Books: “The Talent Code”

Daniel Coyle wrote my favorite cycling book: “Tour de Force,” which for some reason was published in America under the more bellicose title “Lance Armstrong’s War.” His latest book is called “The Talent Code.” It features all the things I loved about “Tour de Force”: bright, lively, descriptive writing loaded with interesting anecdotes and personalities.

“Talent Code” (Bantam Books, 246 pages) doesn’t deal much with cycling. The sport is only mentioned in a footnote on page 34. Still, the book is a great read for sports-minded folks and anyone who’s interested in how we can better use our brains. Like me, Coyle is curious about how certain people got so good at various things. Why are Brazilians so great at soccer? How did South Korean women become so dominant in golf and the Russians take over tennis? Coyle argues that the athletes and, most important, their coaches do things in the same way. They do what Coyle calls “deep practice.”

The central character in the book is myelin, a substance made of dense fat that wraps around our nerve fibers like electrical tape, preventing electrical impulses from leaking out. Coyle explains, “Basically, our brains are bundles of wires – 100 billion wires called neurons, connected to each other by synapses. Whenever you do something, your brain sends a signal through those chains of nerve fibers to your muscles. Each time you practice anything – sing a tune, swing a club, read this sentence – a different highly specific circuit lights up in your mind, sort of like a string of Christmas lights.” Myelin wraps these circuits together, making thick lines of bandwidth.

Coyle says research shows that various forms of “deep practice” help create myelin. Deep practice involves repetition and struggle: doing something, making a mistake, identifying the mistake, correcting it and trying it again and again and again until you’ve mastered the task. “Each time we deeply practice a nine-iron swing or a guitar chord or a chess opening, we are slowly installing broadband in our circuitry. We are firing a signal that those tiny green tentacles sense; they react by reaching toward the nerve fibers. They grasp, squish and they make another wrap, thickening the sheath. They build a little more bandwidth and precision to the skill circuit, which translates into an infinitesimal bit more skill and speed.” Myelin helps wrap together the thicker bandwidth.

The footnote about cycling argues that Lance Armstrong did “deep practice” by having a “maniacal focus on errors” and optimizing every dimension of the race in other ways. He’s famous for doing reconnaissance workouts that helped him memorize every inch of the race course.

My only complaint about the book is that at times it reads too much like a grant proposal – albeit a fun-to-read one – for more funding for myelin research. I wonder if there are informed skeptics out there who might not agree that myelin is the wonder substance that Coyle and the many scientists he quotes claims it to be. Or perhaps some experts don’t agree that there’s such a connection between deep practice and myelin building. If so, I would have liked to hear about the debate. Who knows? Maybe there are no skeptics. I must apologize for my readers for not researching this a bit further on my own. But I’m lucky enough to find a bit of time to read such books, and I’m glad I read this one.