There is also a distinction between practice at an early age, when habits and neural connections are forming, and practice as an adult. It’s damned difficult to take up almost any activity as an adult and get to the very top, no matter how talented you are OR how much time you put into it.
Sure there is: Doping!
OK, so make it a dunking contest, then. I definitely won’t win that one. 
I take your point, but doping won’t allow you to transcend your genetics either - all the Dianobol in the pharmacopeia isn’t going to make me bench 500.
As gene therapy advances, in twenty five years, though, there is going to be a new generation of genetically-modified athletes who are going to blast every existing record out of the books.
Sure, but they aren’t saying it because it’s real. They are saying it because positive thinking can overcome many barriers, and some hard-training athlete can out-perform a lazy genetic superstar.
If you say you can, you may or may not be right. If you say you can’t, you are sure to be right.
Regards,
Shodan
The effect of positive thinking has been studied; last time I checked there was correlation between such and better performance. I can believe it is true.
But, given that, I hate the extrapolation that you can do anything if you just try hard enough, wish for it often enough etc. I was having this argument with my friend the other day - I was saying I’m low functioning. It’s no big deal to me, but she had a real difficult time with the concept; as if everyone is at the same level of ability, has the same potential etc.
Personally, I’d rather be thought of someone who acts rationally and reasonably given the circumstances than someone who is too lazy to live up to their potential. YMMV.
In my case, all the archery practice in the world wouldn’t make up for me being unable to see the target. It takes an external intervention such as glasses to make the difference. I’m another one chiming in to say that practice takes us to the limits of our capabilities, but that capabilities differ between people.
A million American students today may want to be President of the United States, but only about a dozen or fewer can.
Gabrielle Reece was a 6’3" volleyball All-American at Florida State U. She turned pro and played on the beach volleyball circuit, winning a World Championship and being one of, if not the best, player in the world.
She retired from volleyball, hired a full-time golf coach (actually Butch Harmon, one of the two or three best coaches in the world) and trained every day to make it on the LPGA Tour. She gave up after four years without making it, or even coming very close, despite having world class athletic talent.
I pulled that number out of my shorts, so I cheerfully admit you could be right, but you can’t go by the number of people who have done it, since we’re talking about a hypothetical person who does everything he can to achieve a four-minute mile, including years of optimal training, and way, way less than one in a thousand people do that. I’d guess a fair number of pro soccer players might have come close to four minutes, if they had spent years training for the mile, rather than soccer.
If you have figures that suggest that, say, only one in a thousand medium distance runners who gets a track scholarship to a college can ever do it, that would be conclusive. But my impression was that these days, you have to be pretty close to a four-minute miler in high school to get a D1 scholarship.
And of course, there are bound to be some people who were too busy with other things to ever play any sports, and so never realized that they had extraordinary talent. Tiger Woods would probably be an insurance salesman if his dad hadn’t been an ardent golfer.
California 2014 High School Track-1600 meters/mile
1600-Out of 11251 runners, 7 went under 4:10 (roughly 4:11.5 mile)
Mile-Out of 643 runners, 1 went under 4:10 (4:06)
As schools replace their old dirt tracks, the 1600 replaces the full mile.
Deeply ironic OP user handle.
It would have a lot to do with how many other people are practicing very hard. At present I am at the top of my class in primitive flight shooting. I hold a few world records. It doesn’t mean much to me though as not that many other folks are really working hard to break my records. I have practiced a little but as competition grows stiffer. (others practice more) My records will fall and I may be too old to get them back.
Michael Jordan trained hard to play professional baseball. Never got out of the minor league.
I’ve heard he plays golf and trains hard. He’s not even close to joining the PGA…
The running seems plausible to this layman of the athletic sciences; one’s genes can determine the limits of their musculature and endurance. But what talents are implicated in golf except for those that can be honed by practice? Form, consistency, muscle memory, mentality, recognition of the lay of the course, et cetera – what exactly would prevent most people from acquiring these skills if they put in the requisite tens of thousands of hours of directed practice?
Probably not, but there have been people as short as 5’3" to play in the NBA.
Michael Jordan didn’t actually train that hard to be a pro baseball player or golfer. At least not compared to an actual professional. He also didn’t do either when he was at an age where he could have competed with the top players in either sport.
Probably true, but it’s hard to know given most people, even professionals, probably don’t reach their theoretical genetic potential. Even at a professional level, such things are clear when you look at people like Chris Webber or RG3. Sometimes, it’s the situation or the metal factor, but I think part of what makes some athletes so transcendence is because we think they squeezed the most out of their genes and innate talent, and because such a thing seems pretty rare.
Can you succeed just based on hard work? No, not at the elite level. You need both innate talent and hard work.
I recall seeing a documentary about Lance Armstrong. His physiology makes him really good at biking. His heart, lungs, lactic acid, etc. are all better than a normal persons. I knew a guy in college who was physiologically built like him. On a lark he decided to run a half marathon (he said he had run once or twice in the last year or so). He came in second with no training.
Read up on the Dan Plan sometime. He is an ex-photographer who decided ‘I’m going to practice golf for 10,000 hours and see if I can turn pro’. He is attempting to see if the idea that practice is all it takes is true. I think he is golfing a 70 on an 18 hole course, not sure if that is professional grade or not since I don’t follow the sport.
Isn’t height considered a disadvantage in golf? A lot of ex NBA guys play and not that well.
Gabrielle Reece was mentioned earlier. Same issue. very tall
http://www.golfchannel.com/media/wie-offers-tips-tall-players/
if I remember correctly, par is for a scratch golfer, pros are way beyond that. A pro should score well under par. Still looking for cites.
Yes, most players on major college teams would have a plus handicap, which means that they should easily shoot in the 60’s on an average golf course. The courses the pros play typically have faster greens, narrower fairways, higher rough, and longer yardages, which is why even very talented amateurs shoot high scores when they attempt them. For example, in 1996, Tiger Woods was about to win his third straight US Amateur Championship, which pretty much made him the best amateur in the world at the time, and he shot 75-75 and missed the cut at the Masters that year.
He did better the following year.
I think part of the underlying attitude for the “You can achieve anything if you try hard enough” notion is that people want to think that the only thing that holds people back is their inner motivation. This is like telling poor people to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Sure, many can improve themselves greatly through harder work, but for many others, they can’t. Sometimes we run into the hard limits of circumstances.