"I’m fascinated by an ancient group of archers..."

A thought by Mark Batterson from his book, Win the Day (p. 27). The Crown Publishers Group. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.) 

And they had an interesting accomplishment.

Mark says, "I’m fascinated by an ancient group of archers from a tribe known as the Benjamites. Their ambidextrous ability to shoot arrows and sling stones sounds like it’s right out of a Marvel movie."

1 Chronicles 12:2 (NLT) says, "All of them were expert archers, and they could shoot arrows or sling stones with their left hand as well as their right. They were all relatives of Saul from the tribe of Benjamin."

Mark goes on, "Their ability to use both hands equally well raises a few questions. Switch hitters are commonplace in baseball, but there is only one switch pitcher in Major League Baseball! I’m going to make an assumption that the Benjamites were not born this way. Only 1 percent of the population is born ambidextrous. In other words, this is nurture over nature. This was not an innate talent. It was a hard-earned skill set.

"How did the Benjamites develop ambidexterity? And more importantly, why? Let me start with how, and then we’ll explore why. There is only one way to become an expert archer: lots of practice. The ten-thousand-hour rule is often referred to, but it’s also misinterpreted and misapplied. People falsely assume that it takes only ten thousand hours to achieve expertise in anything. But there’s a catch: if you practice the right thing the wrong way, it’s counterproductive. Doing something repeatedly won’t give you the results you’re looking for. This can be called naive practice, and it connotes half-hearted effort or half-minded focus. You develop bad habits while trying to build good habits. The key is something Anders Ericsson called 'deliberate practice,' and it’s three-dimensional.(1)"

Mark continues, "The first dimension is well-defined goals. These allow you to measure progress, and they facilitate a feedback loop. The second dimension is reverse engineering. It’s studying the best practices of others, then adopting them and adapting them to your unique situation... I read three thousand books before writing one, but I did more than read them. I reverse engineered them, trying to figure out the tricks of the trade. The third dimension is effort. Deliberate practice requires near-maximal effort, which is neither fun nor easy. When you’re training your body, you have to stress it beyond its ability to maintain homeostasis. For the record, this is good stress, or eustress. Anything less than 70 percent effort actually maintains the status quo. You’ve got to attempt things that are just beyond your ability.(1) The technical term is just manageable difficulty, or JMD. It can’t be so easy that you become bored or so difficult that you quit.

"I have no idea what the Benjamite 'CrossFit workout' looked like, but they got lots of blisters from drawing their bows. It took many years of deliberate practice for them to aim equally well with both eyes and both hands.

He then says, "Anders Ericcson offered one more piece of advice when it comes to deliberate practice: 'There is no point at which performance maxes out and additional practice does not lead to further improvement.'(1) In other words, you never age out. Don’t stop at ten thousand hours! Keep practicing till the day you die! That’s what winning the day is all about."

So, let's keep at it, okay?

Yes, yes!