"Coyle describes a tennis academy in Russia where they enact rallies without a ball. The aim is to focus meticulously on technique. (Try to slow down your golf swing so it takes 90 seconds to finish. See how many errors you detect.)

By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance. "

At first I thought this article was the standard "it's not just innate" stuff (that people need to hear)... and that we need to practice, practice practice... but this idea of *changing* the automaticity process is worth pondering.

Now, it *does* rather overgeneralize - it's an extremely left-brained interpretation of learning - but I do wish that educators understood that sloppy habits prevent genius. I mean, clearly I would be an acclaimed genius were it not for my general slovenliness...