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Talent vs. Work: Part 1
This piece has been on my mind since I saw someone somewhere recently assert that ‘work beats talent’ or perhaps it was ‘hard work beats talent’. Make no mistake, this is a common belief, usually held by those with less talent who want to think that life works like a Rocky movie (I’m still waiting for my damn training montage to a Survivor song). I’ve had repeated arguments on forums where, when you try to point out that there are genetic limits that can’t be surpassed, someone will tell me “You don’t know my work ethic.” The implication being that hard work can overcome anything.
In other media, books such as Talent is Overrated (which is a popularization of the work of Anders Ericcson that I discussed in Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 1 and Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 2) make essentially the same argment: that there is no such thing as inherent talent and that it comes down to putting in the work. At first glance, even Ericcson’s work seems to support that idea to at least some degree although I’d point readers to my original article series for a lot more verbiage.
The idea was recently brought back to the forefront of my mind as I read the books Pre and Bowerman and the Men of Oregon as well as watching one of the two movies made about the altogether too short career of Steve Prefontaine. For those not familiar, Pre was one of the great distance runners of the 70′s, setting records at a variety of distances prior to dying young in a car crash.
Famously, Pre argued that talent was a myth, that the only reason he beat people was because he was willing to hurt more than anybody. And make no mistake, his ability to suffer was legendary. But was it true that he had no talent and it all came down to his strength of will; or was there more going on? I’ll leave that question unanswered until I finish up in Part 2 of this article on Friday.
So what’s the deal? Is talent overrated, is it just about hard work? Can you talk about one or the other and is it true that hard work can overcome talent in sports? Well, as usual, it sort of depends on what context you’re talking about. At least one issue of relevance is exactly what you’re talking about. In a sport context, what we’re talking about is winning usually.
And that’s the context I’m going to mainly focus on here: winning in competition. Certainly if you pick a different endpoint (perhaps becoming extremely well skilled at an activity), things become fuzzier. Because you’re not trying to achieve the pinnacle of performance.
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What is Talent: Part 1
The first thing i want to do is define some terms and talent is sort of a tough one when it comes to sports performance. Certainly few trying a new sport are particularly talented at it out of the gate although, as I discussed in Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 1 and Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 2 there are likely to be differing degrees of suck whenever someone is introduced to a new activity (at least one that isn’t trivial to perform).
While it’s lovely to argue that the 10+ years of practice that folks put in is what made them experts at something (and make no mistake, clearly you have to put in the work to get to any high level, nobody is ever born great at something), it’s equally logical to assume that those that show an early affinity for a given activity are more likely to continue with it and put in the work.
That is, using the same example I gave in the above article series, consider 10 kids introduced to a new technical sport. Assume 3 show some degree of success early on (i.e. they have a natural ‘talent’), 4 are sort of in the middle and the last 3 just suck at it. Unless they are masochists (and athletes often are), the 3 who sucked at it are unlikely to pursue it. And it’s debatable how many of the middle 4 will stick with it, some might some might not. And the 3 who showed some promise (and probably got positive reinforcement through some mechanism) are likely to pursue it.
Their initial ‘talent’ (for whatever reason) led them to pursue the activity and put in the work that took them to the higher or highest levels. My point being that often the whole discussion of talent versus hard work is far more complicated than it being an either-or type of situation; one feeds back onto the other which feeds back onto the first.
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What is Talent: Part 2
Which doesn’t really answer the question, what is talent, especially in an athletic context? Here I’m going to use the term ‘talent’ very very very generally to basically include anything innate (think physiological, biomechanical or neurological) that gives someone an edge in a given activity.
Some of these might very well be present in kids who try a sport but the examples I’m going to use are equally as relevant if you’re trying to decide if ‘hard work beats’ talent when you get to higher level competition. Because when you’re talking about margins of winning vs. losing of a percentage point or less, every little bit matters.
In endurance type sports that might include a preponderance of slow twitch muscle fibers, a higher than average maximum oxygen uptake or body mechanics that predispose them to be successful at the sport (someone pursuing running has to be sturdy enough to handle the training; injured runners don’t get very far).
Consider for example Michael Phelp’s size 11 feet and monstrous hands which act like paddles and flippers in the water. Couple that with his wingspan and other biomechanical factors (many swimmers have absurd shoulder flexibility and/or are double jointed giving them a mechanical advantage in the pool) and he’s a man born to swim.
There are plenty of other examples, cyclists often have longer legs (Miguel Indurain was mechanically built to ride a bike) as do runners (increases stride length) and certain body types are relatively more or less suited for given sports. In ice speed skating, as another example, skaters with a certain ratio of upper leg to lower leg have been shown to be superior to those without the same ratio, even if their physiologies are the same.
There are even potential psychological factors (which can be innate or at least wired early on) at work here, endurance athletes have to be able to handle what can often be mind numbingly boring training. ADHD sufferers need not apply for the most part.
In strength/power sports, innate talent might be found in a higher proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers. A good nervous system (in terms of being able to fire those muscle well) wouldn’t hurt. Hormone levels might play a role (though this wouldn’t show up until after puberty), obviously having higher levels of testosterone never hurts in such sports. Mechanics plays a big role here too. Tall guys tend to make poorer Olympic lifters (who typically have fairly specific body dimensions) than shorter. Throwers tend to be on the taller and heavier side.
The best benchers often have certain mechanics (shorter arms and a big chest never hurts) while the best squatters and deadlifters often have different mechanics. Having overall robust joints and bones doesn’t hurt here either: lighter boned or jointed people tend to get injured by the type of training needed to succeed at this type of sport.
Even in something like bodybuilding, it’s often been felt that having small joints was a benefit, it makes muscles look bigger. Height is an issue here as well, tall guys have to carry a lot more muscle than shorter to look as big because of differences in how muscle cross sectional area scales with changing limb length.
Certain psychologies are probably better for these types of sports as well. Aggression helps in a lot of the strength/power sports and, to be blunt, bodybuilders and other physique types usually walk the obsessive compulsive control freak line. Otherwise they don’t survive the dieting. Mind you, many great athletes have a streak of obsession; you have to to keep working at something year after year.
In team sports, it gets fuzzier since the determinants of victory often lay far outside purely physiological factors. In addition to physical factors, speed of movement, body requirements, there is the issue of tactics, reading plays, reaction time. A quarterback in American football needs to be able to assimilate a tremendous amount of incoming data and make rapid decisions or alterations on the fly; while some of this can probably be trained it’s not far fetched to assume some differences in innate ability here.
As another example, there is a current interest in vision improvement, for some sports (consider an American football quarterback watching for a sack, a soccer goalie trying to watch his flank, that sort of thing), good peripheral vision would be a real boon. Some of these things do respond to training, mind you, (one of the reasons coaches set up plays repeatedly is to teach athletes how to recognize and deal with them), but some of it may be innate or the luck of the draw.
Mind you, the Eastern European countries did a ton of work on the above type of thing, developing normative data and doing extensive testing on kids to try to identify who had the most potential to become a super athlete based on body mechanics or physiology (i.e. vertical or long jump tests to determine fiber type and explosive potential). And, in many countries, athletes simply weren’t given a choice about the sport they could do. If they were built for sport X, they did X because, presumably, they had the best shot at being successful at it. In contrast, in the US this is far less commonplace; usually athletes with some sort of ‘talent’ for a sport luck into it as often as not.
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What is Talent: Part 3
And then there’s the genetic issue. We’ve known for a decade or more than subjected to the same training stimulus, the variety in adaptability can vary massively. For example, in response to aerobic training, VO2 max can increase anywhere from about 0% (a small percentage of folks simply don’t make gains) to about 50% (the other extreme) with most getting an average response because that’s what average means. The best endurance athletes invariably were born not only with a high starting VO2 max but also had the genetics to get the biggest adaptation to proper training.
I can think of at least one study on strength training where folks with a lighter bone structure gained less strength than folks with heavier bone structure and I even mentioned that above; lighter boned folks often get injured trying to handle the heavy training loads that best stimulate strength gains. And chronically injured folks don’t make good athletes. Hell, there’s that whole odd data set on 4th to 2nd finger length ratio (which is indicative of a lot of things that went on during fetal development) that predicts a ton of things…including athletic performance ability.
Moving to a more reductive level, studies are looking closely at the role of genetics in athletic performance and adaptability and there is certainly evidence that this matters. For example, a specific ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) type is found in elite endurance athletes, and the opposite type in strength/power athletes. Other genetics markers have been found that relate to strength and power production. For example, the genetic marker alpha-actinin-3 is associated with speed performance and athletes who lack it will be at a massive disadvantage to those that have it.
And of course, all physiological systems in the body do have some upper genetic limit that can’t be surpassed and we might consider that upper limit under the heading of talent in the sense that someone with a higher upper limit has the potential to reach a higher level of performance than someone with a lower upper limit (other critical things being done).
Whether it’s a limit to Vo2 max, muscle mass or something else nobody keeps adapting indefinitely. That’s one of the big reasons athletes use drugs (yes, newsflash, athletes use drugs). Not only do they provide numerous other benefits such as improved recovery or what have you, they artificially raise the inherent genetic limit of the body that, otherwise, wouldn’t be surpassed.
To the above we might add other things that would show up as ‘talent’. Good body control, proprioception, things like that. Things that are often innate (or at least vary with some people showing better inherent levels than others). We all know kids who have better or worse ability to tell where they are in space (I’ve seen the same thing in dogs at the Austin Humane Shelter; some seem unable to tell what’s going on physically) and they are probably more likely to be drawn to and/or succeed at sport early on than kids who are, to put it mildly, spazzes (who make excellent water boys, make no mistake).
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What is Talent: Summing Up
My point being that there would certainly appear to be some inherent physiological aspects that relate to sport performance that can show up as innate ‘talent’. Certainly some are modifiable with proper training, but some are not. And there is clearly a difference in how well or poorly someone will adapt to training with increasing evidence that this is determined genetically.
I’d note before moving on a concept that seems to escape many, which I’ll leave for now simply as an unanswered (and possibly unanswerable question): is it conceivable that part of what makes people willing to put in the 10 years of grinding work to get good at something is an innate characteristic?
That is, something about them is just wired to make them want to devote 10 or more years to a pursuit with potentially zero rewards? If so, the whole issue of innate talent versus hard work becomes far more complicated of a question: perhaps the drive to put in the work is an innate talent in the first place.
And since this has already gotten out of control length wise, I’ll cut it here and finish up in Part 2 on Friday where I’ll talk briefly about the work side of the equation and then put this all together in some form or fashion. And answer the question I raised above about Pre: was his success an issue of his work ethic/ability to suffer or did he simply have talent?
Talent vs. Work: Part 2
On Monday in Talent vs. Work: Part 1 I introduced the issue/idea of whether or not there is some sort of innate ‘talent’ that might exist (at least in an athletic context) as part of trying to address the issue of whether the assertion that ‘hard work can overcome’ talent has any validity.
In that piece, I moved from general to specific looking at the idea that there would certainly appear to be some innate factors (physiological, biomechanical, neurological, other) that might give someone an innate edge or talent for a given activity. Basically, I think the idea that there is no such thing as innate talent is a flawed one; it’s a lovely idea to have, to think that hard work can get you as far as anyone else. But in reality, it just doesn’t seem to be the case.
But that still doesn’t really answer the original question or address the issue since there is the other half of what I want to talk about, the work issue. Surprisingly, given the amount of verbiage I gave to the issue of talent, I don’t have much to say here. But I will say what little I have before finally getting around to the original question and trying to make some sort of useful answer to it.
What is Work/Hard Work?
As noted, I don’t have much to say here comparatively speaking. Whether you buy into the idea of there being some type of innate talent or not, I don’t think anyone would deny that you still have to put in the work. That is, people often tend to play this silly little game where they turn debates like this into an either/or sort of issue. Either you have innate talent or you’re a hard worker. Effectively, people will take your argument that ‘Someone has a genetically innate talent for something’ and read it as ‘What you’re saying is that they don’t have to put in the work.’
But that’s not what’s being said. Certainly, beginners in any activity may show some sort of relatively better or worse ability at doing something; in all likelihood the folks who do a bit better initially are more likely to stick with it. But nobody, and I repeat nobody gets to the top level of anything without taking that innate talent (or perhaps a high genetic limit) and maximizing it with years of grinding work.
That is, even if you want to argue that West Africans have a genetic talent to be good at sprinting or that East Africans have a talent for endurance running (I’d point people to the book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It for a look at this) the simple fact is that they still put in years of grindingly hard work to maximize that talent. I’ll come back to this later on. It’s not like someone with the right ethnic background is going to step to the line in the 100m and tear it up if they haven’t put in the work.
So how am I defining ‘work’ here, in an athletic context. Again, I’m going to use it somewhat generally. Consider the work half of the equation to including proper, intelligent, progressive training. Assume the individual got competent coaching (from a technical standpoint). Assume that the individual was willing to put up with the discomfort that comes with high-level training (again, consider that the temperament or personality profile to be willing to hurt that much might just be innate in the first place).
That’s what I’m using to define work here. And figure it’s going to take a solid 5-10 years of it for the person to even come close to maximizing their talent. Certainly there are examples of folks who got there faster, usually in sports without massive technical demands (you see some folks get up there pretty quick in running and cycling from time to time, a few years). But for most the 10 year/10,000 hour rule seems to be a pretty good one.
So by work assume that someone puts in that time. With training appropriate for their sport, putting in the hard work as needed (and resting as needed, we might include training ‘smart work’ as part of ‘hard work’). I think you get the idea. That’s how I’m defining ‘work’ or ‘hard work’ here.
And now finally I can address the original question I set out to address: does talent overcome hard work or can hard work overcome talent?
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The Work/Talent Matrix
Yes, matrix. Because matrices are hardcore or something. Yeah. For simplicities sake (and make no mistake, this is staggeringly simplified), I’m going to define talent and work (or maybe work ethic or whatever) as being high or low. That is, I’m going to pretend that they are binary settings which they most clearly are not.
Which is why I said this is simplified, clearly we are looking at a huge continuum. But this keeps the matrix (YES, MATRIX) cleaner and hopefully everyone can extrapolate to different variations of talent or work or whatever. Ok, THE MATRIX.
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Basically, by dividing talent and work into high and low categories (and again this is very simplified) we get 4 potential ‘types’ when it comes to sport performance. Let’s look at each combination. First, the extremes.
Low talent + low work ethic = The Always Gonna
An individual with low innate talent and no work ethic isn’t really worth discussing: these are folks that won’t ever get anywhere. They’ve got no inherent ability at something but nor are they willing to do the work that it takes. They usually talk about how much they’d ‘love to do something’ but never seem to actually put any effort towards getting there.
They are always gonna start putting in the effort, gonna start watching their diet, gonna start blah, blah, blah. But it never happens. About the only way you get these guys to do anything is to give them no choice in the matter: enroll them in the military. Left to their own devices it’s one bullshit excuse after another.
High talent + high work ethic = The Thoroughbred
At the other extreme is the individual with high talent AND a high work ethic. Not only do they have an inherent physiology (as discussed in Talent vs. Work: Part 1) that is suited to success, they put in the work. Endless work. Hard work. Painful work. Smart work. For years on end. And that combined with their innate talent takes them to the top. Coaches sometimes call these guys thoroughbreds. They have the talent and they are willing to do the work. They can be groomed for the top levels.
Drug issue aside, Lance Armstrong is a great example of this. Even as as teen he had one of the highest measured VO2 max scores when he was tested up in Dallas and he was winning triathlons at a very early age. Then he got cancer, came back and put in years of grinding work (his ability to hurt and put in immense amounts of training was pretty legendary) and reached the pinnacle of his sport. Having a proper support team (including his team manager and teammates) were part of his success. But he combined a monster physiology (much of which is innate) with years of hard work.
In ice speedskating, Chad Hedrick comes to mind. His ability to suffer was also legendary, as my coach put it “Chad would just turn his brain off and go”. He also skated hard for over 20 years. He had the innate physiology and the work ethic to reach the top. And invariably when you look at the world beaters, the guys who reach the topmost level of their sport, this is what you find.
Taking a quick tangent here: It’s not a question of talent vs. hard work even if people try to make it into a simple either/or. It’s an issue of them having an innate talent that they maximized with the hard work. There are other issues mind you, lucking into that sport, being able to pursue it, having the money to do it, whatever. I’m not saying talent and hard work are the only variables. But without either you don’t reach the top level. There simply has to be a bunch of other stuff too.
And I guess here is the best place to discuss Steve Prefontaine; as I noted in Talent vs. Work: Part 1 he asserted that talent was a myth, that he beat guys based on guts and being willing to suffer. And as it turned out he was one of the early test subjects when physiological testing started. The results: a VO2 max of 85 ml/kg/min or thereabouts. One of the highest ever recorded (if I recall correctly, the highest ever is about 90 in a cross country skiier).
Compare that to the 68-70 of good endurance athletes and the 45-50 or lower of the average person. The simple fact is that, guts/suffering or not, he’d never have set the records he did or competed at the international level without the innate talent and physiology to succeed. Again, his work ethic let him maximize his talent. But his assertion that he lacked talent was simply nonsensical: he probably started with a higher VO2 max than most folks will ever achieve. And his ending VO2 max is one that is only seen in the most elite of the elite.
High talent + low work ethic = The Prima Donna
Ok, next up what about guys with lots of talent and a poor work ethic? These guys do well early on, when up against guys without their inherent talent they get by on talent alone and putting in the minimal work necessary. They don’t watch their diet and never learn to train hard because they simply don’t have to at the lower levels.
Invariably these types of athletes coasted through early competition (high school, etc.) on talent alone and never really developed any sort of work ethic. They never learned to hurt or work hard (or smart) because they never had to early on. And as they reach higher levels of competition, and start running into either guys with talent and work ethic (or the next group I’m going to talk about), they realize that talent alone isn’t enough.But since they were always the top of the heap before they usually don’t see any reason to change.
And they are the bane of higher level coaches. They are often uncoachable, they never had to work before and don’t see any reason to start now. Coaches look at these athletes and think “What a waste”; other athletes look at them and just get frustrated “If I only had your talent.” In fact, many coaches would rather work with the next group instead of these guys. Because while you can’t work with someone unwilling to do the work; someone at least willing to put in the effort is worth paying attention to even if the natural talent isn’t there.
Low talent + high work ethic = The Workhorse
And then there’s the final group, which coaches sometimes call the workhorse. These are the guys who didn’t have the innate talent (or didn’t have it to the degree of the thoroughbreds, it’s rare for a workhorse to totally suck at something or they wouldn’t pursue the activity at all) but they pursued it anyhow and put in grinding amounts of work to try to compensate for a lack of built in talent.
Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes workhorses reach a pretty high level depending on how they approach things. They don’t get to the top but they can go pretty far. Mind you, this wasn’t uncommon in the earlier days of sports; there are plenty of stories of guys who reached the top despite a lack of talent (or some physical issue in many cases). But it almost never happens anymore, the level of competition is simply too high with the best having talent and a work ethic.
In some sports, workhorses often play critical roles where they can put whatever level of talent they have developed to use (and they can often make quite a good living doing this). In road cycling for example, which is a team sport, workhorse cyclists are as often as not domestiques. They aren’t the star because they simply don’t have the talent or ability to win. But they can help the team win by working for the leader. And if the team wins, they win by extension because they were part of the effort.
In track running, workhorses can be pacemakers, either helping the thoroughbreds train or acting as workers in races. Again, they aren’t really in the running for the win but they can be part of a record setting effort by doing a specific job and putting their ability to work on some level.
Basically, when thoroughbreds are present, the workhorse can’t win because life isn’t a Disney or Rocky movie (oh that it were). No amount of work can overcome a lesser degree of talent compared to someone with the same work ethic and more talent. And thoroughbreds always have the winning combination of talent and the work ethic.
Mind you, as often as not, the workhorse overtrains themselves into the ground. They fall into the trap of thinking that they need to work 2 or 3 or 10 times as hard as the talented athlete and do themselves more harm than good by trying to compensate for their lack of talent with sheer effort. Because it’s not always ‘hard’ work that is needed, As often as not it’s smart work. I, of course, wouldn’t know anything about this.
Finally, workhorse athletes often make the best coaches. Since they didn’t have the talent which let them succeed easily, they are usually the ones who take apart their sport and chosen activity bit by bit, anything to eke out the most out of what talent they do have (often they become coaches in an attempt to take someone to a level they never reached and make up for their own frustrated sporting goals). I’m not saying that nobody from the other groups can’t make a good coach, just that a majority of coaches seem to come from this group.
And I’m actually going to cut this here. I had wanted to finish this in two pieces but I have a bunch more to say and this is already too long. And I’m too exhausted to write up the rest of it. So…Monday.
This piece has been on my mind since I saw someone somewhere recently assert that ‘work beats talent’ or perhaps it was ‘hard work beats talent’. Make no mistake, this is a common belief, usually held by those with less talent who want to think that life works like a Rocky movie (I’m still waiting for my damn training montage to a Survivor song). I’ve had repeated arguments on forums where, when you try to point out that there are genetic limits that can’t be surpassed, someone will tell me “You don’t know my work ethic.” The implication being that hard work can overcome anything.
In other media, books such as Talent is Overrated (which is a popularization of the work of Anders Ericcson that I discussed in Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 1 and Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 2) make essentially the same argment: that there is no such thing as inherent talent and that it comes down to putting in the work. At first glance, even Ericcson’s work seems to support that idea to at least some degree although I’d point readers to my original article series for a lot more verbiage.
The idea was recently brought back to the forefront of my mind as I read the books Pre and Bowerman and the Men of Oregon as well as watching one of the two movies made about the altogether too short career of Steve Prefontaine. For those not familiar, Pre was one of the great distance runners of the 70′s, setting records at a variety of distances prior to dying young in a car crash.
Famously, Pre argued that talent was a myth, that the only reason he beat people was because he was willing to hurt more than anybody. And make no mistake, his ability to suffer was legendary. But was it true that he had no talent and it all came down to his strength of will; or was there more going on? I’ll leave that question unanswered until I finish up in Part 2 of this article on Friday.
So what’s the deal? Is talent overrated, is it just about hard work? Can you talk about one or the other and is it true that hard work can overcome talent in sports? Well, as usual, it sort of depends on what context you’re talking about. At least one issue of relevance is exactly what you’re talking about. In a sport context, what we’re talking about is winning usually.
And that’s the context I’m going to mainly focus on here: winning in competition. Certainly if you pick a different endpoint (perhaps becoming extremely well skilled at an activity), things become fuzzier. Because you’re not trying to achieve the pinnacle of performance.
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What is Talent: Part 1
The first thing i want to do is define some terms and talent is sort of a tough one when it comes to sports performance. Certainly few trying a new sport are particularly talented at it out of the gate although, as I discussed in Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 1 and Becoming an Expert – Deliberate Practice Part 2 there are likely to be differing degrees of suck whenever someone is introduced to a new activity (at least one that isn’t trivial to perform).
While it’s lovely to argue that the 10+ years of practice that folks put in is what made them experts at something (and make no mistake, clearly you have to put in the work to get to any high level, nobody is ever born great at something), it’s equally logical to assume that those that show an early affinity for a given activity are more likely to continue with it and put in the work.
That is, using the same example I gave in the above article series, consider 10 kids introduced to a new technical sport. Assume 3 show some degree of success early on (i.e. they have a natural ‘talent’), 4 are sort of in the middle and the last 3 just suck at it. Unless they are masochists (and athletes often are), the 3 who sucked at it are unlikely to pursue it. And it’s debatable how many of the middle 4 will stick with it, some might some might not. And the 3 who showed some promise (and probably got positive reinforcement through some mechanism) are likely to pursue it.
Their initial ‘talent’ (for whatever reason) led them to pursue the activity and put in the work that took them to the higher or highest levels. My point being that often the whole discussion of talent versus hard work is far more complicated than it being an either-or type of situation; one feeds back onto the other which feeds back onto the first.
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What is Talent: Part 2
Which doesn’t really answer the question, what is talent, especially in an athletic context? Here I’m going to use the term ‘talent’ very very very generally to basically include anything innate (think physiological, biomechanical or neurological) that gives someone an edge in a given activity.
Some of these might very well be present in kids who try a sport but the examples I’m going to use are equally as relevant if you’re trying to decide if ‘hard work beats’ talent when you get to higher level competition. Because when you’re talking about margins of winning vs. losing of a percentage point or less, every little bit matters.
In endurance type sports that might include a preponderance of slow twitch muscle fibers, a higher than average maximum oxygen uptake or body mechanics that predispose them to be successful at the sport (someone pursuing running has to be sturdy enough to handle the training; injured runners don’t get very far).
Consider for example Michael Phelp’s size 11 feet and monstrous hands which act like paddles and flippers in the water. Couple that with his wingspan and other biomechanical factors (many swimmers have absurd shoulder flexibility and/or are double jointed giving them a mechanical advantage in the pool) and he’s a man born to swim.
There are plenty of other examples, cyclists often have longer legs (Miguel Indurain was mechanically built to ride a bike) as do runners (increases stride length) and certain body types are relatively more or less suited for given sports. In ice speed skating, as another example, skaters with a certain ratio of upper leg to lower leg have been shown to be superior to those without the same ratio, even if their physiologies are the same.
There are even potential psychological factors (which can be innate or at least wired early on) at work here, endurance athletes have to be able to handle what can often be mind numbingly boring training. ADHD sufferers need not apply for the most part.
In strength/power sports, innate talent might be found in a higher proportion of fast twitch muscle fibers. A good nervous system (in terms of being able to fire those muscle well) wouldn’t hurt. Hormone levels might play a role (though this wouldn’t show up until after puberty), obviously having higher levels of testosterone never hurts in such sports. Mechanics plays a big role here too. Tall guys tend to make poorer Olympic lifters (who typically have fairly specific body dimensions) than shorter. Throwers tend to be on the taller and heavier side.
The best benchers often have certain mechanics (shorter arms and a big chest never hurts) while the best squatters and deadlifters often have different mechanics. Having overall robust joints and bones doesn’t hurt here either: lighter boned or jointed people tend to get injured by the type of training needed to succeed at this type of sport.
Even in something like bodybuilding, it’s often been felt that having small joints was a benefit, it makes muscles look bigger. Height is an issue here as well, tall guys have to carry a lot more muscle than shorter to look as big because of differences in how muscle cross sectional area scales with changing limb length.
Certain psychologies are probably better for these types of sports as well. Aggression helps in a lot of the strength/power sports and, to be blunt, bodybuilders and other physique types usually walk the obsessive compulsive control freak line. Otherwise they don’t survive the dieting. Mind you, many great athletes have a streak of obsession; you have to to keep working at something year after year.
In team sports, it gets fuzzier since the determinants of victory often lay far outside purely physiological factors. In addition to physical factors, speed of movement, body requirements, there is the issue of tactics, reading plays, reaction time. A quarterback in American football needs to be able to assimilate a tremendous amount of incoming data and make rapid decisions or alterations on the fly; while some of this can probably be trained it’s not far fetched to assume some differences in innate ability here.
As another example, there is a current interest in vision improvement, for some sports (consider an American football quarterback watching for a sack, a soccer goalie trying to watch his flank, that sort of thing), good peripheral vision would be a real boon. Some of these things do respond to training, mind you, (one of the reasons coaches set up plays repeatedly is to teach athletes how to recognize and deal with them), but some of it may be innate or the luck of the draw.
Mind you, the Eastern European countries did a ton of work on the above type of thing, developing normative data and doing extensive testing on kids to try to identify who had the most potential to become a super athlete based on body mechanics or physiology (i.e. vertical or long jump tests to determine fiber type and explosive potential). And, in many countries, athletes simply weren’t given a choice about the sport they could do. If they were built for sport X, they did X because, presumably, they had the best shot at being successful at it. In contrast, in the US this is far less commonplace; usually athletes with some sort of ‘talent’ for a sport luck into it as often as not.
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What is Talent: Part 3
And then there’s the genetic issue. We’ve known for a decade or more than subjected to the same training stimulus, the variety in adaptability can vary massively. For example, in response to aerobic training, VO2 max can increase anywhere from about 0% (a small percentage of folks simply don’t make gains) to about 50% (the other extreme) with most getting an average response because that’s what average means. The best endurance athletes invariably were born not only with a high starting VO2 max but also had the genetics to get the biggest adaptation to proper training.
I can think of at least one study on strength training where folks with a lighter bone structure gained less strength than folks with heavier bone structure and I even mentioned that above; lighter boned folks often get injured trying to handle the heavy training loads that best stimulate strength gains. And chronically injured folks don’t make good athletes. Hell, there’s that whole odd data set on 4th to 2nd finger length ratio (which is indicative of a lot of things that went on during fetal development) that predicts a ton of things…including athletic performance ability.
Moving to a more reductive level, studies are looking closely at the role of genetics in athletic performance and adaptability and there is certainly evidence that this matters. For example, a specific ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) type is found in elite endurance athletes, and the opposite type in strength/power athletes. Other genetics markers have been found that relate to strength and power production. For example, the genetic marker alpha-actinin-3 is associated with speed performance and athletes who lack it will be at a massive disadvantage to those that have it.
And of course, all physiological systems in the body do have some upper genetic limit that can’t be surpassed and we might consider that upper limit under the heading of talent in the sense that someone with a higher upper limit has the potential to reach a higher level of performance than someone with a lower upper limit (other critical things being done).
Whether it’s a limit to Vo2 max, muscle mass or something else nobody keeps adapting indefinitely. That’s one of the big reasons athletes use drugs (yes, newsflash, athletes use drugs). Not only do they provide numerous other benefits such as improved recovery or what have you, they artificially raise the inherent genetic limit of the body that, otherwise, wouldn’t be surpassed.
To the above we might add other things that would show up as ‘talent’. Good body control, proprioception, things like that. Things that are often innate (or at least vary with some people showing better inherent levels than others). We all know kids who have better or worse ability to tell where they are in space (I’ve seen the same thing in dogs at the Austin Humane Shelter; some seem unable to tell what’s going on physically) and they are probably more likely to be drawn to and/or succeed at sport early on than kids who are, to put it mildly, spazzes (who make excellent water boys, make no mistake).
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What is Talent: Summing Up
My point being that there would certainly appear to be some inherent physiological aspects that relate to sport performance that can show up as innate ‘talent’. Certainly some are modifiable with proper training, but some are not. And there is clearly a difference in how well or poorly someone will adapt to training with increasing evidence that this is determined genetically.
I’d note before moving on a concept that seems to escape many, which I’ll leave for now simply as an unanswered (and possibly unanswerable question): is it conceivable that part of what makes people willing to put in the 10 years of grinding work to get good at something is an innate characteristic?
That is, something about them is just wired to make them want to devote 10 or more years to a pursuit with potentially zero rewards? If so, the whole issue of innate talent versus hard work becomes far more complicated of a question: perhaps the drive to put in the work is an innate talent in the first place.
And since this has already gotten out of control length wise, I’ll cut it here and finish up in Part 2 on Friday where I’ll talk briefly about the work side of the equation and then put this all together in some form or fashion. And answer the question I raised above about Pre: was his success an issue of his work ethic/ability to suffer or did he simply have talent?
Talent vs. Work: Part 2
On Monday in Talent vs. Work: Part 1 I introduced the issue/idea of whether or not there is some sort of innate ‘talent’ that might exist (at least in an athletic context) as part of trying to address the issue of whether the assertion that ‘hard work can overcome’ talent has any validity.
In that piece, I moved from general to specific looking at the idea that there would certainly appear to be some innate factors (physiological, biomechanical, neurological, other) that might give someone an innate edge or talent for a given activity. Basically, I think the idea that there is no such thing as innate talent is a flawed one; it’s a lovely idea to have, to think that hard work can get you as far as anyone else. But in reality, it just doesn’t seem to be the case.
But that still doesn’t really answer the original question or address the issue since there is the other half of what I want to talk about, the work issue. Surprisingly, given the amount of verbiage I gave to the issue of talent, I don’t have much to say here. But I will say what little I have before finally getting around to the original question and trying to make some sort of useful answer to it.
What is Work/Hard Work?
As noted, I don’t have much to say here comparatively speaking. Whether you buy into the idea of there being some type of innate talent or not, I don’t think anyone would deny that you still have to put in the work. That is, people often tend to play this silly little game where they turn debates like this into an either/or sort of issue. Either you have innate talent or you’re a hard worker. Effectively, people will take your argument that ‘Someone has a genetically innate talent for something’ and read it as ‘What you’re saying is that they don’t have to put in the work.’
But that’s not what’s being said. Certainly, beginners in any activity may show some sort of relatively better or worse ability at doing something; in all likelihood the folks who do a bit better initially are more likely to stick with it. But nobody, and I repeat nobody gets to the top level of anything without taking that innate talent (or perhaps a high genetic limit) and maximizing it with years of grinding work.
That is, even if you want to argue that West Africans have a genetic talent to be good at sprinting or that East Africans have a talent for endurance running (I’d point people to the book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We’re Afraid To Talk About It for a look at this) the simple fact is that they still put in years of grindingly hard work to maximize that talent. I’ll come back to this later on. It’s not like someone with the right ethnic background is going to step to the line in the 100m and tear it up if they haven’t put in the work.
So how am I defining ‘work’ here, in an athletic context. Again, I’m going to use it somewhat generally. Consider the work half of the equation to including proper, intelligent, progressive training. Assume the individual got competent coaching (from a technical standpoint). Assume that the individual was willing to put up with the discomfort that comes with high-level training (again, consider that the temperament or personality profile to be willing to hurt that much might just be innate in the first place).
That’s what I’m using to define work here. And figure it’s going to take a solid 5-10 years of it for the person to even come close to maximizing their talent. Certainly there are examples of folks who got there faster, usually in sports without massive technical demands (you see some folks get up there pretty quick in running and cycling from time to time, a few years). But for most the 10 year/10,000 hour rule seems to be a pretty good one.
So by work assume that someone puts in that time. With training appropriate for their sport, putting in the hard work as needed (and resting as needed, we might include training ‘smart work’ as part of ‘hard work’). I think you get the idea. That’s how I’m defining ‘work’ or ‘hard work’ here.
And now finally I can address the original question I set out to address: does talent overcome hard work or can hard work overcome talent?
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The Work/Talent Matrix
Yes, matrix. Because matrices are hardcore or something. Yeah. For simplicities sake (and make no mistake, this is staggeringly simplified), I’m going to define talent and work (or maybe work ethic or whatever) as being high or low. That is, I’m going to pretend that they are binary settings which they most clearly are not.
Which is why I said this is simplified, clearly we are looking at a huge continuum. But this keeps the matrix (YES, MATRIX) cleaner and hopefully everyone can extrapolate to different variations of talent or work or whatever. Ok, THE MATRIX.
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WorkTalent
HighLowHighThe ThoroughbredThe Prima DonnaLowThe WorkhorseThe Always Gonna.
HighLowHighThe ThoroughbredThe Prima DonnaLowThe WorkhorseThe Always Gonna.
Basically, by dividing talent and work into high and low categories (and again this is very simplified) we get 4 potential ‘types’ when it comes to sport performance. Let’s look at each combination. First, the extremes.
Low talent + low work ethic = The Always Gonna
An individual with low innate talent and no work ethic isn’t really worth discussing: these are folks that won’t ever get anywhere. They’ve got no inherent ability at something but nor are they willing to do the work that it takes. They usually talk about how much they’d ‘love to do something’ but never seem to actually put any effort towards getting there.
They are always gonna start putting in the effort, gonna start watching their diet, gonna start blah, blah, blah. But it never happens. About the only way you get these guys to do anything is to give them no choice in the matter: enroll them in the military. Left to their own devices it’s one bullshit excuse after another.
High talent + high work ethic = The Thoroughbred
At the other extreme is the individual with high talent AND a high work ethic. Not only do they have an inherent physiology (as discussed in Talent vs. Work: Part 1) that is suited to success, they put in the work. Endless work. Hard work. Painful work. Smart work. For years on end. And that combined with their innate talent takes them to the top. Coaches sometimes call these guys thoroughbreds. They have the talent and they are willing to do the work. They can be groomed for the top levels.
Drug issue aside, Lance Armstrong is a great example of this. Even as as teen he had one of the highest measured VO2 max scores when he was tested up in Dallas and he was winning triathlons at a very early age. Then he got cancer, came back and put in years of grinding work (his ability to hurt and put in immense amounts of training was pretty legendary) and reached the pinnacle of his sport. Having a proper support team (including his team manager and teammates) were part of his success. But he combined a monster physiology (much of which is innate) with years of hard work.
In ice speedskating, Chad Hedrick comes to mind. His ability to suffer was also legendary, as my coach put it “Chad would just turn his brain off and go”. He also skated hard for over 20 years. He had the innate physiology and the work ethic to reach the top. And invariably when you look at the world beaters, the guys who reach the topmost level of their sport, this is what you find.
Taking a quick tangent here: It’s not a question of talent vs. hard work even if people try to make it into a simple either/or. It’s an issue of them having an innate talent that they maximized with the hard work. There are other issues mind you, lucking into that sport, being able to pursue it, having the money to do it, whatever. I’m not saying talent and hard work are the only variables. But without either you don’t reach the top level. There simply has to be a bunch of other stuff too.
And I guess here is the best place to discuss Steve Prefontaine; as I noted in Talent vs. Work: Part 1 he asserted that talent was a myth, that he beat guys based on guts and being willing to suffer. And as it turned out he was one of the early test subjects when physiological testing started. The results: a VO2 max of 85 ml/kg/min or thereabouts. One of the highest ever recorded (if I recall correctly, the highest ever is about 90 in a cross country skiier).
Compare that to the 68-70 of good endurance athletes and the 45-50 or lower of the average person. The simple fact is that, guts/suffering or not, he’d never have set the records he did or competed at the international level without the innate talent and physiology to succeed. Again, his work ethic let him maximize his talent. But his assertion that he lacked talent was simply nonsensical: he probably started with a higher VO2 max than most folks will ever achieve. And his ending VO2 max is one that is only seen in the most elite of the elite.
High talent + low work ethic = The Prima Donna
Ok, next up what about guys with lots of talent and a poor work ethic? These guys do well early on, when up against guys without their inherent talent they get by on talent alone and putting in the minimal work necessary. They don’t watch their diet and never learn to train hard because they simply don’t have to at the lower levels.
Invariably these types of athletes coasted through early competition (high school, etc.) on talent alone and never really developed any sort of work ethic. They never learned to hurt or work hard (or smart) because they never had to early on. And as they reach higher levels of competition, and start running into either guys with talent and work ethic (or the next group I’m going to talk about), they realize that talent alone isn’t enough.But since they were always the top of the heap before they usually don’t see any reason to change.
And they are the bane of higher level coaches. They are often uncoachable, they never had to work before and don’t see any reason to start now. Coaches look at these athletes and think “What a waste”; other athletes look at them and just get frustrated “If I only had your talent.” In fact, many coaches would rather work with the next group instead of these guys. Because while you can’t work with someone unwilling to do the work; someone at least willing to put in the effort is worth paying attention to even if the natural talent isn’t there.
Low talent + high work ethic = The Workhorse
And then there’s the final group, which coaches sometimes call the workhorse. These are the guys who didn’t have the innate talent (or didn’t have it to the degree of the thoroughbreds, it’s rare for a workhorse to totally suck at something or they wouldn’t pursue the activity at all) but they pursued it anyhow and put in grinding amounts of work to try to compensate for a lack of built in talent.
Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes workhorses reach a pretty high level depending on how they approach things. They don’t get to the top but they can go pretty far. Mind you, this wasn’t uncommon in the earlier days of sports; there are plenty of stories of guys who reached the top despite a lack of talent (or some physical issue in many cases). But it almost never happens anymore, the level of competition is simply too high with the best having talent and a work ethic.
In some sports, workhorses often play critical roles where they can put whatever level of talent they have developed to use (and they can often make quite a good living doing this). In road cycling for example, which is a team sport, workhorse cyclists are as often as not domestiques. They aren’t the star because they simply don’t have the talent or ability to win. But they can help the team win by working for the leader. And if the team wins, they win by extension because they were part of the effort.
In track running, workhorses can be pacemakers, either helping the thoroughbreds train or acting as workers in races. Again, they aren’t really in the running for the win but they can be part of a record setting effort by doing a specific job and putting their ability to work on some level.
Basically, when thoroughbreds are present, the workhorse can’t win because life isn’t a Disney or Rocky movie (oh that it were). No amount of work can overcome a lesser degree of talent compared to someone with the same work ethic and more talent. And thoroughbreds always have the winning combination of talent and the work ethic.
Mind you, as often as not, the workhorse overtrains themselves into the ground. They fall into the trap of thinking that they need to work 2 or 3 or 10 times as hard as the talented athlete and do themselves more harm than good by trying to compensate for their lack of talent with sheer effort. Because it’s not always ‘hard’ work that is needed, As often as not it’s smart work. I, of course, wouldn’t know anything about this.
Finally, workhorse athletes often make the best coaches. Since they didn’t have the talent which let them succeed easily, they are usually the ones who take apart their sport and chosen activity bit by bit, anything to eke out the most out of what talent they do have (often they become coaches in an attempt to take someone to a level they never reached and make up for their own frustrated sporting goals). I’m not saying that nobody from the other groups can’t make a good coach, just that a majority of coaches seem to come from this group.
And I’m actually going to cut this here. I had wanted to finish this in two pieces but I have a bunch more to say and this is already too long. And I’m too exhausted to write up the rest of it. So…Monday.
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