I kept hearing about the The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
by Daniel Coyle on the StrengthCoach Podcast, then Gray Cook talked about it in his book Movement, then I read this great blog post by Mike Boyle about it, and then a friend of mine who is a soccer coach told me he made all his players read it. With all these rave reviews for the book I had to find out for myself, so I borrowed my friends copy for my trip to Edmonton to celebrate my Grandad’s 89th birthday. The reviews were bang on, I started reading it on the skytrain to the Vancouver airport, read it on the plane, read it when I had a moment to myself during family time, and finally finished on the plane back home 2 days later... which is also where I left my friends copy, oops I guess he gets a new one minus all of his notes so he will have to read it again and then I will have to borrow it again to reread. Yes it is that good I will read it twice.
If you are in the business of teaching or coaching a skill to an individual or a group of individuals then this is a must read as Coach Boyle states in his blog post. Coyle travels the world to talk to the people who are responsible for producing some of the greatest talent we see in both athletics and arts (music). He travels to Brazil to figure out the ball handling secrets of the best footballers in the world. He goes to Russia to talk with the coach that has produced a number of top 10 female tennis players. He visits Curacao to figure out why they are producing great baseball players for such a small country. He talks with a former singer turned coach that is responsible for Jessica Simpson and many of American Idols top contestants. He goes for a burger with Tom Brady’s quarterback coach. He interviews the guys who studied John Wooden’s method of coaching. And the stories just go on and on, why I finished this page turner in about 48hours during a whirlwind family gathering.
Amongst the great stories of real life coaches Daniel Coyle mixes in the topic of myelin and how it relates to the development of talent. If you are unfamiliar with myelin you can get a quick overview here from Wikipedia, simply myelin is an insulator that covers the axon of a neuron. Why myelin is important is that it strengthens the pathways of our nervous system, and the stronger certain neural pathways are the easier it is to run the programs associated with the pathways. For example when you were a child you learned how to write and as you continued to practice (one of the major topics in the book) your writing got better; in other words you built strong neural pathways where your nervous system can communicate with your muscular and skeletal systems amongst others to allow you to write. Conversely as you got older and started writing less and using computers more the poorer your hand writing became, the neural pathways you created for writing weren’t lost they just aren’t running as strong as they were when you were practicing/learning to write. When you reach a certain age it becomes difficult to build more myelin but it is still possible to learn new skills, it happened as you learned to type! The neural pathways associated with typing became stronger the more time you spent typing, AKA you started surrounding the neural pathways with more and more myelin.
Coyle takes the limited research there is on myelin and uses the stories from the people he has met to create the blueprint for producing talent. If you want to know The Talent Code
you are going to have to read his book!
Josh Neumann, BHK
by Daniel Coyle on the StrengthCoach Podcast, then Gray Cook talked about it in his book Movement, then I read this great blog post by Mike Boyle about it, and then a friend of mine who is a soccer coach told me he made all his players read it. With all these rave reviews for the book I had to find out for myself, so I borrowed my friends copy for my trip to Edmonton to celebrate my Grandad’s 89th birthday. The reviews were bang on, I started reading it on the skytrain to the Vancouver airport, read it on the plane, read it when I had a moment to myself during family time, and finally finished on the plane back home 2 days later... which is also where I left my friends copy, oops I guess he gets a new one minus all of his notes so he will have to read it again and then I will have to borrow it again to reread. Yes it is that good I will read it twice.If you are in the business of teaching or coaching a skill to an individual or a group of individuals then this is a must read as Coach Boyle states in his blog post. Coyle travels the world to talk to the people who are responsible for producing some of the greatest talent we see in both athletics and arts (music). He travels to Brazil to figure out the ball handling secrets of the best footballers in the world. He goes to Russia to talk with the coach that has produced a number of top 10 female tennis players. He visits Curacao to figure out why they are producing great baseball players for such a small country. He talks with a former singer turned coach that is responsible for Jessica Simpson and many of American Idols top contestants. He goes for a burger with Tom Brady’s quarterback coach. He interviews the guys who studied John Wooden’s method of coaching. And the stories just go on and on, why I finished this page turner in about 48hours during a whirlwind family gathering.
Amongst the great stories of real life coaches Daniel Coyle mixes in the topic of myelin and how it relates to the development of talent. If you are unfamiliar with myelin you can get a quick overview here from Wikipedia, simply myelin is an insulator that covers the axon of a neuron. Why myelin is important is that it strengthens the pathways of our nervous system, and the stronger certain neural pathways are the easier it is to run the programs associated with the pathways. For example when you were a child you learned how to write and as you continued to practice (one of the major topics in the book) your writing got better; in other words you built strong neural pathways where your nervous system can communicate with your muscular and skeletal systems amongst others to allow you to write. Conversely as you got older and started writing less and using computers more the poorer your hand writing became, the neural pathways you created for writing weren’t lost they just aren’t running as strong as they were when you were practicing/learning to write. When you reach a certain age it becomes difficult to build more myelin but it is still possible to learn new skills, it happened as you learned to type! The neural pathways associated with typing became stronger the more time you spent typing, AKA you started surrounding the neural pathways with more and more myelin.
Coyle takes the limited research there is on myelin and uses the stories from the people he has met to create the blueprint for producing talent. If you want to know The Talent Code
you are going to have to read his book!
Josh Neumann, BHK
by Cliff Harvey. So here it is: happiness lifestyle design. Cliff’s book is all about how to create a lifestyle of happiness, most trainers are already happy (at least most of the trainers I know are) but if you aren’t completely happy or if you find yourself not reaching your full potential than you are more than likely to find some helpful hints in this book.