my personal experience the kids who were the best soccer players ages 5-10 were generally almost uniformly not the dominant age 18 or college kids. you could almost set a watch to that being wrong, with few exceptions. so much of it is who develops into a better athlete and that their technique continues to progress and progress. because what looks skilled age 10 is rudimentary age 18.
my experience speed in junior high or HS or even beginning of college was only somewhat predictive and there was a reshuffle that did not follow expectations uniformly. the kid who couldn't regularly make distance events at a good junior high is the fastest HS kid. there is a tiering that is fairly about talent. but within the tiers it reshuffles to defy a chunk of expectations. people get hurt, plateau, get bored, others work harder or grow.
You really need to read “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein. Highly recommended.
You will find that there are two ways that genetics highly determine overall outcomes. First there is the natural starting point. Eg, that high school kid who, right off the bat is naturally faster, stronger than anyone else, without training. Sometimes this is due to the fact that that kid has simply physically matured faster than everyone else, then everyone else catches up, sometimes it’s not, sometimes they just are that good.
The second way is due to trainability and receptiveness to stimulus. When you match the right individual’s talents up with the right training, and all of a sudden they take off, passing those who were better than them before. This is where training comes in. If the training matches the talents of that highly receptive child. A potential elite power lifter won’t respond too well to 80 mpw of running, but put a heavy barbell on his back…
The elites are therefore those who had the right mix of both…an initial high starting point, which is then enhanced by their genetic ability to respond to the training stimulus. Those two genetic advantages see the elite reach the top. Having one or the other may take you so far, but so far only.
Personally I respond fairly well to interval training and aerobic work on general, but my initial starting point, untrained, is so low, that no amount of training would help me bridge the gap to reach athletic success.
jamaica is likely good at sprints because they appear to funnel everything they have into <800. i was discussing southlake carroll the other day on here. they have state winning XC and a school twice the size of normal. they also appear to have next to no one running hurdles, sprints, or doing field events. having had some success, they will have plenty of buy in. but the team is inherently bounded. so jamaica has sprinters, jumpers, and maybe the odd thrower. this is how they use their limited resources.
it helps they have not just good but incredible sprinters who can then teach the next set.
for contrast, kenya used to be very much one set of stuff, but has over recent years begun branching out. 100, 800, some field. i assume they figured out what southlake needs to learn, that having 100+ in some distance pipeline is overkill, and you can probably win state with some smaller amount and redirect some people to 800 and down. and then maybe win their local district in track and not just XC.
Almost all of Kenya’s top distance runners come from just three or four of their many distinct ethnic groups (estimates on the total number of ethnic groups in Kenya range from 42 to 120).
I ran jr high XC and was decent, but quit running in HS because I was a band kid. When I was 32, I got back into running. With a few months of training, I jumped into a 5k and ran it in about 23 min. I joined a training group and got my 5k down to 17:20something and 2:46 for the marathon. Took about 7-8 years of hard work to get to my PRs. Along the way, I came across dozens of runners in my training group who were equally, if not more, dedicated but could barely get to a 21 min 5k and maxed out at 3:30 for the marathon. Then, a guy showed up who just got into running (HS basketball player). His first 5k was 19 min. Within two years he broke 16 min and ended up with a 14:45 5k and 31:30 10k pr (marathon was not his event).
I ran jr high XC and was decent, but quit running in HS because I was a band kid. When I was 32, I got back into running. With a few months of training, I jumped into a 5k and ran it in about 23 min. I joined a training group and got my 5k down to 17:20something and 2:46 for the marathon. Took about 7-8 years of hard work to get to my PRs. Along the way, I came across dozens of runners in my training group who were equally, if not more, dedicated but could barely get to a 21 min 5k and maxed out at 3:30 for the marathon. Then, a guy showed up who just got into running (HS basketball player). His first 5k was 19 min. Within two years he broke 16 min and ended up with a 14:45 5k and 31:30 10k pr (marathon was not his event).
That is remarkable. In all seriousness, I am always impressed by the amount of God-given ability out there. It’s a lot more common than most people think.
Anyone who doesn’t believe genetics play a huge role should go adopt a Greyhound and a Labrador and try to train both of them in the same method for distance running.
Jack Daniels studied and coached athletes for a long time. Here is a talk of his, but the quick notes on it are the ingredients for a good athlete: Ability (genetics - MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR), Motivation, Opportunity, Direction (Coaching - he says this is least important).
Dr. Jack Daniels is a coaching legend. Named "World's Best Coach" by Runner's World magazine, Dr. Daniels not only has success coaching runners but excels at...
my personal experience the kids who were the best soccer players ages 5-10 were generally almost uniformly not the dominant age 18 or college kids. you could almost set a watch to that being wrong, with few exceptions. so much of it is who develops into a better athlete and that their technique continues to progress and progress. because what looks skilled age 10 is rudimentary age 18.
my experience speed in junior high or HS or even beginning of college was only somewhat predictive and there was a reshuffle that did not follow expectations uniformly. the kid who couldn't regularly make distance events at a good junior high is the fastest HS kid. there is a tiering that is fairly about talent. but within the tiers it reshuffles to defy a chunk of expectations. people get hurt, plateau, get bored, others work harder or grow.
You really need to read “The Sports Gene” by David Epstein. Highly recommended.
You will find that there are two ways that genetics highly determine overall outcomes. First there is the natural starting point. Eg, that high school kid who, right off the bat is naturally faster, stronger than anyone else, without training. Sometimes this is due to the fact that that kid has simply physically matured faster than everyone else, then everyone else catches up, sometimes it’s not, sometimes they just are that good.
The second way is due to trainability and receptiveness to stimulus. When you match the right individual’s talents up with the right training, and all of a sudden they take off, passing those who were better than them before. This is where training comes in. If the training matches the talents of that highly receptive child. A potential elite power lifter won’t respond too well to 80 mpw of running, but put a heavy barbell on his back…
The elites are therefore those who had the right mix of both…an initial high starting point, which is then enhanced by their genetic ability to respond to the training stimulus. Those two genetic advantages see the elite reach the top. Having one or the other may take you so far, but so far only.
Personally I respond fairly well to interval training and aerobic work on general, but my initial starting point, untrained, is so low, that no amount of training would help me bridge the gap to reach athletic success.
you just lectured me with a tone like you weren't contradicting your reference to genetics by saying it could also be development patterns, coachability, nurture, etc. then don't talk down. you basically reworded what i said which is often the 10 year old all star is an 18 year old scrub.
i buy talent makes it easier. my impression in soccer is not easy enough to compete at more than a mediocre or perhaps even vulnerable level relative to a well-trained athletic suburban kid with years in select. we played an inner city school with 2 kids with awesome raw ball skills. we defended them hard, i would slide tackle one of them all day. they played individualized styles and had no team concept. they also ran out of gas 30 mins in. we won 6-0. i think if i had a time machine i could make them great in 2 years if they were willing to train hard and learn the team game. but against well coached athletes their team got stomped and they couldn't do much alone. in most team sports while they might have high upside a noob with talent would start out mixed bag or even scrub level until they got trained up technically and intellectually, and as fit as the level requires.
track is slightly different but i don't buy a truly untrained person walks out and is amazing. above-average, perhaps. but they will usually not have the fitness, the endurance, to run complete races. now, some football or basketball or soccer kid comes out, maybe they can surprise. but they aren't new to sprinting and jumping, or running up and down fields all day, they are just new to the sport. in that sense they aren't some raw talent like if some kid from the trailerpark gets talked into joining track from PE having never played a sport in their life. and i knew a kid like that who turned out ok. and he was above average to start, made the sprint relay, but it took him years to catch up to me and my colleague ie the 3rd and 4th legs.
i think the idea of a pure talent who walks out with all the goods to be great right then is either myth or very very very rare. i think you folks are neglecting how much work it takes to get to the levels we have been at. you might be the most impressive kid they have seen in a PE class ever. you might work into the varsity after a year or two. if you come out for track running, say, a 10.8 or a 4:25, you probably were already playing football or soccer or something. you were already working to be fit all the time. you were already rewarded for being fast. you just have to transition to doing it in track. which is not that raw.
i believe in talent but not to the degree you're selling.
I took up running in my 20s, eventually joining a large running club in a major metro area. After several years of training with the club, I peaked at a 16:49 road 5k. Not great by this board’s standards, but truth be told, there were many in the club who were built reasonably like runners, did the same workouts and mileage as me, and never broke 19 minutes, let alone 17. Genetics had to be a factor.
On the other end of the talent spectrum: we once had a guy join the club who in short order, was crushing everyone in the club’s weekly track sessions. He’d played soccer in the past but had no formal running background and didn’t run much outside of the club’s organized workouts. He broke 16 for 5k on like 30 mpw max; I had to run 50-60 just to break 17. He was eventually “discovered” by a sub-elite group, starting training with them, and went on to run a 3:50 1500m. He obviously worked hard and I’m sure his soccer background helped, but he clearly picked the right parents to be a competitive runner.
i ran track in college. my point is for years before that, junior high, HS, i destroyed people.
my experience in college some of the time someone showed up faster. but sometimes they started out mediocre and went on a trajectory. my point is when you start college you DO NOT KNOW who is who. within reasonable limits, eg, a kid running a 12s 100m isn't likely the future usain bolt.
but, say, sam blaskowski went from running 10.8 to 10.1 in college, from D3 type to winning D3 and could have been D1 to losing in the worlds trials. your fake game is come in at the end and say talent won out. but he was probably 1/3-1/2 of a second slower entering college than a pile of D1 scholarship kids who weren't winning national titles and would have been presumed the better bet to make any trials.
to me the fact we don't know ahead of time beats your argument. we make assumptions but they are educated guesses that are disproven in x% of races or careers. it's probabilistic rather than absolute.
Sure. Nobody is going to argue that when you take people in the top 1% in talent and train them for 4 years that some will improve more than others. But there is a reason why he could run 10.8 and I struggled to break 13…
see, here's the deal. blaskowski's HS times, in this era, are out there. and i mean his PRs ever year. alongside his college times. so i can see where in 10th grade he was 11.3. 12th 10.8. college end 10.1. that is a progression from fairly average to excellent.
i want you to tell me when you declared him talented. at the end? that's my point. what you're leaving out is there will have been a dozen other kids with similar times earlier on and then one progresses and the others don't.
my personal experience is there are tiers. someone can be in a high tier and actually lazy and raw. someone can be there and be working their butt off to get the same time. someone can have a great coach or a bad one or one who overtrains. talent sets a bandwidth. that bandwidth usually starts out fairly modest if you never train or join a team or get coached right. i grant someone with modest gifts may have a ceiling. but i've seen plenty of those folks maximize. another kid may have more natural talent but do they care and do they train and do they tap meet the right coach and tap into the resources.
i was able to get recruited for soccer because of a mix of being well-trained in team and individual defense on a great defensive soccer team -- basically the equivalent of a shut down corner -- and the fact i was fast enough i could run track and fix any mistakes i made, on up to playing minor league pro teams.
i can think of track events like hurdles where i simply call bs. you are not showing up and beating me raw. it takes you too long to get over the hurdles or you smack one and face plant. period.
i then don't buy that over 100 or 200 you can just walk out unfit and keep up with above-average experienced practitioners. you might beat them out of the blocks. you might look interesting a ways. you aren't winning. and ditto for distance. you might have natural goods. you might beat the JV guys. you aren't walking out to the track and beating some 4:15 kid being watched by D1s. nope. don't buy it.
y'all have miscalculated what a potential "raw goods" time is, which is probably a JV type time. at least where i grew up which was a strong area. i could jump >18 in jiunior high and not medal here. you might have to run 10.5 to win a 100m here. or 4:15-4:20 mile. you aren't just walking out with raw talent and winning a race here.
you will now say but the 4:15 or 10.5 kid has talent but my experience is often enough the shuffle of who produces those times vs. who used to be better has changed. and will change again in college. a kid who couldn't make my junior high distance team regularly beat everyone off our team when he went to a competing HS with better coaching.
this is due to a mix of factors, some including how they grow and their talent bandwidth, but others having to do with injuries, work ethic, and coaching. IMO what the "talent" lot does is come in at the end and pronounce the fastest finisher the most talented. that doesn't strike me as necessarily true, and it is unhelpful in sorting and training that particular person from among dozens of similar kids at an earlier age.
This post was edited 6 minutes after it was posted.
you will now say but the 4:15 or 10.5 kid has talent
Yes, a 10.5 kid has tremendous talent. Go to your local high school and have every one of the boys run 100m. It will be very clear immediately that none of them, or maybe 1 or 2, will ever run a 10.5. Some of them will run 15's.
you will now say but the 4:15 or 10.5 kid has talent
Yes, a 10.5 kid has tremendous talent. Go to your local high school and have every one of the boys run 100m. It will be very clear immediately that none of them, or maybe 1 or 2, will ever run a 10.5. Some of them will run 15's.
Yes, a 4:15 kid has tremendous talent. Go to your local high school and have every one of the boys run 1600m. It will be very clear immediately that none of them, or maybe 1 or 2, will ever run a 4:15. Some of them will run 7's.