How much of a chance could a typical person have to reach (or get close to) the peak
performance of an elite athlete, if he tried hard enough and worked at it hard enough?
For the sake of argument we’ll say roughly the same height and build as a top
athlete in the sport in question (hence basketball players would have different
base physical requirements than say football offensive linemen). Assume also that
they would have access to the same training tools and nutritional supplements
that the pros would have, and they have been working at it since at least age 10
or so.
In other words how much is the performance of Woods, Federer, LaDamian
Tomlinson, Lebron James, et al. due to nature, and how much is due to nurture?
Are there people out there who would have made it with the proper tools and
motivation, but gave up (for whatever reasons) somewhere along the line? Or
does natural talent eventually come into play at some level, weeding out those
with lesser gifts no matter how hard they try to keep up?
I realize that there is a lot there to cover, so feel free to tackle a few aspects at
a time. I guess us normal types have this fantasy that we could have made it in
sport X if we had started early enough, but by the time we got the motivation the
opportunity was gone. There’s always those few late bloomers to consider (like
that guy who played for the Eagles IIRC a few years ago).
Of the major NA pro sports I think hockey defenseman might be one of the easier
ones, if you had years of experience. There’s always been defensemen who
at least had reps of not being stellar physical specimens (Larry Murphy) having
long successful careers, as anticipation is 9/10ths of the battle-but what do I know?
I think there are two different groups here, really absolutely top class almost freakishly good athletes like several you have mentioned and then your average professional. I know from my years around sport in Australia that the majority of professionals come from the top tier of junior sport but aren’t necessarily the most naturally gifted but rather those with the most desire, conviction and ego resources.
I’ve met/known a few professional athletes, although none were of the super-freak athlete type. They were, however, the most amazingly dedicated and competitive people I have ever met. Their determination to suceed surpasses almost everything else in their lives.
I don’t think you can train that into a person.
Come to think of it, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are described in the same terms, so maybe they’re all like that.
As Lamar Mundane points out, pro athletes are generally astonishingly hard-working, competitive people. However, some people unquestionably are more physically gifted than others.
As anyone who’s been on this board awhile knows I am a passionate fan of baseball, and I have played a lot of baseball. I’m a big guy - 6’2" - but the absolute fastest I can throw a baseball is about seventy miles an hour. That might sound fast but it’s not. With a LOT of training I might have been able to get to 80, but that’s still not nearly enough to be a major league pitcher. On the other hand, Pedro Martinez, who is a small man and doesn’t appear to be very strong, was able to throw a fastball 97 miles an hour. A few years back I played a practice game against a team with a girl third baseman who couldn’t have been 5’7", 140 pounds tops, and she had an arm like a rifle - I mean, 85 MPH easy.
Some people’ arms are simply built to throw the ball really, really hard, and some are not.
Now, maybe there’s some sport I never tried very hard that didn’t require a strong arm that I coulda been good at, but likely not. It’s impossible to watch someone like Wayne Gretzky - himself not a terribly impressive physical specimen - and not think some guys are just born with a knack. Some people are born smarter than others; some are born better athletes than others. And it’s not just physical strength and speed, as Wayne Gretzky demonstrates.
I know a guy, who won the masters cycling road race in a competitive southern state twice. He also set it up for his master’s team at least once. He drinks a lot. His training is to quit drinking for a while. He is quite fat when in bad shape. The man killed us. Talent is incredible. Unfortunately training only helps
I am going partially agree with Rick many top athletes are genetic freaks of one type or another.
Lance Armstrong’s VO2 max is way over normal
It was reported in Sports Illustrated that Mark Spiz (7 gold medals for swimming) had knees that bent slightly forward. Giving him just that much more kick.
But in addition to that, you have to have the opportunity and dedication.
There might be 10,000 other guys that have Lance’s VO2 max numbes (or better) but if they never get on a bike…
Or if they party all the time in the off season instead of training (see Jan Ullrich)
Being an elite endurance athlete is highly dependent on genes. Being able to be the best in that field is a matter of how efficient one’s body is in utilizing oxygen, how quickly one’s body dissipates heat, and so on. I forget the exact number, but I believe a hard-training runner simply cannot modify their VO2 max, a key measure of performance, by more than 10-15%(?). This is less than the advantage the top atheletes are born with. Nothing to be done about it.
Most top athletes, in addition to all the hard work, chose their parents carefully. In other words, heredity has a great deal to do with one’s physical ability.
I worked a couple years with a guy who used to be on the Packers practice squad. He said there were all types of players.
Some guys were religious about training, practicing, eating right, working out and lived and breathed their passion for the sport every day. They gave it 100% dedication. Some of these guys were good and some struggled to make the cut.
He said there were also the ones who were just naturally gifted, ate whatever they liked, liked to party a lot (drinking, etc.), would just coast through practices, and were still stars of the team.
He said a lot of the 100% dedicated guys resented the naturally gifted ones.
Training, dedication, etc. certainly enhance any athelete’s skills, but I’d say top athletes are special human beings, genetically. People used to blabber about how hard Larry Bird worked to overcome his deficiencies, slowness, etc., but jeez he was always an extremely coordinated 6’9" guy who saw everything on the court, could jump easily and shoot the ball perfectly under intense pressure from some of the best athletes in the world. Can’t train that sort of thing up. Carl Lewis could always run faster and jump farther than anyone else around him, Jim Brown was always better than anyone on the field and Ted Williams could always hit better than anyone, etc. Of course I’m exaggerating a bit, but generally the same can be said of all top athletes, none trained themselves up to that level IMHO, but simply enhanced what they had. I used to do a little sports stringer work when I was in school for the local newspaper, and got to cover a lot of pro, college and amateur stuff, and once you got close up even at the lower levels of the sports you could sense how well put-together those guys were, amazing physcial specimens.
Bird steals the ball! Bird steals the ball!
Anyone could become a top athlete if they participated in gene therapy. However, this is explicitly prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency: http://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibitedlist.ch2
I’m not sure if any born human being has actually been genetically modified for sport so I can’t say for sure if gene therapy would work in practice.
However, even with gene therapy, I think it would be very hard for a single person to be a top athlete across the spectrum of sports. For road cycling, you need a large amount of slow twitch versus your fast twitch muscles to enable you to ride for a long time. In sprint events such as a 100 m running sprint, you need a large mount of fast twitch versus slow twitch muscles. To be Bruce Lee, you would need to have a very well developed nervous system to allow you to move like lightning. To be a good swimmer, you would need feet like those of Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. To be a basketball player, you would have to be a giant and be able to put your arms around three girls at once . Well, you get the idea.
Each person’s body type will be better geared towards some sports than others. You can’t be world class at everything no matter how hard you train.
Now with that in mind, has anybody perfected the technique of downloading the human brain? I bet I can pay a evil scientist to make me a hundred bodies, each specialized at a different sport
I would have to disagree with you here. Lee was a martial artist first and THEN an actor. Have you seen the bad acting in his movies? The guy’s acting doesn’t cut the cheese but it was the eloquence of his fighting scenes that helped to gain him fame.
Even though Bruce didn’t participate in many fights, he is still a top athlete because there is more than one way of becoming considered the best at what you do.
Even at the level of sport I play, there are guys who don’t train, yet are stars of the team, and those that work their tails off just to be meideocre.
Talk like this will get you killed in some parts of the world.
I’ve often thought that if you are not genetically the right body type for any given sport, then you’re never going to reach the elite levels, you’ll always be beaten by those who do possess the right genetic mix and at best would only get to be better-than-average.
Though that may depend on the sport. Archery, or bowls, or sports of that ilk, might be within anybody’s capabilities, potentially.
Wayne Gretzky had a rink in his backyard and he played everyday. They couldn’t get him off the thing.
I have a rink in my backyard and my kids could care less.
I think that some people have a natural affinity towards certain activities. Then they have the opportunity to express that affinity. Part natural gift, part luck.
I would say no. Being "roughly the same height and build " isn’t enough. In addition to the above mentioned desire, etc. you also need the correct ratio of fast twitch/slow twitch muscles in your body architecture.
The OP mentions the top athletes in their respective sports. Jordan, Gretzky, Woods, even the top tiers players in their sports can’t be like them. If you change the question to asking if a ‘average person’ can earn a living in professional sports, I say yes. The league minimums are still more than I make. You’re not going to be a pitcher, a goalie, a power forward without some natural talent. But if you are smart, can perform sport-tasks consistently and have some drive, I think you could be a lineman, a winger, an outfielder.
I know it’s a common thread around here, so I don’t want to get bogged down in “Is Golf a sport”, but the average guys in golf are merely statistically consistent with occasional moments of luck. They play a lot, and rarely have multiple consecutive bad shots.
. Well, you get the idea.
The guy’s acting doesn’t cut the cheese but it was the eloquence of his fighting scenes that helped to gain him fame.