Elder Virtuosos: Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Aging and Skill

How do you maintain elite performance in late life?

Years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Doc Watson in concert. He was in his early 80s at the time.

Doc was one of the world’s greatest flatpicking guitarists, playing one of the most highly demanding technical styles (and one he helped originate). Despite his advanced age at the time I saw him, those technical skills had not diminished. His speed, tone, articulation, and timing were still world class.

He would continue to perform regularly up until his death at age 89. Here’s a video of Doc fingerpicking his iconic “Deep River Blues” at the age of 86:

Martha Algerich, who is 81 years old, is still widely regarded as one of the greatest living pianists. Here she is in a recent performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor:

Here we have two musicians in their 80s, with musical and technical skills that any professional musician a quarter their age would trade a medium-sized appendage for. The mere existence of Doc and Martha are at direct odds with conventional notions about an inevitable and inexorable decline from “aging”. How can we possibly square those notions with what we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears?

And yet, Martha and Doc are indeed outliers. That’s part of what makes these late life performances so remarkable. It is unusual to see people at their age performing at such an extraordinarily high level. It’s not the norm, which is where our expectations about aging come from to begin with.

So why are they outliers? Why isn’t world class skill in late life more common? Is there something unique about their brains that renders them impervious to the laws of biology (and if so, can we bottle it and sell it for a mighty sum?)?

Or are the laws wrong?

In 1996, researchers Ralf Krampe and Anders Ericsson published a study that examined that question.

In it, they took four groups of classical pianists: young amateurs, young experts, older amateurs, and older experts. Each subject was given a series of tests of various cognitive and motor abilities that are known to typically decline with age. The key was that some of the tested abilities were related to skills relevant to piano playing, while others were not.

What did they find?

For tasks that were unrelated to piano playing ('“general processing speed”), the younger subjects did better. In that case, age was the most significant factor accounting for the difference in performance.

For the tasks that were related to piano playing (“skill related tasks”), however, age was not a factor. The older experts performed as well as the young experts, and significantly better than the young amateurs.

Here’s the figure that demonstrates the key findings:

Krampe and Ericsson, 1996

And what was the key factor separating the amateurs from the experts?

Practice time.

Specifically, the single biggest predictor of performance on skill-related tasks was not age, but the amount of time spent practicing in the previous 10 years.

Furthermore, the influence of practice on performance was greatest in the older pianists.

Prodigies and Elder Virtuosos - 2 sides of the same coin

When we practice, our goal is to stimulate adaptations in the brain that ultimately make us better at whatever skill we’re practicing. Once those adaptations exist, we must then spend some of our time maintaining them (fortunately, the amount of practice time needed to maintain them is less than the time needed to acquire them). This means that better we get at anything, the more time we must devote to skill maintenance.

Ultimately, at the very highest levels of human performance, just maintaining capabilities requires lots of practice. This is why remaining at that level in any domain requires such a relentless, single-minded focus.

As the authors of the study mention, thanks to shifting goals, lifestyle, and priorities, it is unusual for someone to maintain that level of single-minded focus throughout their lives. Not surprisingly, early adulthood is the time where such single-mindedness is most common.

But, like the expert older pianists in the study, Doc and Martha continued to play and perform at a professional level, and continued to put in the work necessary to do so, throughout their lives.

And, as the research indicates, that is why they are outliers.

Not coincidentally, these findings nicely mirror the research on prodigies - children who display outlier levels of performance relative to their peers in a particular domain. As it is with the older experts, what is atypical in the case of prodigies is the amount of time spend practicing relative to their peers.

For example, it is estimated that Mozart, the prototypical example of a child prodigy, had amassed 3,500 hours of practice before his sixth birthday!

High levels of performance are unusual in both the very young and very old. In both cases, it’s not because of outlier brains, but outlier amounts of effective practice.

While this research does have practical applications for anyone who is interested in maintaining elite level performance as they get older, it’s the broader implications that are most important. No matter our age, what our brains can do is driven primarily by what we’ve been asking our brains to do.

Brainjo Bite: Why It’s Great To Be A Beginner

Just because it’s possible to stay at elite levels of performance for long periods of time doesn’t necessarily mean that you should, especially if doing so comes at the expense of learning new complex knowledge and skills.

That’s because, from the perspective of brain health, it’s great to be a beginner (click here to listen to the episode).

Brain Boosting Resources

In this section, I’ll provide some of my favorite recommended resources for improving brain health and function (I don’t receive anything for these recommendations, I just share what I like).

Product Recommendation: Casio Privia Keyboard

Since we’re on the topic of piano playing… a number of folks have asked for recommendations for a piano keyboard.

While real pianos are wonderful, keyboards have 3 things going for them that real pianos do not:

1. SIZE. An obvious advantage if space is limited.

2. SOUND. You’d have to spend quite a bit more to get a sound that rivals what you can get from an electronic keyboard (especially if you play with headphones on).

3. PRIVACY! I’ve heard from more than one person who was reluctant to practice on a real piano because they didn’t want others to hear them. Plug in a pair of headphones to a keyboard, and the sounds you make are for you and you alone.

As for as specific model, there are many great options out there. I’ve been playing a Casio Privia for years now and love it.

Course Recommendation: Piano Blast (The Brainjo Academy)

I’d be remiss to not recommend Brainjo’s “Piano Blast” course for building your piano-playing brain.

As with all Brainjo Academy music courses, it utilizes the Brainjo Method, a neuroscience-based system of instruction tailored for the adult learner, and designed to maximize the brain-boosting benefits of music. Click here to learn more.

The humanOS Newsletter: Exercise, Medication, and Depression

Depression is one of the most costly health conditions in the US — both in terms of economic burden and the human toll. US clinical guidelines currently promote medications as the first-line treatment.

Meanwhile, lifestyle interventions, like physical activity, are characterized as "complementary alternative treatments." Recently, some clinicians and researchers have started to question this approach.

Meanwhile a massive meta-analysis of more than a thousand randomized controlled trials examined how effectively exercise interventions can address symptoms of depression, and the findings may surprise you.

Click here to learn more about how exercise compares to medications for the treatment of major depression