How much does genetics affect running?

The key to running really fast is picking the right parents.[/quote]

Ok I'll choose Sara and Ryan Hall.

If we stay at checking success at existing running families in history we see that genetics is of utmost importance.There is of course lots of examples of this......

I myself coach / coached 3 Kenyan brothers, and all of them very talented without exception. Knut and Arne Kvalheim , Norway, was at the world elite back in their time.

If you study genetics you will find that genes for a special skill can be latent for a generation or more and only bloom when the two parents` genes interact. Gjert Ingebrigtsen has also trained some other Norwegians, but of course far from the results of his sons. You don`t get 3 brothers run the times they have done if they were not extremely talented for running. It`s mission impossible to shape a world record holder ( in natural way ) without tons of talent......even I cannot possibly perform such a magical work... )))

- The Wizard -

Well well. Given that you’re not lying through your teeth, guess how much FASTER you’d be if you had been as over-zealous as your teammates about training. But you missed out. You wasted it.

Work is relative to your talent. At least your friends got the most out of themselves while you were sitting on your ass, a 3:50 miler to be, and never pulled it off because you didn’t care enough.

What you don’t understand is that the sport of running is meant to motivate you to transform yourself to be the best version of yourself. I’m surprised you even lasted through college.

Brittle Master 1958 wrote:

15_50 wrote:

the ability to be motivated/dedicated is a talent. I honestly think people miss that element.

^This.

Garry Kasparov, probably the greatest chessplayer who ever lived, understood this key point.

Talent is really just a vague undefinable concept that cannot even be demonstrated to exist unless you liberate it from the chains of potential by working hard.

Kasparov said: "I have a talent for hard work."

What he says is not true and what all world-beaters in their respective skill say. I mean, of course someone whose good at something is not gonna say it’s because he’s talented. That’s terrible marketing and bad for publicity.

Plus, chess is a skill and infinitely more nuanced. It’s not physical.

There's literally a book about this. "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein. Read it.

hansen9952 wrote:

Brittle Master 1958 wrote:

^This.

Garry Kasparov, probably the greatest chessplayer who ever lived, understood this key point.

Talent is really just a vague undefinable concept that cannot even be demonstrated to exist unless you liberate it from the chains of potential by working hard.

Kasparov said: "I have a talent for hard work."

What he says is not true and what all world-beaters in their respective skill say. I mean, of course someone whose good at something is not gonna say it’s because he’s talented. That’s terrible marketing and bad for publicity.

Plus, chess is a skill and infinitely more nuanced. It’s not physical.

There is the 10,000 hour rule - to become great at something, you need to put in at least 10k hours. Talent gives you a head start, but in the end the ones who work harder and longer surpass the more talented ones.

Take away 10 years of running 6 miles to school and back home every day from African runners and put them in a classic US city on the standard fast food diet. Tada! Suddenly they won't be world class anymore, and would be happy to run a sub 5:30 mile.

Getting a scholarship is all that some people want from the sport. Some want to earn a living. Some want medals. Some want friendship. Some want competition. Some want health and fitness. It is nice that you believe the sport has a specific meaning but it means something different to every person.

I agree that training gets people to their potential. But there is a tradeoff. Some don't really like to train so it is not worth the hours and weeks and years of hard work just to cut a few seconds off of a mile. Tell your coworkers that you ran 5 minutes or 4:30 or 3:59 and most don't care.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

Take away 10 years of running 6 miles to school and back home every day from African runners and put them in a classic US city on the standard fast food diet. Tada! Suddenly they won't be world class anymore, and would be happy to run a sub 5:30 mile.

Paul Tergat grew up next to his school.

Try another theory.

"...the probability of, say, an American between 6-6 and 6-8 being an NBA player today stands at a mere .07 percent, it is a staggering 17 percent for someone 7 feet or taller."

No amount of training will turn a 5-foot-9 guy into a 7-foot-tall guy.

We can all agree that genetics can provide an advantage, but at the same time we can all agree that hard training is required to reach the full potential in ourselves.

The controversy seems to be only about the degree in which genetics helps.

I find it incredible that a high schooler can run 4:12 with only 20 miles per week. This is fascinating. I'd like to know what the maximum peak is for genetic potential.

Obviously a cheetah is faster than a housecat. It makes sense that some humans will be faster based on genetics alone.

run more and more wrote:

Getting a scholarship is all that some people want from the sport. Some want to earn a living. Some want medals. Some want friendship. Some want competition. Some want health and fitness. It is nice that you believe the sport has a specific meaning but it means something different to every person.

I agree that training gets people to their potential. But there is a tradeoff. Some don't really like to train so it is not worth the hours and weeks and years of hard work just to cut a few seconds off of a mile. Tell your coworkers that you ran 5 minutes or 4:30 or 3:59 and most don't care.

If I had run 3:59, I would care a lot.

If you think about it, though, it’s really not all that astounding that some humans are noticeably faster than others. We live in a comfortable, domestic society. Everything is provided for us. There’s medicine and surgery. Mortality rates amongst the older, the younger and the weaker are much lower. Thus, “un-athletic” genes are proliferated two or three or four fold. There’s no motive to be athletic anymore. In contrast there’s no athletic variance in animals in the wild because of natural selection.

facts and reason wrote:

No amount of training will turn a 5-foot-9 guy into a 7-foot-tall guy.

We can all agree that genetics can provide an advantage, but at the same time we can all agree that hard training is required to reach the full potential in ourselves.

The controversy seems to be only about the degree in which genetics helps.

Obviously a cheetah is faster than a housecat. It makes sense that some humans will be faster based on genetics alone.

You made two important points:

There are people who are much taller than others, due to genetics. Similarly, there are those with a lot more fast-twitch muscles and those with ST muscles. Also IQ varies a lot.

So it's safe to say, that just like there are tall and small people, there are people who have physical traits good for running.

- Some have longer legs in comparison to their torso

- Some have the ability to pump more blood and use a lot more oxygen at others. In other words - some have an untrained VO2MAX of 30, and others of 70. Some have a trained VO2MAX of 55, and others of 85.

- Some have better/more robust bones and can withstand more pounding without getting stress fractures

- Some are mentally stronger, and really able to push to their limits whereas others give out at the smallest amount of discomfort.

So in that point you are right - there are significant genetic differences.

The "cheetah is faster than a cat" is a terrible example on the other hand. You are comparing two different species (yes they are related to the bigger group of "cats" but there is no such subcategory for humans yet). Of course, the cheetah is a lot faster than a house cat due to genetics. But if you compare 10000 cheetahs, how fast are they all? The best speeds recorded were 70-75 mph. Are there cheetahs that max out of 35 mph? Like a 25 min 5k guy? If there are, they would probably not be able to survive in the wilderness and die. They would be too slow to hunt. So we can assume that most cheetahs will have a top speed of around 70 mph, give or take a few. But they all grow up the same way, "train" the same, eat the same, and live similar lifestyles. In humans, you get some people unable to break 25 min in the 5k and others running sub 13. So there must be something more than just genetics that prevents humans from being rather homogeneous in athletic performance.

In my 1st year running in high school I knew that genetics were all important, to my dismay.

I watched carefully others, hoping for some enlightenment to benefit from. I saw things that were genetic; ankle set farther back on the foot(better leverage); larger quads and hamstrings in proportion to the calf size (better distribution of power); thin lower leg diameters(less circumferential force to overcome); longer lower body to upper body proportion, etc. Advantageous heredity must feel wonderful!

A ton...mitochondrial DNA plays a big role in how much energy your cells can muster. That is a big limitation to successful endurance.

https://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/17/v.1

To determine whether the mitochondrial genes of track athletes differ systematically from those of the population at large, Niemi and Majamaa analyzed the mtDNA sequences of 141 elite Finnish long-distance runners and sprinters as well as 1060 Finnish control subjects. They found that certain groups of mtDNA sequences (called haplogroups, since there is only one copy of the chromosome per mitochondrion) occurred less frequently in the distance runners than in the sprinters and control subjects. In particular, no distance runner belonged to haplogroup K or subhaplogroup J2, whose combined frequency is at least 4.5% among control subjects and is even higher among sprinters.

Since distance runners are heavily dependent on aerobic ATP production by their mitochondria, it isn't surprising that their mtDNA differs from that of people with different exercise habits. For example, genes for protein isoforms that mildly impair ATP synthesis should presumably be rare among endurance athletes. What's interesting, however, is that the haplogroups underrepresented among the distance runners are overrepresented among very old people. Previous work by the Niemi/Majamaa group and others has shown that members of haplogroup K and subhaplogroup J2 tend to live longer than people of other haplogroups.

The standard let’s run answer is that being significantly faster than the poster is because of genetics and being significantly slower is because of laziness.

Genetics give you your cap and then there are various factors in how close you can come to that cap. After 6 years of training reasonably seriously in HS and college, I couldn’t break 60 seconds in the 400. I didn’t race it, but probably would have maxed out at 63-65. That is slow and the 400 doesn’t require a ton of training to get somewhat close to your peak ability. So I was never going to be able to run a 4:20 mile or 16:00 5k even with perfect training. I was actually a much more talented and competitive ice hockey player, though sadly had a distance runners physique.

Kvothe wrote:

A lot. Kenya and Ethiopia have a lot more pro distance runners per capita than anyone else and its not all due to training at altitude.

And presumably the fact that Mo's brother is a violent, career criminal, and Somalis make up hugely disproportionate percentage of the prison populations of the UK, Sweden etc., has absolutely NOTHING to do with genetics, and anyone who wrongthinks that it might is so dumb and neanderthal.

Coevett wrote:

Kvothe wrote:

A lot. Kenya and Ethiopia have a lot more pro distance runners per capita than anyone else and its not all due to training at altitude.

And presumably the fact that Mo's brother is a violent, career criminal, and Somalis make up hugely disproportionate percentage of the prison populations of the UK, Sweden etc., has absolutely NOTHING to do with genetics, and anyone who wrongthinks that it might is so dumb and neanderthal.

Kvothe is talking about Kenya and Ethiopia, not Somalia.

LateRunnerPhil wrote:

hansen9952 wrote:

What he says is not true and what all world-beaters in their respective skill say. I mean, of course someone whose good at something is not gonna say it’s because he’s talented. That’s terrible marketing and bad for publicity.

Plus, chess is a skill and infinitely more nuanced. It’s not physical.

Bobby Fisher was the same class. A genius!

But of course they must train....

There is the 10,000 hour rule - to become great at something, you need to put in at least 10k hours. Talent gives you a head start, but in the end the ones who work harder and longer surpass the more talented ones.

That`s not true!! At least not when it comes to middle/longdistance training.If the runner trains smart enough it`s possible to reach optimum capacity on much less hours.........

- Head coach -

It doesn’t matter how much EPO and steroids I take, I am not going to beat Kipchoge at the marathon. Or any distances at all.