Yesterday I posted a couple videos with some insight in to what MVP club coach Stephen Francis is doing with his athletes. The discussion on this blog entry got me off my butt to write another blog that I’ve been meaning to write for some time – The Reasons Why Jamaicans Dominate the Sprints. In case you were in a cocoon in 2008, you witnessed one of the greatest sprint years by a single count
speed is a skill therefore it is learned or acquired, not untapped or some type of natural unproven speed. There is no way to identify or quantify beforehand how much speed someone has. Therefore talent does not exist, because talent describes having such abilities to develop such a skill apriori.
I just did an interview where I was told talent was everything. I nodded in agreement without giving full compliance. It’s true that to win in a collegiate program you must take your chances with those of proven abilities and skills over those who do not show such abilities or skills, but that doesn’t mean you should base your entire program around it. The best way to develop depth is to take the athletes who show great abilities (older training ages) or great skill acquisition (younger training ages).
in my book talent is the natural ability to be good at something…ie, having a naturally high percentage of fast twitch fibres would/ could mean you have an extra ability to be good at sprinting/ jumping etc…i beleive talent is a very real thing…
Having a high percentage of fast-twitch fibres doesn’t equal being a great sprinter. In fact, people are born with about the same amount fast to slow fibres across the board so everyone starts out about equal (sure there are outliers). The development of those fibres starts early in life and continues till about a child 2nd or 3rd major growth spurt after infancy. Thus between the ages of about 18 months to about 8-10 years of age determines the predominance of fibres in our bodies (which we can still change). However, the human body is not yet done developing at this point and here in lies one of the problems with early specialization. At a time when motor abilities are being put together we are teaching sport specific skill acquisitions which lead to an imbalance of abilities developed to keep a skill when most these kids turn 18-20 years of age when their bodies are different, not to mention the lack of overall general motor skills they’ll need when their body gets bigger to express those abilities into sport specific skills like speed while sprinting. On another note, a bigger stronger kid at age 10 is going to run faster than a smaller or fatter one, but that likely will not hold true into his early 20’s or even his teens as late bloomers (those who develop into contenders at age 16 or 17 out of nowhere) are generally but not always the better athletes over time from my observations. If an athlete shows promise at 13 or 14 they are likely to be surpassed by better athletes by the time they are nineteen or twenty years old.
The case against having excess fast-twitch fibres is that Olympic Lifters and even some powerlifters have greater percentages of fast twitch muscle fibres than elite sprinters. However, none of them could run a 100m like an elite sprinter and not many of them could throw the javelin, long jump, or throw the discus anywhere near what the elites or even multis do. Fast twitch muscle fibres are about force development and impulse and they work into helping the speed and power athletes of track and field, but more important to those fast twitch fibres are the development of elastic structures which aid the impulse and force development in track and field events. Those are developed through a combination of having certain bio-motor abilities, general motor skills (balance, coordination, speed), and then specific motor skills (speed while running/sprinting).
I think all this feeds into the 2 groups I identified earlier, ones showing a great number of abilities or the ones who show great skill acquisition. Those two types of athletes come from different backgrounds as one has a greater training age, but a more general overall background and could possibly have potential based on certain attributes to develop into a very good sprinter, but mostly never the elite status. The other is the group that has the greatest potential, but the hardest to quantify as they show they usually don’t have a training age of any thing longer than 2-3 years, but they show great competence in acquiring specific skills (These are athletes who when you were younger could play and where pretty good and not the best, but always limited by size and strength (to abilities developed later in maturation to their fullest potential), but had outstanding vision, tracking, balance, coordination, and limb speed (you just didn’t notice it). These are the kids who didn’t make the cut on travel teams, made the travel teams and sat on the bench, or just always played on the playground on not on any teams.
...The other is the group that has the greatest potential, but the hardest to quantify as they show they usually don’t have a training age of any thing longer than 2-3 years, but they show great competence in acquiring specific skills (These are athletes who when you were younger could play and where pretty good and not the best, but always limited by size and strength (to abilities developed later in maturation to their fullest potential), but had outstanding vision, tracking, balance, coordination, and limb speed (you just didn’t notice it). These are the kids who didn’t make the cut on travel teams, made the travel teams and sat on the bench, or just always played on the playground on not on any teams.
What you have described here is a pretty good example of what many prefer to call talent. Nevertheless, all nouns are somewhat elusive, so we should perhaps talk more in terms of verbs anyhow (like you seem to suggest, at least indirectly).
If you were a collegiate coach and needed to fill the last spot on the roster with your last half scholarship would you want to offer it a kid who progressed from 10.92-10.68 from his freshman to senior years or the kid who progressed from 11.92-10.85 from his freshman to his senior year with a jump from 11.15-10.23 from junior to senior? I’d take my chances with the latter.
...The other is the group that has the greatest potential, but the hardest to quantify as they show they usually don’t have a training age of any thing longer than 2-3 years, but they show great competence in acquiring specific skills (These are athletes who when you were younger could play and where pretty good and not the best, but always limited by size and strength (to abilities developed later in maturation to their fullest potential), but had outstanding vision, tracking, balance, coordination, and limb speed (you just didn’t notice it). These are the kids who didn’t make the cut on travel teams, made the travel teams and sat on the bench, or just always played on the playground on not on any teams.
What you have described here is a pretty good example of what many prefer to call talent. Nevertheless, all nouns are somewhat elusive, so we should perhaps talk more in terms of verbs anyhow (like you seem to suggest, at least indirectly).
I’ve never heard talent as many would put described the way I just did. They would call the fastest, highest, and/or strongest subset of a group of athletes as the most talented.
I’ve never heard talent as many would put described the way I just did. They would call the fastest, highest, and/or strongest subset of a group of athletes as the most talented.
That might be due to the context coaches usually find themselves in. Some are expected to show results in the short term, perhaps only within a time frame of a few years, thus it becomes pragmatic to define talent accordingly; i.e., if the goal is to win a championship the following year, they will opt for the athlete who’s more likely to achieve that goal within that time frame – and consequently sometimes motivate their decision in terms of talent (hence talent is defined accordingly). That doesn’t mean they are correct in their short-sighted definition; that’s just how they use the term, but which tend to re-define it as time goes by.
But that is of course not how talent would be defined if the time span would be much longer, and especially if they had more developmental information available about all the athletes. Thus in another context talent is defined more along the properties you already alluded to, and which is probably why I associate talent more along the lines of what you have brought forward (as many I know also do). Here we’re talking about a kind of hidden potential becoming visible when we’re broadening the landscape for our observations. It could remain hidden as long as we’re only making our conclusions from a fixed point in time with limited information (current results on paper). But when we look at the more qualitative aspects (how they move and react, their training history etc.), the potential becomes clearer, at least in the intuitive sense. Hence talent can be used to describe behavior rather than a fixed set of results.
From a pragmatic point of view, I would say we need both perspectives. The sad thing is that the easily quantifiable one appears to be overly dominating; maybe because it requires much more insight from the observer in order to look past the obvious, as well as resources (time) and lesser pressure to gain immediate success.
I agree with Lorien, i never said a high no. of fast switch fibres, long achilles tendons, long legs, lean muscle mass etc etc will definitily make an elite sprinter…my word, so much more has to go into it. (lifestyle, right training, coaching,desire, motivation etc) BUT, that person i just described sure does have the talent to become a great sprinter and if given the right situation and if he has the right motivation i am sure would beat out 95% of the people who don’t have his characteristics…
As described by Websters, talent is, “the natural endowments of a person”.
So, arguing that talent doesn’t exist, when it is a word which describes charactoristics of a person specific to a skill or application is a bit silly isn’t it.
Dbandre: what are arguing again? im confused…is it that the word talent is a stupid WORD? or is it that there arent natural charactoristics which can predict an athletes possible ability in certain sports?
I was just happy to see the homeland. I am childhood friends with the physio who work with Darryl and Asafa on the video and with MVP camp(and who worked with Usain before the beginning of last season). I can say that from conversations with him that they really do not do anything much different than what is done here in the collegiate system. In my opinion, what has created the boom this year ( and it has been developing for probably 20)is
1. A more scientific approach to sprinting and periodization. Even 10 years ago when i was a junior, many sprint coaches in the caribbean prescribed mileage in the off season, upwards of 3!, daily. This is no longer the case for the most part
2. Prehab and rehab is more widely accepted and used as can be seen by the full time physio whos services are utilized by both the pros and the kids in the club system
3. Sprinting is the beginning and the end when it comes to track and field in the caribbean, there are few exceptions, but not very many
4. apart from football(i refuse to use the S word)and cricket to a lesser extent, talent isnt lost to other sports.
5. Coaches in the caribbean are a huge proponent of technique and drills, there arent much quality weight facilities so by the time these kids and young adults are able to raise their strength levels,through improved facilities, be it abroad or the limited infrastruture that MVP has, improvements usually follow. I am sure this is an observation that many college coaches who have coached caribbean kids can attest to. technically sound, but cant even move the bar off of the rack.
I can go on, but comments welcome.
I just don’t see it that way. I see “talent” as being an excuse of why someone else did better and “desire” or “talent” as being the excuse of why your athletes didn’t do as well. What I see by and large in the coaching community is an inability to identify athletes and distinguish between raw values and the ability to train an athlete to higher and higher levels. It takes much greater coaching skill to get more out of athletes who are on the cusp of greatness, but whose abilities are already maximized. In the case of sprinters this is the majority of HS sprinters aged 16-19 is between 10.6-11.0, but the further you get away from 10.6 the larger the potential of the “late bloomers” who start to fill the ranks around 10.9-11.4s for 100m. I am not saying that the 10.6 guys don’t have potential, but those who do are far fewer at 10.6-10.7 than they are at 10.9-11.0.
At the collegiate level if a coach is looking to win he has to offer scholarships to the guys who can get to regionals or score well at conference meets, but at some point that same coach is going to have to develop depth. That depth comes from his athletes who are partial scholarship athletes or walk-ons. What I see is a ton of collegiate coaches are more willing to take on the athlete that their coaching skill is unable to help maximize based on known abilities just because the raw numbers are better under the premise of those athletes having more “talent”.
At the high school level its even more pronounced, when an athlete is very good they use the term talent, but the marginal athlete they don’t see as being talented but as having drive or motivation and the kid who they think as being talented but ends up marginal as being unmotivated, lazy, or lacking drive.
It’s all hogwash, the coach should be focusing on skill acquisition/development working towards perfecting such skills. The coach needs to work on feedback and refinement in feedback to facilitate skill development and acquisition as well as redefine goals intrinsically and towards performance goals and not extrinsically and towards outcome goals, evaluate competence, and reset desire and motivation when needed. This is like 80% of in the field coaching responsibility and ends up being that 80% of coaching community has no idea what this is.
Nick:
They are not natural characteristics that can be measured unless you live in a totalitarian state which predict possible ability in any sport. What I am saying is the US system by nature of evolutionary system naturally cuts out about 50% of what would be the “talent” pool.
USATF/AAU age groups
Middle school
High school
Collegiate
Professional
After peak numbers in middle school years, track and field experiences a sharp decline in participation at each level. Evaluation of potential shouldn’t stop until around age 25 as this is when 99.9% of the individuals at that age are done maturing. This is why I hate who post-graduate athletes are supported and not just the good ones. You still have athletes who are leaving college who have not reached their potential, partly because of coaching they have received and partly because they haven’t stopped maturing.
Talent is a stupid word unless you use in terms of past tense.
I just don’t see it that way. I see “talent” as being an excuse of why someone else did better and “desire” or “talent” as being the excuse of why your athletes didn’t do as well.
If you define talent as an ‘excuse’ of some sort, then it’s nothing but a straw man from my point of view. There’s obviously no point arguing about this issue since we seem to speak about different issues.
Overall, I share some of your concerns and sentiments.
