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How to serve up a dominant strategy
The killer domino
As an adult the epic follies of your own youth-era athletic training become crystal clear, especially once you’re a parent. I suspect that this clarity helps explain why those parents take their daughter’s soccer game way too seriously. So much of what the competitors should be doing on the field is simply “obvious” to that sage who sitteth afar amidst the other elders atop his foldable Coleman throne, mighty Coke Zero in hand.
Nevertheless, I’d do so many things differently if I were to go back in time and pursue those dreams of “making it,” either in tennis or soccer, to “the show” as author David Foster Wallace calls it. For instance, practice one thing until you’re perfect at it before moving on to the second thing. Piano teachers have known this since the piano was invented. Granted, it’s awfully hard to keep a kid’s attention this way. [1]
But this is not a piece about how to Richard-Williams your kids to be the GOAT of curling or badminton or Eschaton. This is a piece about one approach, the only one that matters: the dominant strategy.
