For some athletes, success has come from a dedication to practice and the repetition of a particular routine. Baseball icon Ichiro Suzuki or English soccer star David Beckham are two examples that immediately spring to mind.
Ichiro, for example, recalls hitting around 500 pitches per day as a child practicing with his father. These days, his daily routine includes weight training to maintain strength and flexibility. Beckham, meanwhile, says he must have practiced taking tens of thousands of free kicks as a child.
Author Malcom Gladwell popularized the idea that a person can perfect a technique if they practice a particular task for 10,000 hours. Others, however, argue that such practice needs to be concentrated on a particular task in order to improve. What's more, they say, 10,000 hours is the average amount of time that people spend perfecting a technique.