“ the more
advanced the athlete, the less of a role practice plays…. within an Olympic team tiny
differences in performance are unlikely to be the result of training: these
athletes train together, with the same coach, day in and day out. Those
milliseconds come from somewhere else. "
I never tell my students “practice makes perfect.” Nobody’s
perfect, nobody speaks their own language perfectly, and if you think you have
to be perfect, you can never open your mouth. I used to tell my students,
“practice makes progress,” but I’ve learned better now. If practice made progress,
this lady I know would be an opera goddess, but no matter how much she sings,
she always sounds like a mental patient receiving dental care without
anesthesia.