlations between the attainment of superior performance and inherited traits. The purpose of this paper is to show agreement with Ericsson's theory, but only to …

…But sports like golf are probably influenced very little by genetics because skill acquisition far overshadows physical ability. History provides many examples of athletes who apparently has a poor genetic endowment, yet by hard training and motivation went on to international success (Shepard,1987). In conclusion, expert performance is most likely due to a complex interaction of psychological, physiological, and biomechanical factors (Powers, 1994); factors whose importance is dependent on the nature of the task at hand.