2 years of proper training is nothing to laugh at. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever had a proper year of training in my life. I wouldn’t even say I’ve had six months. I think the natural talent argument is a scapegoat for lazy and/or bad coaches who don’t know what they are doing. They don’t want to admit that the way they train their athletes holds them back, so they blame it on a “lack of natural talent”. I believe “natural talent” or lack thereof is also an excuse for underachieving athletes to sell themselves short. I don’t know what I or anyone else is capable of, but I know that I can do more than most people think that I can.
and my view of the “average man” is skewed only in a sense that there is no way the “average man” could ever be dedicated enough to spend the hours upon hours at the track, and the hours in the gym required to achieve these things.
If natural talent was so important and elites possess such rare talent how could Charlie coach multiple world class athletes from scratch without recruiting?
Charlie even said that many of the athletes who came to him were incredible talents. See Mark McKoy and Desai Williams. Maybe you haven’t read Speed Trap. He didn’t just get Joe Blows. It goes without saying, there was 1 Ben Johnson. A lot of great guys trained with Charlie, but how many went under 10, let alone 9.8 (let alone 9.7, 9.6). That isn’t a knock on Charlie, but shows that talent is huge. You can have one of the best coaches alive, get massage 3x a day for a number of years, work your ass off for years, and do all of the other things needed for success and still never break 10 (let alone run 9.58 or 19.19) if you don’t have the talent.
Bolt ran sub 20 before he was training seriously and before he was with Mills. How many people (as in, the entire world population) are capable of sub 24 without extensive training? As a percentage… not a whole lot.
Oh and this ‘4 years ago’ stuff is beyond stupid. 4 years ago you had just started puberty. That tends to help people progress. A lot.
Most high school kids that train tend to explode during those very same 4 years.
I’d like to introduce you to diminishing returns and plateaus my friend, you’ll know what I’m talking about soon enough.
I’d like to add that, while the average man would be capable of doing a lot better on the track, or in the gym, than he’s actually doing now, if he’d put in the hours of training and sacrifice necessary to do so, the average man has a family to provide for, a mortgage to pay out, and a car loan to fullfill.
Of course continuous proper training will help a lot, but only to a point. Talent/potential, or whatever you want to call it, counts for a lot. You give CF a slow, weak, uncoordinated, determined, 18 year old fat kid (say 40lbs overweight) and 4 years of training, and how fast do you think he could run the 100m at the end of those years? I would be impressed with 12.0.
While I think training is training and should be for the most part individualized to begin with. I think race as in skin color is both overblown and underestimated.
It’s overblown for the simple reason that the actual skin color of a person doesn’t mean much genetically. If Tom Cruise is slower than Tupac it won’t be because he’s white.
It’s underestimated because socially it does make a difference. Especially in the U.S. It would be willing sticking your head in the sand to assume that on the whole a black athlete and indian athlete would come to the track with the same baggage. The personalities and social experiences brought due to their “race” will undoubtedly lead to some adjustments in coaching. At least until there is a level of comfort reached.
The social argument is drastically overstated. There are plenty of black sprinters who came from good upbringings and plenty of white sprinters who didn’t.
A phrase that I like to repeat when discussing the importance of hard work versus natural talent is, “You can only nurture what nature has given.” Since I’ve accepted this, I’ve re-defined my main goal in track as realizing my maximum potential.
Let me state my summarized philosophy and tell me if anyone agrees with it. Keep in mind that the “ideal” training situation i speak of is impossible and has surely never been achieved. Ideal situation would mean “ideal” in every possible way. This person got 10 hours of sleep every day of their life. Early exposure to the sport. Never missed a workout in his life. Never ate any junk food in his life. Took ice baths whenever he needed to, got massages. Did 1000+ reps of corework for years and years. Somehow was exposed to any supplement he ever wanted and any sort of scientific advancement that could possibly help him such as therapeutic modalities and nutritional or pharmaceutical means of improvement. He had the very best coach and training program and was exposed to high levels of competition his whole life. I’m talking about absolute perfection.
“If a male of average genetics was exposed to these “ideal” situations he could become a world class athlete or even a world record holder”
I think your goal of realizing your maximum potential is an admirable one. But my personal philosophy is that achieving your potential is impossible, because there will always be things that you could have done better. Just as this “ideal situation” is impossible, so is maximizing your potential in my humble opinion.
Does no one agree?
Most of what you just said here is irrelevant to maximizing potential or would actually inhibit maximum potential for direct or indirect reasons. Almost everything you said there is stupid as hell.
“If a male of average genetics was exposed to these “ideal” situations he could become a world class athlete or even a world record holder”
I think your goal of realizing your maximum potential is an admirable one. But my personal philosophy is that achieving your potential is impossible, because there will always be things that you could have done better. Just as this “ideal situation” is impossible, so is maximizing your potential in my humble opinion.
Does no one agree?
You may never achieve your “maximum” potential, but you can get pretty damn close. That doesn’t mean that millions of people can come close to 9.58/19.19. That is just a stupid thing to say.
While we both agree that “maximum” potential cannot be reached, I do not claim to know whether or not it is even possible to get close to your maximum potential. How do you propose to know what anyone’s maximum potential is since you say that it is possible to get close to it? Do you know what your genetic potential is? And why is what I said stupid? Is it because nobody actually is that dedicated?
I don’t agree.
You take an average person and put them in this “ideal” situation and I guarantee you that someone out there is faster without ever training.
You take an above average person and put them in an “ideal” situation and someone out there in an absolutely un-ideal situation will run faster.
You take two extremely talented people and the one in the ideal situation will potentially run faster.
I think you’re attributing too much to environment and not enough to nature.
Maybe you are right that I put too much emphasis on hard work and not enough on nature. But I think the notion of this “ideal situation” is soooo farfetched and nearly impossible to attain that there is no evidence to support or disprove my theory. What if ligaments could be re-attached to structurally re-engineer an athlete with a body less than ideal. I can’t think of a physical attribute that cannot be manipulated. This is the basis for my beliefs.
Now it sounds like I’m talking about a human Frankenstein.
Because dedication often does not necessarily equal better results. I hate to say it, especially as someone who is dedicated, but there are numerous upon numerous examples of athletes who dedicated everything they had and were pretty much the definition of a freak and someone else came along and beat them with minimal dedication. There are numerous examples of people who were dedicated and had careers riddled with injuries. Being dedicated really is a relative term because Powell and Bolt still stay out late partying, still drink, sleep through practices, sometimes even around major championships.
Need I mention the most obvious example of a person with minimal dedication succeeding at the highest level: Xavier Carter. The guy ran 19.63 (at the time, the 2nd fastest 200m EVER) skipping practices, playing football (and spring football instead of going to track practice!), etc. He ran 45.x in the 400m indoors 2 weeks after a bowl game. He beat Tyson Gay, Usain Bolt, and numerous others while being called lazy and undedicated by his coaches and teammates and others at his university. In fact, his behavior was so outrageous he is now essentially banned from the LSU campus for causing such problems.
Now, he has been surpassed by athletes who are more “dedicated”, but it shows you how far talent alone will take you. In fact, had it not been for injuries, he may very well be the fastest person in the world right now. Ironically, him getting hurt was when he started to attend more than a few practices a week and eating something other than chicken wings (according to what he has said!).
You can’t disprove the statement that Santa Claus exists either. It doesn’t make it any more valid.
Your what-ifs are just becoming stupid. Run sub 14 on the big boy hurdles with this dedication and then we can start. Then go for sub 13, then sub 12.9. Once we get there, you can tell us about how far dedication and training alone will take you.
I think - a person who is naturally fast, but lacks many things and runs 100m fairly slow due to certain issues, can be brought up to great speed, and even do well internationally (so long as bolt, gay, powell aint in the race…)
I have seen people, with fast leg turn over, or fast arms, but lack any or all of the following, Strength, flexibility, stride length, posture, technique, and other types of things, improve greatly with the right training.
You have to fix certain issues on lots of different poeple - this is where programs fail.
If u or i were to do Usains exact same program, exact as he did - we would fail.
Glen Mills has been heard saying, that he worked on Usains technique, posture and other things before Usain was ready to even start doing Serious fast work.
This is how i train my cllients also, Fix the issues, once resolved, you can train the house down on them, and with the right recovery, they just keep on improving. Train them right off the bat, from the get go, and injury after injury happens.
The trouble with the average person, is they are average for a reason, Find out that reason, fix it, then train them for serious speed and they will be a great runner.
Will they run sub 10sec? Good chance they wont, how many have done it now in the history of 100m? 60? Very very few.
Train enough guys correctly, and eventually the glue will stick, and you’ll get a guy sub 10.