Semi OT. What helps make a great athlete

[pinotbear]

With the various threads that revolve around Stef's (and others before her) efforts at transformational conditioning, the need to confront and rehab from injuries, identifying desirable recruits, etc., I thought this might be of interest. I've been helping coach softball for the Wayland Baseball & Softball Association for the past two years, and that org. forwards some interesting stuff.

http://changingthegameproject.com/more-important-than-talent/

 

[Icebear]

Great genes.

 

[meyers7]

Great genes.

My first thought.

 

[UcMiami]

Nice - thanks for posting. Wayland, MA?

 

[DobbsRover2]

Usually great genes in great jeans. And if you go with the guy who plays to his right, a ton of injected juice.

 

[DobbsRover2]

But seriously, suffering is one of the key elements in my sport of distance running, as the most famous XC slogan goes: "Pain is temporary, pride is foever." However, even for the most masochistic sufferers of all of us, there is a limit to how much you can overcome the genes you're born with. As noted in a previous post, David Epstein's great book The Sports Gene does a nice job of discussing all the complexity and nuances of nurture\suffering and nature\talent for moderate and elite athletes. As he notes, if you're born with a mass of fast twitch muscles you're not going to be an elite marathoner no matter how much you suffer, and the same is true for any slow-twitch types who dream of becoming Jesse Owens. But short guys can become the world's best high jumpers if they are built a certain way and work at it very very hard.

 

[pinotbear]

Nice - thanks for posting. Wayland, MA?

Wayland, MA, until recently: now Northbridge, MA. Prior to that, Mystic, Ct, for 22 years.