https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger
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Thanks for the link…REALLY excellent talk!
His book The Sports Gene is among the best science writing I’ve read in years. Eye-opening stuff…I think the most valuable nugget is the finding that we each fit somewhere on a 2x2 grid:
One axis: High Natural Born Ability <—> Low Natural Born Ability.
Other axis: Low Response to Training <—> High Response to Training
He gives the example of Jim Ryun, who couldn’t make the middle school track team (low on the “Natural Born” scale).
But, he set records by the time he was a high school senior (high on the “Response to Training” scale).
We can all think of people with different combinations of these two scales.