Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I have often been through stages where I have trained for long periods by myself. At the end of these periods I have often thought that I have made a real break through in strength only to realize that this is not at all true when I am completely schooled on going out with someone else. I hadn't realized until reading this post that it is quite a common misconception in general and is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

So the learning is training in isolation is dangerous if you benchmark yourself mentally against what you think is good performance. Malcolm Smith seems to have been fairly successful in training in isolation so it is definitely possible but just be careful not to over estimate the effect.

1 comment:

  1. Great post! Even when you're tracking data, climbing itself is so complex its hard to know where you stand until you go outside. Yangshuo is looming for me... Wonder I will get on. Yay, for a climbing holiday... :-)

    ps. replaced my ethan Pringle routine with a four minute continual encore session (two handed shifting bewteen smaller holds and bigger holds). Do it 5 times with 10min breaks inbetween. Feels intense and realistic. Hope it will have better cross over to real climbing; and its less tweaky on the elbows..

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