I was rereading the Talent Code for the 4th time last week and in the introduction, I remembered one of the most fascinating parts of the whole book. He was talking about “talent hotbeds”. These are places where for no apparent reason, fantastic athletes magically bloom in large numbers. This happened in the Dominican Republic with baseball players in the 1950’s, in South Korea with women golfers in the late 1990’s, and even in the Renaissance when Florence, Italy produced an explosion of genius! Daniel decided to study where this extraordinary talent came from and how did it grow?
He began by studying a 13 year old girl who was studying the clarinet and didn’t appear particularly talented. In her 6 minute video, she was classified at “musical mediocrity.” (How depressing!) She lacked a “good ear”, sense of rhythm, and her motivation was subpar. Her strongest reason for practicing was because “I’m supposed to”. What was crazy was that in 5 minutes and 54 seconds, she accelerated her learning speed by 10x, and she didn’t even know it.
She was trying to play “Golden Wedding”. She played 7 notes and stopped, stared at the music sheet, and sung that phrase. She then started over from the beginning, making it a few notes further before missing a note, patching in the fix, backtracking and starting again. That time the notes had some verve and feeling. When she finished that phrase, she stopped for 6 long seconds, replayed it in her mind as she fingered the clarinet, leaned forward, then started again from the beginning.

She played that phrase again and again, each time adding spirit and rhythm to it. She was creating a blueprint in her mind, fixing the errors and fitting parts into the whole (chunking). This was a highly targeted, error focused process. The scaffolding was being built and a new quality was growing in the girl. It was not talent created by genes. It was six minutes of an average person entering a magically productive zone where more skill was created with each passing second. This targeted practice was causing accelerated learning.
What they later learned was when we fire our circuits in the right way, our neural insulator called myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around the neural circuit, with each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker it gets, the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become (think riding a bicycle). Everyone can grow it though it grows more swiftly in childhood. It’s indiscriminate, and its growth enables all manner of skills. The more time and energy you put into the right kind of practice, the longer you stay in the zone and the more skill and speed you gain.
So, back to the hotbeds of talent where world class soccer players, violinists, artists, tennis and golf players, even skateboarders developed and flourished. They all got better by gradually by improving timing, speed and accuracy, by honing neural circuitry and growing more myelin. There are 3 parts to this- deep practice, ignition and master coaching. Each element is essential to creating skill. Combine them, even for 6 minutes and things start to rapidly change.
I’m going to delve deeper into this in my next few articles because it’s so relevant to how we can all become skilled with our horses and grow our timing and feel which before was believed that you either had it or you didn’t. You can absolutely grow both! Great news isn’t it??
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Do horses learn in the same way?
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