Are Elite Athletes Born or Made

JB Cases said:
One thing seems to be holding steady in the world of sports and well the world in general, those who practice harder and deeper for longer know more and win more than those who don't. Finding a situation where an elite athlete did NOT put in more time and more focus and go to extraordinary lengths in training is extremely rare.
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There are many sports where this is not only unnecessary, it is outright impossible.

My nephew Brian's son was a pretty hot pitcher when he was 8. At that age, the most hard throws you are supposed to make is about 100/week. Sure, he played catch a lot with his dad, but serious, dedicated practice time actually throwing fastballs - next to nothing compared to any pool player.

He's 14 now and is still going strong. Time will tell. He has all the desire, the eye, the heart, the knowledge that you might expect of a kid his age who desperately wants to pitch in the majors, but I personally think he will be too small by the time he is finished growing. His mom is a tiny thing and Brian is only about 5' 9" and weighs maybe 180. Damn genetics. May rob the kid of his dream.
 
Sloppy Pockets said:
There are many sports where this is not only unnecessary, it is outright impossible.

My nephew Brian's son was a pretty hot pitcher when he was 8. At that age, the most hard throws you are supposed to make is about 100/week. Sure, he played catch a lot with his dad, but serious, dedicated practice time actually throwing fastballs - next to nothing compared to any pool player.

He's 14 now and is still going strong. Time will tell. He has all the desire, the eye, the heart, the knowledge that you might expect of a kid his age who desperately wants to pitch in the majors, but I personally think he will be too small by the time he is finished growing. His mom is a tiny thing and Brian is only about 5' 9" and weighs maybe 180. Damn genetics. May rob the kid of his dream.
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Could be. If you're physically unable to perform a task then that's how it is. The point is that among competitors of relatively equal physical prowess it's rare to find an elite performer who didn't ALSO put in more time.

In other words no major league pitchers who got there on 50% of the work. Which is what "born to be" would indicate.

Now I could certainly agree with born to be able to. If a certain physical attribute absolutely must be present to perform a task and it's not then the person born without it will be unable to perform it without some kind of assistance.

And sometimes people do overcome physical limitations and perform at high levels despite physical handicaps.

I always get a kick out of these threads because they basically contain three kinds of people, the one side is adamant that every person has a certain capacity and is limited. The other side thinks people possess pretty much unlimited capacity if they simply have the desire to unlock their potential. And the third kind are the ones who say it's somewhere in the middle.

I think it's somewhere in the middle and leaning more towards unlimited potential. Why? Well because we as humans can simply do MORE now than we as humans could do at any time in history. The average human is smarter than the average human a hundred years ago, the average human is faster, the average human is stronger, the average human lives longer, in just about all sports the performances are way higher than in the past.

So count me as a believer in progress, discovery, improvement, science and potential.
 
PhilosopherKing said:
What if you took 100 clones of the same baby... Do you think the curve would look any different?
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If they were genetically identical clones and were raised as I said exactly the same then yes I do.

Environmental factors that are uncontrolable and that alter individuals beyond pure genetics would stop each from reaching the exact same level but the standard deviations on the group would be clustered far closer together.
 
easy-e said:
Lol. Doyle Brunson, the elite athlete.
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Doyle was a good athlete as a younster. He was a pro basketball prospect until an injury ended his athletic aspirations. He was all-state in high school and also won a state event as a miler in track.

Edit: I see this has already been mentioned. Pardon moi.
 
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punter said:
Doyle was a good athlete as a younster. He was a pro basketball prospect until an injury ended his athletic aspirations. He was all-state in high school and also won a state event as a miler in track.

Edit: I see this has already been mentioned. Pardon moi.
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I'll try to clarify. I am sure many great athletes are poker players. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to say that someone is a great athlete solely because they play poker at a high level.
 
easy-e said:
I'll try to clarify. I am sure many great athletes are poker players. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to say that someone is a great athlete solely because they play poker at a high level.
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Poker, backgammon, chess, mah jong, dominos, scrabble = games, no physical skill involved.

Pool, golf, tennis, bowling, shooting, curling = sport, physical skill involved.

Lou Figueroa
 
Celtic said:
If you take 100 babies from birth, raise them in nearly identical fashion, put them all into rigorous training for the same sport where shear size is not an overwhelming factor to success (like basketball and being 5 foot 9) after 20 years some of those kids would be "great" at that chosen sport.

BUT you are going to have a statistically normal curve showing that most of those 100 kids fall into a central lump of fairly strong play, some of those kids despite being brought up in the game are going to be lower then the curve, there will be an outlier or two way below the curve that simply could not do it and who never played at the speed of the norm, and there will be one or two outliers at the top of the curve who simply rose faster then all of the other kids, they showed dominance early and as the training progressed their skills increased far faster then the norm and they pulled farther and farther away from the pack.

You cannot simply dedicate 10,000 hours into something and be a pro. If you could I WOULD go play golf for 10,000 hours and become a pro, I would LOVE to have that life. But I know for an absolute fact that in that game that 10,000 hours simply would not get me even close to the lower ranks/tours of pro level golf. I might be a 70-something golfer after that time, single digit handicap, and for me that would be outstanding, but it would still completely suck compared to the pros.
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Good post, and based on reality, not fantasy.
 
JB Cases said:
Finding a situation where a person is an elite athlete and they did NOT put in more time and deeper practice and extraordinary practice than their competitors is extremely rare.

In other words talent predicts that some people excel with less practice. But the reality is that it's very rare to find that a person reaches elite status having put in less time than other world class competitors.
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How do you explain the people who have put in more time than top players, love the game more than anything, took many lessons, library of video's, table at home, dedicated their life to the game and never even made it to a A level speed? I know 25 players, who play 6 days a week and most have played over 30 years and never played better than a B level.
 
lfigueroa said:
http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/

Lou Figueroa
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Interesting that they chose musicians and chess players to look at.

I remember reading about the great chess grandmaster Jose Capablanca. As a toddler he used to watch his father playing chess with his friends. One day when he was about four he walked over to the table and moved one of his father's pieces. Turned out to be one of those moves they notate in the books with a ! after it, i.e. brilliant move. Within no time he was beating most of the adults in town. He had had zero actual experience playing the game at the time of that first great move.
 
backplaying said:
How do you explain the people who have put in more time than top players, love the game more than anything, took many lessons, library of video's, table at home, dedicated their life to the game and never even made it to a A level speed? I know 25 players, who play 6 days a week and most have played over 30 years and never played better than a B level.
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I would say that those people are not REALLY training. They are spending time playing, socializing, matching up but they are not looking to go pro nor training as if they want to.

Anyone can have a library of videos that doesn't mean they actually study them and absorb them. Doesn't mean that they can repeat a single lesson from them.

Anyone can read books on how to do something but if they don't ingest that material and work it completely then they won't really get much better.

Training is what SVB does, spending hours and hours, up to 18 one day, working on the break until there is nothing he doesn't know about breaking a ten ball rack. Training is doing what John Schmidt said and stroking till your fingers bleed.

That's dedication and desire. Training is also working on your mental game to insure you can't be fazed when the heat is on.

Social players who love the game and spend every available moment don't realy train, they just carry on a love affair with a cruel mistress.
 
lfigueroa said:
Poker, backgammon, chess, mah jong, dominos, scrabble = games, no physical skill involved.

Pool, golf, tennis, bowling, shooting, curling = sport, physical skill involved.

Lou Figueroa
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I think real-life poker requires physical skill. Maintaining the right expression so as not to give away your hand is a physical skill in my opinion. Not the type of muscles we think of for athletics but certainly physical.
 
backplaying said:
How do you explain the people who have put in more time than top players, love the game more than anything, took many lessons, library of video's, table at home, dedicated their life to the game and never even made it to a A level speed? I know 25 players, who play 6 days a week and most have played over 30 years and never played better than a B level.
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That's easy they maxed out their potential. .... Any one who has ever coached kids knows some learn much faster than others , given the exact same training ,, I have had kids that no matter how much I tried to teach them they just could not do it ,, while others grasp it the first time ,,,
The best coaches in the world go thru hundreds to thousands of kids while only turning out a small percentage of elite quality students

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JB Cases said:
I think real-life poker requires physical skill. Maintaining the right expression so as not to give away your hand is a physical skill in my opinion. Not the type of muscles we think of for athletics but certainly physical.
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Physical tells in live poker are overrated. Not saying they can't be used, but paying attention to bet sizes and patterns is a much more reliable way to hand read.
 
lfigueroa said:
http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/20/10000-hours-may-not-make-a-master-after-all/

Lou Figueroa
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That`s a good article you linked there. But again I think they have misconstrued what Ericksen and Gladwell said. They noted that it was extremely rare to find a world-class expert in something who did not put in at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. They never said that 10,000 hours was all that was necessary to become an expert. I think its more accurate to think of the 10,000 hours as a needed ingredient, but there are obviously some other intangibles that are harder to quantify that really separate those who are merely good from those who are great.
 
DaddysVisa said:
That`s a good article you linked there. But again I think they have misconstrued what Ericksen and Gladwell said. They noted that it was extremely rare to find a world-class expert in something who did not put in at least 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. They never said that 10,000 hours was all that was necessary to become an expert. I think its more accurate to think of the 10,000 hours as a needed ingredient, but there are obviously some other intangibles that are harder to quantify that really separate those who are merely good from those who are great.
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A little CnP


In recent years it has become clear that the 10-year rule is not actually a rule, but an average, with substantial variation around the mean. Exceptions to the 10-year rule have been found across the arts, sciences, sports and leadership. Some people take much longer than 10 years to become an expert, whereas others get to the same point in far less time. For instance, four-time Ironman triathlete world champion Chrissie Wellington didn't compete professionally until the age of 30, but won her first world championship less than a year later.




These findings suggest that a concept such as talent may be required to help explain the development of high performance. But what is talent? Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton argues that talent is best thought of as any package of personal characteristics that accelerates the acquisition of expertise, or enhances performance given a certain amount of expertise. In other words, talent allows a person to "get better faster" or "get more bang for the buck" out of a given amount of expertise.


Again I think most who ever have coached or played a lot of sports would agree with this assessment
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one stroke said:
... Exceptions to the 10-year rule have been found across the arts, sciences, sports and leadership. Some people take much longer than 10 years to become an expert, whereas others get to the same point in far less time. ...
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Such as Joe Bachelor who is said to have run 100 by the time he had played six months. The book I mentioned before gives good examples on both sides.
 
lfigueroa said:
Poker, backgammon, chess, mah jong, dominos, scrabble = games, no physical skill involved.

Pool, golf, tennis, bowling, shooting, curling = sport, physical skill involved.

Lou Figueroa
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Many here will argue with you about the poker thing (and probably the rest of your no-skill "games"). If you took pool and shooting off your "sport" list we'd be jibing.
 
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