Nature vs. nurture in sport

LoveInTheAsylum

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Not sure if this merits a thread, but I figured it could become a catch-all. Anyone been following the back and forth discussion that's serving to advertise David Epstein's new book: The Sport Gene - What Makes the Perfect Athlete?

His research appears to heavily stress the importance of nature/genetics over any amount of training when it comes to achieving excellence in a discipline, which seems logical when it comes to sport. But part of his promotion for the book seems to be about expanding this to all learned skills, looking to rubbish the idea of 10,000 hour rule (what's thought to be the average practice time needed master something). I know eff-all about any of this, but the main thread of that discussion seems a bit of a nonsense, taking an overly simplified view of that rule. This comment from a guardian article sums up what I thought it to mean:
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/26094025 said:
I thought the 10,000 idea was chiefly about the length of time it takes to build appropriate neural pathways - as with a violinist.

How that connects with swim-bike-run, etc, I have no idea, and this article doesn't explain it.
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It seems like in sport, or rather for certain physical activities, it's fairly easy to identify biological characteristics that will be advantageous (i.e. height in basketball, muscle composition in athletics). But as far as I'm aware, for things like musicianship or chess, genes explaining genius haven't yet been found. So a more nuanced theory about practice (the age at which that practice is done & the type of practice that makes up that average of 10,000 hours) that seems the best explanation of mastery (discussed in a thread by Snow here: https://www.redcafe.net/threads/the-grandmaster-experience.352351/)

This theory then seems to have been used by people like Malcolm Gladwell to become motivational/inspirational gurus, & we end up with a lot of back and forth discussing the relative importance of nature vs. nurture, without much scientific detail.

Aaaaanyway, instead of me being boring, the point of the thread was to say that the book sounds like it includes some interesting research, laid out in the following articles:


Guardian review of the book explaining the basics:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/22/sports-gene-david-epstein-review
Long interview with Epstein explaining the premise with some interesting aspects of the book:
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/media/books/How-Athletes-Get-Great.html?page=all

Excerpt:
Discussion around the moral implications of such research (or rather how much research is held back) always seems interesting:
A lack of nuance can really make it difficult to talk about genetics, especially with race.
Writing about race almost scared me out of writing the book altogether, which is why I wrote a section that had nothing to do sports on whether race had a genetic meaning in the first place. I was hoping that would be a non-hysterical way to start the discussion of genetics. But I wasn’t alone. Some scientists told me that they had data on physical differences in some ethnic traits that they were not going to publish. They were worried about reinforcing stereotypes or that people would take this to mean they’d also be somehow implying that there are innate intellectual differences between ethnicities; never mind that their work had nothing to do with that. But that’s the fear. So there’s clearly a political aspect to science that people are angling for depending on what social message they want to convey, but that social message has no bearing on the truth. The best way to get the best outcome for all people is to figure out what ethnic differences are real and what are not. Once I heard scientists tell me—it wasn’t often, but it did happen—that they were holding back data, I decided I didn’t what to hold back with things that I found.

Black athletes have been so negatively impacted by pseudoscience stereotypes about what’s biologically innate to them that it’s easy to distrust any discussion of what is innate ability. Writers like William C. Rhoden of the New York Times want scrap the idea of athletic prowess—good or bad—being innate, chalking up differences in race and ethnicities as social constructs. You cite an example of that in the book.
Rhoden says that white cornerbacks are shuffled off to safety instead of playing corner because whites are stereotyped as slow. I didn’t know if he was right or wrong. The only way I thought I could evaluate was to look at combine times to see if anyone who had the speed to be a corner but were shuffled off to safety. What I found was that there weren’t safeties of any ethnicity that were running fast enough, most of the time, to be cornerbacks. There certainly are social constructs and bigotry, but people attack those ideas thinking that will negate the bigotry. I think those pseudoscience beliefs are the result, not the cause, of bigotry. People aren’t looking at innate differences and decide, “Well, I guess I’m going to be racist.” Patrick Cooper addresses that in his research in his book Black Superman, when he dismantles the incorrect idea that physical prowess and intellectual prowess are on some sort of teeter-totter. That was never even an idea until physical prowess became associated with African Americans in the 1930s. So, I understand why it’s important to be critical of those ideas about innate ability.

But you believe there are innate differences between ethnicities and that we need to be up front about them?
In medicine, this is a non-issue. There was a study this month that come out showing tuberculosis measurements should be tailored by ethnicity because people with African ancestries, their immune systems respond differently to treatment. So you monitor the disease differently. We know that people with African ancestry have lower hemoglobin levels so sometimes they get turned away inappropriately from blood donation because they get measured against European standards. It’s really important to acknowledge ethnic differences in those cases. What the problem is when you take generalities and you apply them to an individual. A stereotype is a way to evaluate someone indirectly. When you can have someone at the NFL Combine, it makes no sense to evaluate him indirectly with a stereotype when you can evaluate him directly and decide whether he’s good or not.
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The terms "talent", "genius" are so vague I consider them useless. I think training, repetition and learning (the right way) are the dominant factors in making anyone an expert at anything, not talent.
 
Environmental (nurture) factors are important, but you very rarely find people with average genetics at the top level in serious professional sports.
 
I know Ronnie O'Sullivan puts his "natural talent" almost entirely down to all the practice he put in as a kid.
 
No brainer for me. My son is a better natural athlete than me and at the age of 8 had much better football skills. I spent from 8-12 kicking a ball every daylight hour (not much else to do). He didn't (lots of other fun stuff to do) and by 12 he was nowhere near as good as I was.
 
Sports is almost entirely nurture. For example, there is nothing natural about the way you kick a ball in football. Of course different body types, speed and intelligence can make you a better player than others but that's down to your development and how fast you learn, which is normal and isn't down to a natural ability for football specifically.
 
Talent is not always means physical talent. How about court/pitch vision? split seconds decision making? Those are the things that I'm more interested at. I always wondered whether those skills can be developed or trained. We often heard that about a striker predatory 'instinct'. Well instinct indicates that it was something you were born with, not something you could train for.
 
It pretty much has be a combination of both doesn't it? Someone with the greatest genes in the world, who doesn't train or practice won't achieve much. If two people put in the same amount of work though, I would guess the one with the better genes would be better.
 
Some years ago, Sports Illustrated had an article on 'fast' and 'slow' twitch muscles, which affect one's performance (obviously) in sprinting or long distance running. In the US (and the world) black athletes tracing ancestory back to Western Africa tended to have a higher percent of fast twitch muscle while those from east of the Rift Valley had a higher concentration of slow twitch. Looking at the results of track and field today, Kenyans, Ethiopians, and Somalis tend to dominate the longer distances, while blacks from Jamaica and the US, who trace their origins back to the African slave trade that ran primarily from present day Nigeria to the Ivory Coast, rule the sprints.

The article also noted that the genetic make-up of the groups on either side of the Rift Valley were closer to Southern Europeans than to each other.
 
Not sure it is really a matter of nature or nuture, for the top atheletes in most sports there is a bit of both. For some atheletes it is easy for us to watch them play with a seeming effortlessness thinking they are using some natural gift but in truth they have worked very hard almost all their lives to get to that level. While other atheletes because they seem to have to "grind it out" during competitions we assume they owe their success to hard work more than any natural ability.
 
I don't doubt the 10000 hour nurture rule (or something of the sort) applies to all complex sports - including football. One of the most striking things about football, as opposed to some other sports, is that it basically is a sport for all standard body types. Height and speed matter but that can as easily be a statement about low centre of gravity as a statement about jumping prowess; speed can be as easily a question of anticipation as acceleration or raw speed.

In your 10000 hours you need to learn the skills to match the genetics you've got as well as how the game's played and individual techniques. You'd also need to learn how to overcome your genetics in certain areas so you can actually play 90 minutes. Fletcher types are marathon runners, so they need to learn to sprint. Ronaldo's are sprinters, so they need to learn how to recover between sprints (and ignore the crowd calling you a lazy bastard :devil: )

So which sports wouldn't a 10000 hour rule apply to? I'd suggest the ones that are more directly a question of physique. Even so there was speculation about particular Kenyan villages etc producing middle distance runners - was there a genetic component? On investigation it was seen there was maybe something compared to the global population but not compared to neighbouring areas. What there was locally, historically, was a longer run to school, altitude training, and more recently a running tradition that led to kids/adults seeing running as a route to success/money and trainers setting up in the area in response.
 
Messi is the best player ever, but without the growth hormones, he might just been a very good one.

50% talent + 30% technology + 20% training

Kelly slater is 50% talent + 50% training

Mmm what are we talking about xd
 
The balance varies from sport to sport and you can go a long way in many sports with hard work but in others no amount of hard work will get you an Olympic gold e.g. swimming.

What is for sure, as the meme goes, "Hard works beat talent if talent doesn't work hard".

Usually.
 
Size is also very important in many sports where you get a huge biomechanical advantage and not just basketball.
 
You can see it in my son's waterpolo. Being 6ft 3 at 14 is giving him a huge advantage. Players who have stopped/slowed growing who were better than him 2 years ago have fallen off the pace.
 
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