Sacrificed Basic Skill For Awesome Training / Real Life

• Unfortunately, this is often Truth in Television: many child prodigies tend to practice and allocate all their resources on their skills so often that they neglect some very basic aspects on growth into a fully socialized person. This is particularly true in regions or education programs that focus on good grades and high test scores, such as the Advanced Placement system, as they spend almost all of their time teaching students how to do well academically. In more intense cases, the time that students normally spend socializing, like during lunch or after school, is taken up by further studying. It has become an issue as of the 2010s, with growing awareness of people graduating from universities with no idea what to do next, as they were only taught how to receive that degree without being told what to do with it or what employers want.
• This is also why education has almost eliminated grade skipping in recent years, as the 10 year olds graduating college found themselves unemployable, over-educated, with no social or "soft" skills, and no way to gain those skills, as they had no peers with which to interact.
• Big business college athletics in the United States has been noted as suffering from this, especially with the presence of sports scholarships in some universities leading to cases of players able to get, essentially, joke degrees that have no practical benefit to them. If players then manage to make it into professional ranks at some point when they're forced to retire many realize they have no useful skills outside of the sport. This is often exacerbated by the effect of fame and fans so their ability to socialize like a normal person when they're no longer the center of attention can be hampered. On top of this, they likely lack much in the way of saving despite the high pay that pro athletes (at least pro male athletes) often receive because of the combination of being expected to maintain a glamorous lifestyle that requires spending large amounts of money on expensive homes, cars, and other luxuries and the medical expenses that result from the injuries that are suffered over their careers. Many professional leagues now offer, essentially, life-skills classes and support so ex-athletes can manage to survive off the field. There are also efforts to clamp down on the fake athletic degrees so the college athletes have at least some kind of a real education.
• Pro sports teams outside the US college athletics ecosystem are simultaneously better and worse at this, because they do their talent-spotting through relationships with the local youth leagues and start recruiting promising rookies before they're even old enough to be applying to colleges. This avoids the problem of talented young athletes being forced into an academic career they're not interested in or suited for (not to mention the perverse incentives created by college sports being as marketable as they are Stateside), but it results in particularly impressive rookies signing contracts for very impressive salaries when they've barely reached the age of majority and have absolutely no life-experience when it comes to what to do with all that cash. Conspicuous Consumption, excessive partying and bad financial decisions in general often follow, sometimes with tragic consequences. And if they get past that phase without harming their ability to continue playing professionally they're still going to retire from the sport at some point and figure out what to do with the rest of their lives with nothing but a highschool education to fall back on if they're not cut out to be coaches or team managers.
• Some argue that the Autism Spectrum Disorder is just an exaggerated example of this, reasoning that the person sacrificed social skills for their "special interests". Some autistics would agree but put it another way: that socializing is simply the neurotypical "special interest", and that to autistics themselves, other children were/are simply not interesting.
• This is sometimes the case with musicians who received formal educations at Berklee or similarly prestigious institutions and then attempt to start or join bands with no formal band experience. They generally have all the technical knowledge and ability in the world, but they also frequently have no idea how to write a full-fledged song that sticks with the listener, an overly sterile and robotic feel because they never really developed one on their own (you can't exactly teach feel, after all), and no idea how to function in a band setting, which often leads to frequent turnover if they're the leader (as they often wind up being difficult to work with and/or are egotistical assholes) and a steady stream of ejections if they're not (as they frequently try to take control of the band or just have trouble working with others in general).
• In some species of termites, soldiers have powerful jaws, toxins, or even the ability to squirt glue at predators that attack the colony. This comes at the expense of being able to feed themselves — they require workers to feed them.
• Extremely advanced degree programs (learning how to be a specialist doctor, for example) sometimes erode away any social skills an aspiring doctor had built up at that point, due to spending 20 hours a day, every day, for 6-8 years studying biology, medicine, and human physiology.
• Racing Thoroughbred horses are among the fastest breeds in the world, thanks to an incredibly rigid schedule to get them that way. They spend the vast majority of the day in their stall, with their only outdoors time being at the track, training for the track, or at the vet to make sure they're still healthy enough for the track, so Retired or rejected horses take off at a gallop on anything remotely resembling a racetrack, and often just in the presence of other horses, because that's the only time they meet. The first thing that owners of ex-racehorses need to teach them is how to socialize without competing, and the second is basic riding cues that most grown horses know as a foundation for every other riding discipline. Like "slow down," or "turn left/right."
  • Many vets have noted that the immense training both shortens their lifespans and quality of life. Most horses reach their prime at six or eight years old and live well into their twenties or thirties, but a professional racehorse is often retired at 6-8 years if they're not outright euthanized for health issues.
  • On top of their training, Thoroughbreds in general are notorious for being high-maintenance and prone to injury, so a common joke is that ANY other breed is hardier than a Thoroughbred.
• Toughening your knuckles is one of the Required Secondary Powers if you want to be a fighter. That said, the sacrifice comes if you toughen them too much, to the point where it's difficult to write (since finger dexterity is reliant on cartilage inside the joints of the hands, some of these being the knuckles).
• As a form of government, constitutional monarchy requires this of the monarch and their immediate heirs. A constitutional monarch must be educated from a young age about what is expected of them and what is permitted from them, since all it takes is a few seemingly small deviations and the monarchy could fall. (Just ask the Greek, Italian, and Portuguese royals.) This education frequently comes at the expense of a more "normal" one. However, if a constitutional monarchy is diligent about educating its dynasts, it can retain incredible staying power and even allow its country to punch above its weight diplomatically and culturally (as the British monarchy powerfully shows).