The 10 year rule has been known to apply to the development of expertise in music, mathematics, swimming,

distance running, tennis, soccer and field hockey. From the 10 year rule Ericcson developed the theory of deliberate
practice which says that it is not simply training of any type, but rather a minimum of 10 years of engaged specific
domain practice that is necessary to be a expert. All the previous studies that examined general sports and some
team sport all agreed with Ericcson and his finding, but there is so much more to attaining expertise in sport than
just getting hours of deliberate practice. A key characteristic in expert performance in team ball sports is decision
making. This study by J.Baker, J. Côté, and B. Abernethy examined the quantity and type of both sport specific and
non-specific practice accumulated throughout the careers of expert decision makers from three different team sports
and contrasted these findings with the practice experiences of less accomplished athletes.

Baker, Côté and Abernethy examined the quantity of sport specific practice to ascertain whether it agreed
with the general rule of 10 years/10,000 hours of training that was developed by Ericcson and to determine if the
amount of sport specific practice is the key factor in discriminating expert decision makers from less skilled athletes.
The rationale for examining the quantity and type of other practice activities it to identify similarities in the
backgrounds of expert decision makers from different sports that may have contributed to their expertise and to
determine the extent to which athletes participation in other sports was a distinguishing attribute of their
development.

Twenty eight athletes participated in the study. The expert decision- making group consisted of 15 players
chosen from the Australian national women’s netball team, national men’s basketball team, national men’s field
hockey team and the national women’s field hockey team. All the experts were the best decision makers on their
team. The non expert decision making group consisted of 13 participants that all had greater than 10 years of
experience in their sport but just had not participated beyond the state or provisional level. The average age of the
expert decision making group was 27.6 years and they had been playing in their respectable sport for an average of
20,7years. While the non expert decision making groups’ average age was 23.2 years and their average involvement
in their sport was 12. 2years.

Each participant underwent a structured interview that was specifically developed to examine the practice
activities of elite athletes. Each interview was conducted in a one on one environment with the interview lasting 2 to
3 hours. The purpose of the interviews was to create a detailed account of each athlete’s involvement in sports and
other extra- curricular activities. The interview was broken up into two parts. The first part of the interview was
devoted to the establishment of a comprehensive set of extracurricular activities that were done by the athlete in
either an informal or formal way. The second part of the interview assessed the amount of time the athletes spent in
their main sport during their development.

The researchers found after computing the total number of years and hours of sport specific practice prier to
achieving expert performance, that the number of years spent in practice prior to being selected for the national team
ranged from 7 to 20 years. The range of practice hours prior to becoming an expert performance ranged from 600
hours to 6026 hours. Experts accumulated similar hours of sport specific training to the non experts until 11 years of
involvement in their sport. The athletes that required fewer hours of sport specific practice achieve expertise
typically had a larger number of involvement in other sporting activities. Those athletes that had the greater amount
of sport specific practice prior to achieving expertise had fewer other sporting activities.

From the collected data, it suggests that the 10 year rule is a good rule with respect to the minimal sport
specific practice base needed for the development of expertise in team sports. The number of hours that were
accumulated hours of sport specific practice suggest that it is an important indicator of expertise in sport decision
making although in this study the number of hours of repeated sport specific practice was less than the 10,000 hours
of deliberate practice.

From Baker, Côté, and Abernethy’s findings in the study it suggests that participation in other activities may
be a functional element in the development of expert decision making skills. Unlike the music domain that was used
in Ericcsons study to develop their theory of deliberate practice, sport expertise in team sports may be sufficiently
multi faceted to allow valuable learning to occur through settings other than deliberate, task specific practice. There
is a broad range of activities that was performed in the early years of expert (age 6-12), followed by a decrease in the
other activity involvement (age13-15), then there was complete devotion to the primary activity (age 16+). In the
years, that were devoted to one primary sport is where there is drastic change in the number of training hours per
week between experts and non experts. The take home message is that early specialization may not be a requirement
for expert level performance in decision making sports. Encourage children to get into different sports at an early
age because exposure to other sports settings allow for children to better use their recognition, decision making
skills, & hand-eye coordination which ultimately will help them in the long run when deciding to specialize in one
particular sport.

Baker,J., Côté, J., & Abernethy, B. ( 2003). Sport-Specific Practice and the Development of Expert Decision-
Making in Team Ball Sports. Journal of Applied Psychology,15, 12-25