4: Discussing the origins of extraordinary athletic performance

Sports gen Inside The Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about why you wrote this book. Yeah, actually, it really kind of started with questions I started sticking in the back of my head that came out of my own athletic experience, and that started with growing up in an area outside Chicago had a large Jamaican immigrant community, and track was very popular among this group, and we had this amazing team.

We won twenty four straight conference championships, largely with the help of these Jamaican sprinters. And when I got curious about Jamaica and learning a little more about Jamaica and realized there's two and a half million people there and producing all these great runners, I started to wonder, you know, what the heck's going on there? And then in college

I move up to a little longer distance. I'm meeting some Kenyan athletes and learning they're all basically from the same town in this rural area of the Western riff Aalley. And again I'm saying, well, what the heck's going on there? And at the same time, I have a training group of guys you know, who are becoming my best friends. We're living together, we're doing everything together, all the same training, and we're getting kind of more different, not more the same.

And just sort of started to wonder, you know, sort of lodging these questions in the back of my head along with things like, well, why couldn't Major League Baseball hitters hit softball pitchers? Just things I saw on television, And so eventually, when I had a chance to just tackle my own questions, you know, in one large project,

I jumped at the chance. You know, it's funny we sort of had parallel well, we obviously had parallel lives, but our interests were our interests in why we're interested in this today came from our fascination with individual differences. With me, it was in a school environment. With you,

it was in a sports environment. But I think both of us are really interested in getting at the truth about what is the relative influence of nature and nurture, how do the interact and all these all these deep questions. I really I want to say, I really loved your book, and I particularly liked it because it was very nuanced and was I didn't get the feeling when I read it like you were trying to be sensationalistic for the sense the sake of taking a claim. I really felt

like you were a scientist, you know. Yeah, Can I say,

just in your point in us kind of agree. I agree, like when we've we've talked before, you know, before this, and and one thing I think that we both kind of have in common is that instead of sort of staking out ground for the sake of staking out ground, if and tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like we both share a certain approach that's like, hey, let's let's find out what differences between people are real, not just folklore, which are important, and then how you

can use those to try to get kind of optimal outcomes for all people, instead of just staking out ground that's as there are or there aren't differences without sort of trying to incorporate all the evidence around you. And I think that's kind of why we connected, you know, when we talk about these things. That's exactly right, that's

exactly right. You know, I think that we're both in we're interested in science as well as what does it have to say for the person who's actually in the trenches, who's doing the training or doing the or wants to be better, a better person. You know, it's I have a lot of I have some scientific colleagues, and I of course will not mention names, but you know, they they're doing science, but I see an agenda in them as well. Right, So I don't think Andy, you know,

I don't think scientists are are exempt from this. Certainly journalists aren't exempt from it. You know. I don't think just because someone's doing science that they somehow have some claim on saying that they're being completely objective and getting in the truth. I see biased everywhere. I mean, me

and you are obviously somewhat biased as well. We're not not saying that we're like, you know, above everyone by any means, but what we what I'm trying to do and what I really see an earnest effort in you in doing as well with your book and your writings on this topic is try to acquire as many perspectives as possible, because that's the only way we can overcome this bias is by seeing, you know, perspectives not just through science, but also through those who are actually doing it.

So we obviously have a lot of things we could talk about today, right yeah, I mean, and I agree exactly. And one of the just you know, just to add to that, one of the things I was sort of disappointed to in while I was reporting my book is eventually there are a couple cases where people confess to me that they're basically hiding data because they were concerned

about publishing and things like that. And I totally understand where that comes from, because it usually had to do with with ethnic differences and you know, but we were talking about, like one prominent case was the head of a kinesiology department at a big research university told me'd found some differences between black and white subjects and it was in the reponse of people who were exercising to a dietary supplement, you know, which could be actually useful information,

but he felt that if he published it would somehow be construed that he was saying there were you know, these innate intellectual differences and they have nothing to do with one another. But it shows you how kind of harmful that stigma can can be. It's really harmful. I mean, ciding that kind of information makes it in the category of taboo all of a sudden in a way that can exaggerate the implications of it in ways that can

be even more damaging. So that's actually that blows my mind to hear that I didn't even know people were doing that. I mean, I didn't know that. Like I didn't either, Holy cow wow. So let's you know, we could.

I feel like the cool thing about having this conversation view is that when we jump into this, we can jump into it on a common ground of software hardware being integrably intimately intertwined, right as always feeding off each other, yin yang, And maybe maybe that's a bad analogy, yingyang, but dancing the tango? How about that? I like that analogy actually, so we can start on that common ground.

We don't need to start with me asking you so dare because it neuture or nurture, Like I don't even need to ask you that question, like, I feel like could really dive into this and let's get it some specific examples and start and maybe in this interview cover various domains, because I think that's the you know, this, this conversation, it tends to be very abstract in the in the public sphere with people fighting each other, it's nuture,

it's nurture, some sort of general abstract way. But but as your book shows, when you get into the nitty gray details of each specific sport, then it's like, now

we're talking. Now we're starting to understand, well, what are some of the specific influences on trainability, What are the genetic contributions to those influence to those influences, what are the you know, environmental ways that regardless of what we know about your genes, things like that, that we can really really, you know, we can really talk and understand. So what I'm trying to think, what I've I've picked something random in mind. What what what sport can we start

off with? Maybe you should we start off with running, since it's something I've studied and you've personally done. Could you start off with a personal experience you had as a runner when you're young, because you said, you notice with more training, people started to get more different, And

I think that's a fascinating point. So I pe colaborat. Yeah, I had played on a variety of sports before I came to running, and then when I came to it, I was I was a walk on runner in college, meaning I wasn't good enough to be recruited, and I was paired with a guy named Scott who was already Canadian national athlete, was twenty seconds faster in a half mile, and I was near both juniors in high school, and so we started training together and I was doing like

lesser variations of what he was doing, but strangely, I basically started catching up to him, even doing less until the point where about at about a minute and fifty two seconds and a half mile, which was way faster than I had run two seasons prior, I passed him and he never beat me again. And kind of the strange thing was that our coaches and teammates started, you know, telling me, all, you know, you have no talent, you're just so tough, and telling him, well, he's got all

the talents in the world. They were give him pep talks like he was a head case. Because he couldn't capitalize on his talent. I think I think getting those PEP talks as if he had like psychological issues started to make him doubt himself frankly, And you know, in the reporting of my book and getting kind of a lot of the testing I did, I came to realize that I'm actually what sports scientists would call a low baseline high responder, meaning like I basically didn't have you untrained,

didn't have good capacity to process oxygen. But I adapted very, very very rapidly, and so improved really really quickly, and so we were kind of making our coaches and teammates were kind of making an unproductive I think, based on only the things that we can see in our guesses.

And you know, I think it's important. One of the most important things I think that's come out of some of this work and exercise genetics is to find that the correlation between baseline ability and ability to be trained for some skills is zero, which is which gives you a whole different insight into you know, we're always thinking of talent in a cross sectional way, and I think it kind of renders that idea a little bit obsolete

for some skills. It's not it's different for different skills, but that that's for the one that I was engaged in. That's what it is. That's so interesting. So we do conceptualize ability as potential, and it sounds like you're saying that that's not necessarily the case. You know, when we measure solone's ability at any moment in time, we can a should be measuring what they've copped out it in a way, or what they've or that or yeah, like you just said, their inability to be further trained at

a great, a great, great levels. That's why I think, really I wish there was sort of a blanket answer. You know, so in that for a robic capacity for building the amount of oxygen you can move through your blood, you know, if there's in this the most famous exercise genetic study, there's no correlation between baseline ability and ability

to be trained. So the scientists at the beginning of the study took the ten most talented people and they missed one hundred percent of the people who ended the study looking the most talented, even though everyone did the exact same thing. And then so I think the question is we have to find what's you know, some skills, there is correlation between initial ability and ability to improve, So I think we have to put in a lot of work to figure out which are which and then

you know how you can help people using that information. Yeah, this ability to you know, and there's so many things to disentangle her ability ability to improve is not necessarily the same thing as rate of improvement, so right, And I mean that's an important distinction too. Like you look all in a classroom in educational context, and IQ is a variable that measures rate of learning. It's very strongly related to the rate of learning new material, new complex

and novel, you know, new material. However, even if someone takes slower they might still be able to be trainable. So it doesn't mean you're not trainable just because you might be slower than someone else. Could you speak? Could

you do you agree? Yeah? I do agree, And I think that there are a lot of reasons why that could be the case, right, Like some of them might be you know, there's there's actually the UK Athletics, which had been I think a world leader right now, partly because they really funded their sports science and the lead up to the London Olympics in twenty twelve, has come up with sort of terms for people like that, and they use these cooking terms. It's like the fast risers

and the slow bakers and things like that. And the fast risers are people who, just like like rocket fuel, they get some training and you know, they're up to a world class level really quickly. But then some of the slow risers sort of plod along at regular intervals, but sometimes surpass the fast risers, I mean the slow bakers surpassing so so just from the rate and just from the initial baseline, you can't always tell them. They're seeing that so regularly that they started to codify it

sort of with these terms. And I think that's that could be because of any characteristics of someone. It could be because of their self regulatory behavior, the way that they're better able to take accountability for their own practice, you know, But I think that's absolutely true, and it's it's just I think it's important for people who do various forms of talent selection to recognize all that variability, to recognize that they can't always believe what they're seeing

at this moment in terms of judging potential absolutelyslutely. So, what are some things that you going into it you thought were more innate and turned out to not really be that, or maybe they weren't it, but we're not turned out to be all that not important for the sport as much as we thought they would be. Well, let me let me give you the thing that most that surprised me the most period overall was the chapters.

I knew full well from following exercise science that physical activity alters the dopamine system, you know, to to oversimplify it, you know, it was just involved in a sense of pleasure and reward from whatever, eating sex, drugs, whatever, physical activity. I had no idea that scientists who study dopamine system

know that the reverse is true too. The differences in our dopamine system and dopamine receptor genes can actually drive physical activity to various levels, giving some people sort of a compulsive drive to train or to be physically active. And that you can medicate that a way pretty easily, yeah, or medicate it into existence. Yeah. And I just didn't know that. That was just a surprise to me. I

guess it makes sense. Well in retrospect, I say it makes sense, but I just had not you know, I guess I had just thought of that as totally like voluntary acts of will, like someone gets off the couch or they don't, and it turns out there's actually an

important genetic component to it. And I think, now, when I think back on my own experience training with people, I knew I had some teammates who had to be managed to train more and some who had to be managed to train less because they would do more than was good for them. And that was the most surprising kind of general theme that came out of my book recording for me. In terms of the initial question you asked.

The most surprising thing to me that I thought was an eight that wasn't was reaction times, for sure, because I'd come across all this old sports science literature that was trying to categorize athletes into certain positions or sports based on their reaction speed, and turns out it's pretty

much useless. And so when I took a reaction time test and I outscored Albert Pooholes, who's probably like the best Major League baseball hitter of a generation, and he only scored in the sixty six percentile compared to a bunch of random college students, I was pretty pretty darn

surproprised at that. I just keep thinking of all the parallels between what you're talking about and prodigies and other sports like music, and I think there are fundamental principles here and all, as well as not fundamental principles of course, I think about this. I keep thinking about this example in your book of this baby who had big biceps and kind of you know that the most extreme example you could think of of, Like when we talk about innateness,

what does that mean? What does innateness mean? Well, a concrete example, someone who's born into the world with already a leg up that might cause what are called Matthew effects. I was wondering if you could talk a little more about what, you know, what are Matthew effects, What are the role of that? What is that role? And tell me and and talk a little bit more about this. Uh, this this little this little kid that you talked about in the book that seemed to so quickly move up

with that muscle development. Yeah, that the super baby. So yeah, this is so called super baby. So this was a child who was kind of picked out in German hospital because of having muscle development basically at birth, and it led to the discovery of the myostatin gene. So myostatin gene codes for a protein called myostatin. It's basically like a muscle stop sign. It tells muscles when to stop growing. And this baby had mutant versions of both copies of

the gene, so had none of this protein. So the muscles just sort of continued to grow beyond when they should stop. And the gene version has now been found in racing dogs like crazy, because if you have one version, you're pretty muscular but still leans so good for sprinting. And the baby's mother had one version and was a

professional sprinter and so on and so forth. But the Matthew effect idea being that someone born with this trait that's kind of outlandish, but still, you know, at the baby level, it's a lot more muscle, but it's still not like the baby can go on and become a

world class athlete right away, right. But it can lead you to sort of cascade effects of effects that there's some advantage that leads to other advantages, and in many cases because people see what they seize on as potential and start conferring advantages and frankly disadvantaging other people who are de selected, which is a huge problem in sports that we should talk about education. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And do you have this sort of avalanche of benefits that

come from some slightly different initial starting conditions. Absolutely. So much of sports development is psychological as well as physical. And you know, when we do these sorts of things, we're very much influencing someone's confidence or sense of self efficacy for their sport, which is going to motivate their practice. I thought we could talk a little bit about practice. We'd be remiss if we didn't discuss andres ericson at

all in this interview, right, So, yeah, he's done. He's done some good research showing the importance of deliberate practice or systematic targeted activities to push you beyond your limits in a very sustained, effortful way. Do you think the role of the word practice has been overrated underrated in terms of sports development? Do you think it's been misrepresented at all by any or scientists. I do think it's

been misrepresented. I think it's hard to say whether it's overrated or underrated because it's so terribly important, and at the same time, when the conclusion from some studies has been that it's the only thing that's important. The studies that have made that conclusion have been set up in such a way that that conclusion cannot even be falseized. Yeah, exactly,

it can't be falsified. And you know, in many cases they're highly range restrict In some cases they're restriction of range based on your dependent variable, which is like the cardinal sin of setting up a study and then make could you actually explain that that's actually a key key issue with this, could you for my listeners who might

not know what restricted range is. So the most famous so called you know, ten thousand hours rule study that led to this idea that ten thousand hours of practice is necessary and sufficient for expertise comes from a violin study of thirty violinists who were so highly pre screened at the beginning of the study that they had already gained admission to a world famous music academy. So you were restricting the range of your subjects based on their

ability level while studying ability level. So this would be like to analogize it to sports, like doing a study of basketball skill with only NBA centers, noticing they all practiced a lot, and concluding therefore that only practice got them where they are not practice plus being seven feet tall, right,

because you've screamed everything else out. So in one chapter of my book, I did analytics and found that if you put every American on on a continuum and looked at points scored in the NBA, you find a high positive correlation between height and points scored in the NBA. If you restricted the range to only people actually in the NBA, it reverses and becomes negative. So your conclusion if you restricted the range that way would be to tell parents to have shorter children in order for them

to score more points in the NBA. You have to take your study design into accountant and what version. So in that case, in that case, it's just a lot of conclusions. So what my problem has been with journalists and some scientists is to say the difference between scientists and journalists and normal people is that numbers and magnitude and variants have to matter for scientists. It can't just

be practice matters, that's totally uncontroversial. It has to be what kind of practice matters, How much does it matter, how much variance is it accounting for? And performance? What else matters? Right? And so I get a little frustrated when I see someone saying, well, deliberate practice matters, therefore nothing else does. That's not the that's not the conclusion. And I see why that straw man helps sort of

market ideas, but it's not it's not honest. Yeah, you see it all at all angles scientists say well, genes really matter, and and they could you can make the same argument about anyone who just picks one variable and says, you know, and that's their hobby horse variable, right, absolutely, you know, Zach Cambric, My colleagues, I can really sent some meta analysis summaries of looking at the role of do it practice in terms of how much variation is

explained across various things and sports was you know, it was substantial. It was by no means, I don't even think it was fifty percent, but it was still you know, a lot, but interesting enough. Other things, like you know, it differed by domains like education it was like two percent or something, or business it was small. It seems like, you know, there are lots of other ways to be good at something other than deliberate practice, something that isn't

discussed that that often. Are you know some other variables that you know, I think are also important things like inspiration and motivation, and well, let's talk about inspiration motivation there for a second. We can stop right there. Do you think that someone who isn't motivated or inspired to be good is really going to be deliberate, it's really going to be deliberately practicing that much? I don't think

over the long term. I mean I think the I think the the more developed that human endeavors have gotten, sports, business, whatever, the more competitive they've become. So so used sports an example, I think, like a century ago, you could be the only person who had had a lot of talent, or you could be the only person who had any idea how to train correctly, and you could come and like win the Olympics. Right now, you can't do that. You

have to have all sorts of things lining up. Luck, skill, talent,

lots of deliberate practice. So I think, and this actually brings me to an idea that you sort of introduced me to that I had some familiarity with but didn't have good words for, which is the vision of future self that I think people in most cases, you know, there's the occasional Donald Thomas, like the high jumper I write about and kind of accidentally became the world champion, but that's an exception, and you know, in most cases, I think whatever people are doing now, a lot of

human endeavors are so well developed that even a talented person is going to have to put in a lot of time and learning, and that there's going to be a lot of roadblocks and stumbles and obstacles and bad days, and that having that vision of your future self is one of the things that makes those a heck of a lot easier to envision as just a piece of

the road going forward. And when I when you sort of sent me a paper that idea, and I went back and looked at some of the groaning and talent studies the Netherlands, all the kids from age ten and

twelve up to adulthood. That that that helped me as like a one sentence descriptor of some of the motivational factors for some of those kids who would not be wrecked when things went wrong for a little while, because it was just because they had I think a stronger vision, you know, of of their future selves, and so it helped them put failures into context. Is just, you know,

something that has to happen on the road along the way. Yeah, that seems to be a that seems to be maybe a general principle about how anyone can accomplish their goals in life. You know, I you know, for for people that want to like lose weight, right, you know, weight loss and things like that, to have some sort of like simulated picture of what they would look like, you know when they lost fifty pounds or something stuck to their wall. You know, things like that I think are beneficial.

So I think this can you know, apply across across the board. And of course you know we should. We should get creditor to eat Paul Torrens, who was that was the paper I sent you who in his study of following up lots of school children, found that the extent to which kids fell in over the future dream or vision of themselves was a great predictor of creativity across various fields. And and you're seeing this also, you've

seen this in some data in sports. Could you tell some all the other interesting findings that came from that

longitudal study you just mentioned. Yeah, the growing engine is that the growning gin study, the learning and studies, Yeah, I mean the d that's and one of The reason I think that those studies are important is because they're just they're just higher quality of studies than a lot of the case studies and cross sectional stuff that's done in sports, which means they should be paid more attention, but in fact they're often paid less attention. But he

you know, one of the things. So, so to take soccer for example, so some of the kids that were followed from the time they were twelve have now made it up to the professional levels in soccer. Netherlands is very good soccer country, and there were there were a couple on highlights, sort of three quick things. One was they started realizing we talked about that Matthew effect. Right.

One of the reasons that happens is because kids who are the same chronological age but different biological maturation that will get mistaken for differences and potential a lot of times, right, especially when they're young, pre puberty and in the growing and studies, they started tracking growth velocity, so peak height velocity is like physiology lingo for the growth spurt, and they if coaches wanted to cut kids, they said, oh, ye has a good technical skill, but not you know,

too little or whatever. It doesn't have enough athleticism. The scientists have basically stopped letting them do that because they're saying, no, no no, he's still on the left side of the growth curve. You're not allowed to cut him yet. And they've saved some people who went on to become really good that way by not allowing the coaches to de select them before they had caught up with their peers in physical maturation. So I think that's one really important

thing that came out of it. Another they found some physical characteristics that even at age twelve, if kids didn't have, like if they couldn't didn't have a certain minimum speed and shuttle runs at age twelve, they were behind us minimum feed, they never caught up and they wouldn't make the top level. So that was important. But they also found that the kids who went to the top displayed

self regulatory behavior. You know, if you watched videos of them, they would be the kids who were going up to trainers saying, well, why are we doing this drill again? You know it seems kind of too easy for me. I think I've already mastered this. Can I work on

this other thing? How is this helping me? And they sometimes they look like they're the ones annoying the coaches and the trainer and they're like, get back in line, kid, But they're actually they're taking accountability for their own practice, and they're reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses and what

they need to do to move forward. And ultimately they found that those kids assess their own strengths and weaknesses much more similarly to the way their coaches do, and I get a much better idea of what they need to work on keep moving forward. So interesting is that

the liver practice? What is that? This reflection? Yeah? That so the single So I asked Mariah L. Frank Gemzer, who's kind of one of the masterminds of growing in talent studies too, if she had one word for the most important trait that those kids show, what it would be and she's reflection. And if she had one sentence for what they do, how would she describe? Says, they become the orchestrators of their own development. Right, They don't just like leave it up to their coaches or to

other people. They continually try to take more and more accountability for their own development and orchestrated and they reflect on what they're doing, and they go to these cycles of kind of trial and error. Is this this is what I need to work on. Let me try this to work on it. Did that work? If not, they try something else. And I think that in some ways fits very much with deliberate practice. It's finding practice that matters, right, instead of just kicking some balls or going to the

to the driving range and just hitting some golf balls. Right, that's not delivered practice. That's not figuring out what you need to work on and working on it. Yeah, I really like that. Like said, self determination theory is also you know, I think relevant here that we take we have some sort of sense of autonomy and the locus of control, internal locus of control over our lives. And you also see that you see that across the board,

lots of things with like depression. You know, people who don't think they have that, you know, are more I could be depressed. But yeah, so you know, like when I when you keep talking about these things, I keep liking to think about, you know what, what are some generalizable principles across the means and things in life? And I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned here. Uh, why don't we go to basketball. I'm

also really interested in basketball. I went to high school with Kobe Bryant, I went to middle school in high school with Kobe Bryant, and I, you know, like most other kids in growing up in the main Line of Philadelphia, had hoop dreams. You know, I wanted to go. I wanted to be in the NBA too when I was really young. But but but clearly there, you know, he you know, what what is it like Kobe Bryant has

and and that I and that he clearly had. Like I remember in middle school everyone talking about like, oh my gosh, this kid is, you know, like the most amazing thing ever. What what What are some of the key X factor traits of basketball? Well, and I think first there are some there's some obvious things with basketball, right like it's it's the sport where some of the physical attributes that are helpful are more obvious than in

anywhere in the world. I Mean, one of the things that jumped out of me when I was doing those analytics was to find that a man who's seven feet tall, so one in ten slightly more than one in ten men in the NBA are seven feet tall or taller.

And that's that's actually so rare. Like the height distribution in the United States is such a what's called leptocretic curve, meaning it's really really steep basically that falls off on either side of the mean that about seventy percent of American men are just in like the six inch range from like five eight to six two, I think. And if you know an American man between the ages of twenty and forty is at least seven feet tall, there's a seventeen percent chance he's a current NBA player. How

are you serious? Yeah, so just Kobe Bryant, even though we don't think him as being tall for the NBA, you know, six foot six, Like, it's it's a big difference. It's helpful. And NBA players also have these incredibly long wingspans, so you and I probably have very well, I have

exactly same arm length as height, probably very close. The average in the NBA is six foot six and three quarters with seven foot long arms, and that and that arm length ratio ratio of wingspan to height is actually a better predictor of certain stats like offensive rebounding and blocks than height is alone. So these kind of even sort of hiding in plain sight physical attributes. But I mean, I think someone like Kobe Bryant, you see, he has

pretty transcendent athleticism. You know, I don't think it's a surprise that a lot of the guys who we consider the best players ever, Michael Jordan, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, are also dunk contest winners because they have this incredible athleticism. At the same time, I mean, they have this incredible obsessiveness. Right, Like Kobe Bryant doesn't even have to still be He certainly doesn't need to be playing for money. He certainly doesn't need to be playing to prove anything to anyone else.

He's already won championships and MVPs. Right. But I think, and you know, I've even been at a table and talked about Kobe Bryant and said and had people say, you know, why is he still why is he still playing? And I think that sort of betrays how little they understand him, because a he feels like he can still win a championship no matter what you say, And this is what he does and what he loves and what he obsesses over in missing one shot and trying to

get the next one. I think you see that in you know this this that's the difference between a guy who has incredible athleticism and a guy who rises to the level that he has where he can kind of carry a team to a championship because he's just I think, fell in love with the task for the task's sake, and the fact that other people think he's passed his peak is totally irrelevant to his obsession with a task that he's he's in love with. Oh, I really agree.

You see the same thing in Michael Jordan. I've read a lot of biographies about him and just this obsessive need to it's also, let's you know, we can also pinpoint it even more precisely a need to an obsession

with winning. Yeah, no doubt. Again, in those in those growing and Talent studies, when they looked at types of motivation and the kids who are twelve years old, they looked very similar to adult to lead athletes in terms of their intrinsic motivation and their ego motivation, and they are actually had pretty high levels of both, so very high levels of wanting to make themselves better, but also not quite as high, but pretty high levels of also

wanting to be better than the next guy. You know, it dawned on me that this conversation really can segue nicely into the discussion of sex differences, because there it's you know this, this need to win is tied somewhat to tsosterone. Right, Certainly, there's a lot of theory behind that. And I think if you look at you know, work from well outside of sports and like like John Coates's

were looking at hormone levels and what stock traders do. Uh, there's there's a lot of support for that idea that that it's definitely tied into competition and sex differences. Yeah, and you talk about sex differences are really nuanced, really interestingly. I mean I learned new things from reading your book, so thank you, and so you know, in terms of sex differences, could you talk about some of some of that nuance. So maybe I should ask a pointed question,

like why do we separate males and females in most sports? Yeah, that's a that's a good question. It's one it's been coming up a lot lately because there have been some some really controversial cases where someone doesn't fit easily into our normal conception of male and female and sports governing bodies are having trouble trying to figure out how to categorize them. But the fact is, in general, you know,

men are males starting very early in life. Uh you know, for six weeks we're all on the female developmental path as a fetus, and then the testosterone starts the late egg cells are created and the testosterone starts moving, and it caused a host of changes that that end up with men being obviously larger in stature in general, which

with much much more muscle mass. The difference in muscle mass between adult men and women is about the same as in male and female guerrillas, which is extremely large. In the upper body, men have more red blood cells so they can carry more oxygen, denser bones that support more muscle mass, everything like stronger jaws that are more

resistant to damage. I mean, there's this incredible suite more narrow hips that are more efficient for running, the suite of traits that gives men really a pretty staggering advantage at the highest levels of sports. So the reason we separate men and women is because we place a lot of social value on women being able to compete at

the highest levels. And I think that's completely appropriate. And they wouldn't have those opportunities if we didn't, if we just said, let's take the twenty fastest people instead of the ten fastest men and ten fastest women. Well, why don't we give women who are capable of competing with men at the highest level the chance? Well, we absolutely shouldn't mostly do. It's just in most cases that doesn't

really exist. But there are a few cases, like in Danica Patrick, the professional race car driver, where there have been women at least two women I can think of in our lifetime who have you know, tried out for the men's PGA and golf. So there are the occasional instances, but for the most part, it's there just haven't been women who can compete at that level. But when they can, they they are welcome as far as I know, for

the most part. Yeah, that you know, I was, I was thinking about things like basketball, and there was some talk about Britney Griner, but you know, there was people asking questions, would Britney Griner be worth scouting for the NBA? But yeah, so I think if there were a woman who were and and there's just Becky Hammond just joined as an NBA assistant coach for the Spurs. Yeah, I

think that's a big that's a big breakthrough. But I think there are reasons that we are unlikely to see women playing in the NBA or or even if there is a one offer that to become a regular occurrence. Right on, Were there any other I'm trying, I'm trying to remember in my mind the rest of that chapter in your book on sex differences. There were so many interesting nuanced things. Is there anything else you want to

mention about? You said some statistic about some women who identify as women technically have just as much of certain genes or or or testosterone levels as it's very rare. Then there are certain there are certain I don't know if they're conserved diseases, but certain genetic mutations that that allow for certain situations for that that reversal. Did you want to elaborate on that stuff a little bit? So like for one example, these are the cases they come

up as controversial as so most of us. You know, most people their genes and their chromosomes, and their psychology and their and what their body looks like all fit pretty simply with male or female. But there but in some cases, you know, human biology just simply doesn't break down into as tidy a binarias for its governing officials

wish it would. And so there are some conditions like where a woman will have x y chromosomes but not respond to testosterone during development and will develop as a female and while having x y chromosomes, and these women will usually be you know, their average on average that are unusually tall with longer proportional limbs than normal women.

And that condition, which is like you know, maybe one in forty thousand or something like that in the general population, is more like one in four hundred at the Olympics, right, So some of these conditions are they're natural, they're certain, they're not any kind of cheating, but they can confirm advantage, and they are very highly overrepresented at the elite levels of sports, and that's caused some very very controversial cases of sort of how to how to handle individuals with

those conditions. So interesting, and we can also we talked about sex serferences that we might as well bring up a topic of race differences. You say that we are all black, sort of gee, you elaborate on that a

little bit. That was so when I was in the book, I guess the area of the book where I take the longest time, where I stray from sports, is to discuss kind of what race even does and doesn't mean from a genetic perspective, right, and frankly, we are all you know, our forebears spent a heck of a lot of time in Africa accumulating genetic variation and genetic mutations, and then not so very long ago, a tiny group of them came out of Africa and taking only a

small bit of genetic variability with them, and then a small group of those moved on, and a small group of those moved on. So if you got rid of every you know, white person, frankly in the world, you would lose You'd lose some genetic diversity, like genes for white skin and blonde hair, but you would preserve most of humanity's genetic diversity, because most of it has accumulated

in Africa. And so the point I was making sort of with that with that chapter title was that really basically almost all of humanity's genetic diversity is contained within Africa and within each of us, And so I think that's worth thinking about before even starting to talk about whether there are there are race differences. No, I think

that's a good point. I mean, you look at like you talk about Jamaican sprinting, and then you you know, you talk about other areas where there's to be these hop eds of talent and and and they do all happen to be black, right, So what what are the environmental conditions that are that are that are making that that? And what are the genetic contributions? Yeah, in running, they in running, they all happen to be black, no matter

the distance. And so let let's take for example, and I think one important thing to recognize is that so every man who's been an Olympic one hundred meter finals since the boycotted Olympics of nineteen eighty, whether his homeland is Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada, US, Great Britain, Portugal, they all have their ancestry in a small area on the coast of West Africa. So it's not like just they're African,

they're from a specific area. And then on the other side of the continent are the runners who dominate long distance running. In these two groups, despite both being black, could hardly be more physiologically dissimilar. Frankly, such a good point, and so in the east side of the continent that you know, we think of canyons as being these great marathon runners. The Kenyans think of the Kallengin tribe as being great marathon runners. And the Kallejin tribe is this

minority tribe. It's about the population, about the size of Atlanta. And to put their achievement in perspective, there are seventeen American men in history who've run under two hours and ten minutes in the marathon. That's four minutes and fifty eight second from mile pace, and thirty two Kallengen men did that just the October before my book came out,

just in that one month. And they happen to have extremely low latitude ancestry, the Calengen, and so I was like crisscrossing the equator when I was visiting them, and in a very hot and dry climate. And that causes an evolutionary adaptation to that is very long proportional limbs that are very thin at the extremity. It's an adaptation for cooling. It's the same reason a radiator has long coils to increase surface area compared to volume to let heat out. And because the leg is like a pendulum.

Having low weight at the extremity makes for extremely energy efficient swinging, and so they actually use less oxygen to go at given pace than someone who has more weight at the extremity. That said, so they do have on average this physiological build that's advantageous for running. They aren't the only people that have it. It's just very, very

common in their population. But that said, if they turned into if the western Rift Valley where they live turned into like Finland economically tomorrow, you could forget about the running phenomenon disappear overnight because you take that physiology and you apply to a group of people who have basically no opportunity cost to try to train to be Olympic runners, Like there's subsistence farmers, there's almost no other opportunity. They have no sense that I think American do Americans do.

If we have to get into this gradually, they'll jump in. Someone will walk off of a farm and try to run like a couple laps with a gold medalist. And I think you just get this amazing sort of uh striving and lack of any fear to attempt to train like an Olympian. And you pair that with certain physiology and you get what I think is the high biggest over representation of sporting prowess ever seen in any sport

ever anywhere. It is so interesting, what are the applications there for for the United States for for talent development programs? Are we doing it doing things wrong by by by obsessing so much over really really early indicators of quote potential as opposed to changing the whole culture and goals of these training programs. Yeah, I mean you mentioned early indicators. So the world record in the marathon was just broken the other day, I don't know, the first sub two

oh three marathon, Holy cow. Yeah, And it was run by a guy named Denis Cometo who, as of twenty ten was a farmer who was not running, and it was about twenty six years old, I believe, had not run, and a guy who held the world marathon the record previously saw him and said, hey, you look like you could run. Why don't you come out with me and train? And he did and about a year later won the

Chicago Marathon. Right, So obviously he's very talented. At the same time, can you imagine that conversation happening in the United States if the winner of the new York Marathon came up to you and was like, hey, I think you could run, Like, why don't you come out and train with me? You're twenty six or twenty seven years old. No matter who you are, you'd be like, yeah, I think that ship has sailed. You know, I don't think so.

But they this idea of ten thousand hours and early specialization has not made it to the Western River Valley fortunately, and so there seems to be much less inhibition to trying something new when you're older, and it works out pretty well in some cases. Like fore, guys like Dennis cometto who's now the world record? I love that? And not everything in life. When we get outside sports, we start thinking about other things like becoming a doctor later

in life, becoming an actor, not everything in life. Do you have to be the world's greatest at to have a satisfying, meaningful, fulfilled life, right? You know? People people so often think that ship has sailed for many things that haven't sailed in the sense that they could they could do it, and some could still do it great job later in life. I in many cases people could probably get a lot better at things later in life than they really think they do than they could. Oh,

you know, you just triggered something. You just gave a quote once. I just love Do you gave a quote and I can't I can't quote it back at all, but the outline of it with something like people, even if there are genetic differences or there are there are differences that we can't change. That even within the range of what we are capable of changing, is so striking and dramatic of what we can accomplish. Do you remember that quote? You said that somewhere where? Did I read that?

I don't remember the exact quote, but that certainly sounds like the kind of thing i'd say. I mean, like I I'm always saying, I think, like you know, it's funny that I've become like this in some some to some people, like a spokesman for talent. And I'm the guy who thinks I could literally pick any person without a serious medical condition and in six months have them

finishing a marathon, you know, literally anybody. And I'm confident of that, you know, And I love that, and I'm pretty confident that I, you know that I could do that. In terms of maybe teaching teaching copulation, well, I don't know, I don't know cacoless enough to teach it, but something that I know that I could teach, right, like psychology, psychology, right, yeah, I mean, I just I just finished taking an online

fiction writing course. You know. It's not something I'd ever done, and I loved it, and I'm going to keep doing it and I find it rewarding even if I don't end up getting better. But I sort of I sort of feel like through all the reporting I've done that I can probably get better than I felt like I could be on day one. You know, I just I know that I should be optimistic because I do think people underestimate and this has been shown in sports for sure.

I mean, athletes used to be viewed as like over the hill at thirty, and I think now people have sort of stepped back and said, looked at some of the performances of older athletes in some sports and said, huh, We're actually not really sure where you have to draw the line here, you know, And to some degree, I think aging in sports and in skill development is to some degree a choice, and that just you know, I think people were sort of throwing in the tonnel early

in previous generations. This is such a good point. Do you have any any other thoughts about for recommendations for talent development programs? Well, I think it depends. I think it depends what we're looking at, because I think there's a lot of devil in details and skill dependent. But one thing I think that goes across everything we're talking about again is being concerned about that that relative age effect, right, and this is this is both in sports and schools.

I've seen a German study that said, like kids, who are you know, at age seven? If kids are going to get tracked in school and one kid is basically a year older than another kid who's also seven, that's a massive difference in development at that age. And I think the kids were younger, way more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD, even though it's really just that they're just behaving like the younger kid that they are, and they end up getting on a whole different track in school.

They can follow them kind of forever. I mean, I think you had some experience with that sort of kind of getting one point in time, you know, tracked you in a way on the right. They could have long lasting effects, and so I think it's really a very general idea is that we really have to understand what we're looking at when we try to make cross sectional determinations about what talent is, and the earlier the earlier we're doing that, the less likely we're making a good choice.

I love What is there such thing as a perfect athlete? No? I think there are people who have, you know, like the guy I write about in the last chapter of My bo who has a genutation that causes him to be naturally what Lance Armstrong was through technology is certainly fits into a certain sport. But when you look at even the genes that we know influenced performance, which is and most of them we presumably don't know, the chance of anyone having all of them would be like you know,

winning the lottery like twenty times in a row. The world population isn't isn't even remotely in sniffing distance of us having taken enough spins of the genetic roulette wheel for anyone to have come out with all those genes. So most of us sort of fall kind of in the middle, with a few more a few less, just from the ones we know so far, and nobody has them all the genetic times environment interaction jackpot, Yeah, which would be more specific, right, Yeah, yeah, I want to

leave with the one lasting question. I hope it's not too personal. I hear a bird tells me that you run with Malcolm Gladwell, that's right. Do you have any sense of who has a better trainability? Me? Wonderful. Thank you so much for this interview, David. I learn a lot from you, and I really appreciate these conversations we have. It's my pleasure and I hope I've learned off from you, and I know we've enjoyed sending papers back and forth.

I hope we keep it going me too. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as informative and thought we're looking as I did. If you don't like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.