Matt Hank

This post was inspired after reading the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.

Being heavily involved in the athletic community you hear comments all the time like “This kid was born to play baseball.  Her jump shot is smooth and natural.  This guy was born to a professional quarterback.”

First off, I do understand that genetics play a role in athletics (especially at the professional level – you can’t be 5’6 and be an NFL lineman or a 7’2 middle infielder).  Your height, fast twitch muscle fiber composition, limb length (including hand/foot size), some other physical characteristics (tendon attachment, bone articulations, etc.) are genetically predetermined.  However, when it comes to athletic skill it is hard to argue that individuals are born with greater genetic abilities to swing a bat, hit a volleyball, or kick a soccer ball.  When you start to understand that genes give way to certain characteristics and human physical traits, it is also important to understand that does not directly equate to athletic skill.  Humans do not come out of the womb with pre-wired neuromuscular pathways to hit home runs or run the 100-meter dash under 10 seconds.

Athletes become great because of the stimulus provided to them over the course of their life.

Many times what happens is, a child (or usually parent) realizes that they enjoy a sport and are pretty good at it.  Now this child starts to enjoy practice and has the motivation/internal drive to improve their skills even more (improve their neuromuscular pathways).  Now they live and breathe the sport so much that they spend all their free time watching it on TV (obtaining that visual stimulus to the brain).  Maybe the child doesn’t obsess over the sport, but they are given positive verbal stimulus from coaches and parents letting them know how good they are at the sport.  All these stimuli strengthen the child’s athletic skill set.

What about the kids that are “genetically” coordinated and fast/quick.  (Again fast twitch muscle fiber composition aside for this argument)  If you really start to analyze it from an early age, you begin to see that many of those fast kids play multiple sports.  They also spend all their free time outside playing with their friends – even if it’s just hide and seek, riding bikes, kicking the soccer ball around, playing hopscotch, or playing on the playground.  All these events provide a stimulus to the body and this child becomes more coordinated at controlling their body and improves their spatial awareness.

Was Tiger Woods born, I mean actually genetically predetermined to be the best golfer in the world?  My thought is no way!  How about the fact that he started hitting a golf ball when he was 2 years old, or that fact that his dad was an avid golfer (that’s a whole lot of stimulus provided to young Tiger Woods).  He took golf lessons and played in golf tournaments his entire life – he was preparing his body (the neuromuscular pathways) for greatness.

Let’s begin to look at athletic talent as something more than “genetic ability/potential”.  Understand that your body has the ability to adapt and change based on the stimulus you provide it whether it is physical, visual, emotional, or mental.  Hard work and deep/deliberate practice make an athlete great, not their chromosomes.

Train Hard-Train Smart
www.asap-pt.com

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Mindset, Program Design, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.