The 10,000-hour rule has become a cliché, Jonah Lehrer notes:
However, a series of recent studies by psychologists at Queen’s University adds an important wrinkle to the Tiger Woods parable. The scientists began by analyzing the birthplace of more than 2,000 athletes in a variety of professional sports, such as the NHL, NBA, and the PGA. This is when they discovered something peculiar: the percent of professional athletes who came from cities of fewer than a half million people was far higher than expected. While approximately 52 percent of the United States population resides in metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people, such cities only produce 13% of the players in the NHL, 29% of the players in the NBA, 15% of the players in MLB, and 13% of players in the PGA.*
I can think of several different explanations for this effect, none of which are mutually exclusive. Perhaps kids in small towns are less likely to get distracted by gangs, drugs, etc. Perhaps athletes outside of big cities go to better schools, and thus receive more attention from their high school coaches. Perhaps they have more access to playing fields. Perhaps they have a better peer group. The scientists summarize this line of reasoning in a recent paper: “These small communities may offer more psychosocially supportive environments that are more intimate. In particular, sport programs in smaller communities may offer more opportunities for relationship development with coaches, parents, and peers, a greater sense of belonging, and a better integration of the program within the community.”
But there’s another possible explanation for this effect, which was nicely summarized by Sian Beilock, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and author of the forthcoming Choke. She proposes that an important advantage of small towns is that they’re actually less competitive, thus allowing kids to sample and explore many different sports. (I grew up in a big city, and my sports career basically ended when I was 13. I could no longer compete with the other kids in my age group.)
While avoiding burnout is nice, and training a breadth of sports skills may build useful general traits — such as self-control, patience, grit, and the willingness to practice — there are other benefits to competing at a lower level.
The well known January effect — in which kids born in the first months of the year are more likely to excel in sports — already demonstrates that a slight edge early on can turn into a long-term edge, because early successes lead kids to play more. It’s fun to win.
Competing at a lower level also allows an athlete to try new things and take risks. If you always bring your A game, you always go to your go-to moves, and you don’t add many new moves to your repertoire.