Natural ability vs Hard work

[Natman]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

Yeah I know people who played with and against him when he was younger and some of the stories about his Dad are hard to believe.

They aren't stories - most are true, but a few are exaggerated.

A driven, manufactured sportsman if there ever was.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

Those who play individual sports and want to get to the top have to be driven, manic, selfish, have a fair bit of mongrel in them and even unpleasant, compared to those who play team sports.

When you play an individual sport there is no place to hide - you are it. In team sports people have different roles so you can hide a bit and don't have to be as driven as the star player.

If any of you watched the equestrian at the 2008 Olympics you would have heard ex top jockey and general shit stirrer Simon Marshall call the equestrian along with Garry Wilkinson. Marshall is bloody funny and I'm sure he pissed off the serious horsey types.

He made a comment after a German rider came back from some adversity to win a gold medal - I think he clinched it for a team gold but it could have been an individual gold. I pissed my self laughing when he said it, mainly because the way he said it, but there is a lot of true to it - "there is no I in team - but there is in champion."

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

If you watched Jacques Peretti's doco Tiger Woods: the Rise and Fall - which was on SBS at the end of September/early October in their Friday 10pm erotica time slot - you would see that Tiger Woods old man drove him rather more so than him being a super naturally gifted player.

His old man at 2 years of age manipulated his mind and muscles like no another 2 year old has ever been done before. The doco has a lot of salacious sex details - not that there is anything wrong with that - but the first 15 minutes or so is the real interesting bit, it talks about how his old man - a green beret from Vietnam who wasn't a golfer- used military mind control techniques on Tiger from 2 years of age. He saw golf as a way to progress his sons life in a white mans world......

You can watch this doco at

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=SX5IILHQ

just click on the > button in the middle of the screen. If you keep getting buffering issues then pause it for 15 to 20 minutes as it downloads and then watch it.

The first 23 minutes is about the bubble Tigers' old man created for him, Earl's Vietnam experience and how that changed his thinking and plans for Tiger and the people around Tiger and techniques employed by people to train Tiger and turn him into a machine, plus the whole black vs white corporate exclusive world of golf. The next 5 minutes is about the bubble IMG put him in and how they made money out of and for Tiger and the last 35 minutes is the sex stuff. Above I said Earl wasn't a golfer, but that was wrong as he started playing golf in Vietnam for relaxation when he had time off. The mind control techniques taught by an ex Vietnam officer was taught at the end of his amateur golf days.

 

[ploppy]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

The question I've got to ask is, "does 'natural ability' allow the sportsperson to excel or hard work"? Have the past Brownlow Medalists or even Norm Smith medalists been the the most gifted or are they hard workers?

What makes the player great within the context of our game?

Hard working is not enough...you must have natural talent . Norm Smith medalists are the most talented.
Norm Smith Medalists
2002 Nathan Buckley
2003 Simon Black
2004 Byron Pickett
2005 Chris Judd
2006 Andrew Embley
2007 Steve Johnson
2008 Luke Hodge
2009 Paul Chapman
2010 Lenny Hayes
2010 Scott Pendlebury

 

[finbarr]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

I believe hard work is the key. If you're on an AFL list you clearly have natural talent and a base with which to work from. Ofcourse there's those who have the freakish abilities that others don't, but how many of them turn into consistent high performers? I believe that at this level the natural talent gap is relatively minimal.

If amazing natural talent was the main ingredient Shaun Burgoyne would have at least one Brownlow Medal by now.

Just an opinion.

 

[Enviable Tradition]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

I was interested to hear Rowie's comments the other day that he didnt know how to break the pain barrier until he retired and did marathons. He thought he had worked hard in footy but realised post retirement that he didnt.

I think many of our players must be in this school. They think they are working hard but relative to other AFL players and clubs they just arent pushing themselves to the same limits. Robbie Gray is probably a perfect example I think, much like his lookalike G Ablett was in his early days.

 

[Power freak 2008]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

I was interested to hear Rowie's comments the other day that he didnt know how to break the pain barrier until he retired and did marathons. He thought he had worked hard in footy but realised post retirement that he didnt.

I think many of our players must be in this school. They think they are working hard but relative to other AFL players and clubs they just arent pushing themselves to the same limits. Robbie Gray is probably a perfect example I think, much like his lookalike G Ablett was in his early days.

It may take more than one preseason to get these guys up and running too. They just aren't in the league of the better teams or even the mediocre teams for that matter.

Have we forgotten our perplexing game plan that required swithcing the play and holding on to the footy until such a time that we gave it back to the opposition. We are in the midst of a serious cultural change in the way we play, selection, and team discipline.

No SANFL player of the year because we do not reward flashy players but players who work hard to get the ball back. This must delight the SANFL clubs because it is more team orientated.

No more glod passes. No more tagging half of the other team's dangerous mids. The way we played has a lot to do with our current fitness and the ability of the boys to gel as a team. We have broken the mould and now we have to put the pieces back together.

I would be struggling to point the finger or absolve the fitness staff. If we had Collingwood's staff I think that the team would go through this period anyway. I also believe that other teams have gone through and will continue to go through these growing pains.

This year the players have done more endurance but struggle to get through games. The players may have struggled through the preseason and are struggling to get to the aerobic profile needed to match it with the best. To develop a midfield that has a big enough pool of players with a big enough tank may take more time.

Seems like we keep saying that. Our emphasis in the past was beefing up the whole team and then turning them into a hard running side. Hard to do that when you spend 60% of the match chipping sideways and when yu are tired.

 

[Natman]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

It may take more than one preseason to get these guys up and running too. They just aren't in the league of the better teams or even the mediocre teams for that matter.

Have we forgotten our perplexing game plan that required swithcing the play and holding on to the footy until such a time that we gave it back to the opposition. We are in the midst of a serious cultural change in the way we play, selection, and team discipline.

No SANFL player of the year because we do not reward flashy players but players who work hard to get the ball back. This must delight the SANFL clubs because it is more team orientated.

No more glod passes. No more tagging half of the other team's dangerous mids. The way we played has a lot to do with our current fitness and the ability of the boys to gel as a team. We have broken the mould and now we have to put the pieces back together.

I would be struggling to point the finger or absolve the fitness staff. If we had Collingwood's staff I think that the team would go through this period anyway. I also believe that other teams have gone through and will continue to go through these growing pains.

This year the players have done more endurance but struggle to get through games. The players may have struggled through the preseason and are struggling to get to the aerobic profile needed to match it with the best. To develop a midfield that has a big enough pool of players with a big enough tank may take more time.

Seems like we keep saying that. Our emphasis in the past was beefing up the whole team and then turning them into a hard running side. Hard to do that when you spend 60% of the match chipping sideways and when yu are tired.

Interesting comment on AFL Teams - the 4 hardest working teams fill the bottom 4 places at the moment. I don't know how they measured this.

Hardest working could equate to chasing jumpers and having to retrieve skill errors.

It is misleading - we look like a lazy and disinterested team - so is it real tiredness or just poor body language.

 

[Ford Fairlane]

Re: Power freak's Power training thread

Now this thread has taken an interesting twist.

Earlier this year Matthew Syed brought out his book 'Bounce: How Champions Are Made' . He is an ex 3 times Commonwealth table tennis champion, twice an Olympian, and an award winning sports journalist - regularly writing columns for The Times and other newspapers.

I bought his book about 3 months ago and got about a 1/3rd of the way thru it, before I started reading a novel. I have to go back and finish it off.

Anyway he reckons the idea of God given talent is a myth and the key to achieving greatness lies in hard work, and the right attitude and training. He explains how memory and inspiration prime our brains for success. He says genes are starting to matter - but not in the way you would think - its about the parents and how they support and drive the champions properly, rather than the genes they pass on.

He was on Lateline at the end of the World Cup. Below is the introduction to a long and very interesting interview. He takes the same attitude to success outside sports ie business, the professions etc. You can watch or read the full transcript at the link below. His personal website, where there are links to some of his articles, is at

http://www.matthewsyed.co.uk/

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2951668.htm



http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2951668.htm

and a bit more



what about how old you are when you start

Took a few posts out of Power freak's training thread to create this thread (yeah I know, too much time on my hands).

I have been reading this book lately and was directed to it on a non-footy related topic.

It certainly holds a great deal of relevance to football and uses many sporting examples of achievement through hard work (the 10,000 hour rule of purposeful practice) but also more cerebral such as music and chess and work related such as fire fighting.

Syed obviously comes down firmly in the camp of nurture rather than nature - I'm not convinced it's as clear cut as that - and does provide a framework for achievement in sporting and other fields of endeavour that could be practically applied to football.

A thought-provoking read.

Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice

 

[PAFC04]

I beleive that there is four major factors that produce elite superstars...

At the top of my list is

Genetics..........(this helps but you must have the love or want to do it, even though you have it) My analogy to this is this: (you may have 12 inch shlong, but it aint no good if you not into pr0n)

Natural Ability.....(this is close to genetics without the history of champions is the previous generation. this is one for the person who thinks they have it......

Love what your doing.....(to love what your doing doesn't require much drive or inspiration to do it)

Hard Work......(if you dont have the natural abiltity and the love for what your doing, then you must put in the hard work to get there)



When you have a player that loves to play the sport for love, and not money, who has natural abilty passed on from a generation before who also gives 110% at training has the makings of a superstar.....

This is why there is only a handfull of superstars.......because to have those four traits in a player are very hard to find.....

So if I was Matty Primus.....these people would be on my selection panel to find that special future player.

Genetics..........(Someone to chase down son's of previous champions)

Natural Ability.....(Someone who spot a good player)

Hard Work...... (Boot camp officer)

Love what your doing.....(Someone who see through players thoughts)

But there is one thing people always over look when trying to find elite superstars, and that is in the slum's, where most of the times this is where superstars have the drive to reach to the top because they know were the bottom is, which is a place they never want to be in again.

It would be interesting to see how many superstars came from the slums, (poor upbringing)...I can think of three.....

Not a sports person but has the drive and love.....Oprah

Pele.......

Beckham....

Shachin Tendulkar....

Superstars have a purposes in life to reach their goal, and that goal is to get as far as they can from where they once where......especially those who dont have the essentials to live with in life.

 

[Northalives]

This is a very interesting thread.

When I was a lad at high school, we used to play association football on the oval. We took it in turns to be captains and we each had alternate picks 'till we had our teams. The last player always picked was a lad who only got picked because he supplied the ball.

Down the track some years, this kid, who was always the last picked, ended up playing over 200 NSL games and coaching at the top level, meanwhile, the rest of the "stars" at high school level would sit around at bars and say things like,
"I was much better than him and I could have played National League soccer."

The point is that regardless of how naturally gifted one is and make no mistake, some people are naturally gifted at sport/sports, it does not make one iota of difference what amount of natural ability one has, it is how one gets this ability to shine against other top class athletes/performers.

In short, it is not a simple matter of natural ability versus hard work in order to succeed. The absolute best have natural ability coupled with hard work. The next rung down have some ability coupled with hard work and the next rung, hard work to improve skills/technique. All of these types are crucial to every team sport and the most vital ingredient is practice, practice, practice as hard as you can.

 

[Burningleviathan]

Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard - Kevin Durant

Genetics plays a part, I mean some players getting the kind of vertical leap they get in basketball doesn't just come from practicing jumping, ya know?

Some players can have an innate feeling for the game. Their peers can play just as long, practice just as hard but won't have the feel or natural rhythm other players have. Like everything though, if you don't work at it, you won't make it to the very top.

 

[Shaucob_Burjan]

Shaq, Wilt, Kareem: genetics >>> hard work.

Shaq didn't bother trying to improve his FT shooting ffs. Wilt was a giant black guy in a league of white guys.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Genetics play a massive part in athletics, but hard work still has to be done.

Since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, yes a dozen eastern bloc countries boycotted the LA Olympics, but it didn't really matter, every finalist of the male 100 metres ie 7 Olympics x 8 finalists = 56, have been black athletes whose ancestry can be traced back to West Africa. So if you don't have enough fast twitch fibres in your genetic make up then you aren't going to make an Olympic 100m final. But if you do have enough, you still have to put in years of training and competition to win.

Usain Bolt might have appeared to have dodged that because prior to 2008 he had hardly run a 100m race as a junior let alone senior, but he had done the work in the 200m, setting world underage records for a 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 year old. So he maybe had 7,000 hours of training rather than 10,000 when he won in Beijing as a 21 year old in both 100m and 200m.

Genetics, ie slow twitch fibres and living in high altitude give Kenyans from the Rift Valley and Ethiopians a huge advantage in the middle and long distance races. But once again hard work and pounding out the kms on the European track and road circuit have to be done. In Kenya and Ethiopia the 10,000 hours start early as its common that kids walk and run 5,10 even 20kms to school each day, before they start training in athletics clubs.

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Thanks for the clues Natman. The player was Todd Marinovich and his father was Marv Marinovich.

Todd Marinovich played for USC and the Raiders, but his career fell short as he ran wild after escaping his father's control.

link

link

There's plenty of links in the Wikipedia entry, including the Sports Illustrated Bred to be a Superstar article.


link

It's an extraordinary story.

Thanks for the info - it fills a knowledge gap

It certainly goes to show that it takes a lot to make a champion, no matter which way you look at it - above all luck and good judgement helps along with mental toughness, irrespective of genes or basic physical make-up and inate skills.

Surely this is a movie, coming to theatre near us soon.

Early Christmas morning (12.30am) ESPN showed the 90 minute doco about Marinovich titled The Marinovich Project.

I only saw the last 40 minutes but as Ford said its an extraordinary story. He quit the NFL after 2 years, took a year off, then went up to Canada to play for Winnipeg in the CFL and blew out his knee on his first play on his first day at training. Ended up joining a band and got addicted to heroin and then methamphetamines. It was gut wrenching at times to see how he has struggled to deal with the expectation of others and talked about always seeing disgust in peoples faces that he threw away his talent. One point he says that it wasn't there's to throw away, so why should they matter.

He still has a great although not perfect relationship with his father. The old was was addicted to training, Todd became addicted to drugs.

Both Marv and Todd studied art at college. This is now their connection point, both painting and both worked on a sculpture of a large tree.

Hopefully ESPN will replay the doco soon and I can watch it all.

 

[Natman]

Early Christmas morning (12.30am) ESPN showed the 90 minute doco about Marinovich titled The Marinovich Project.

I only saw the last 40 minutes but as Ford said its an extraordinary story. He quit the NFL after 2 years, took a year off, then went up to Canada to play for Winnipeg in the CFL and blew out his knee on his first play on his first day at training. Ended up joining a band and got addicted to heroin and then methamphetamines. It was gut wrenching at times to see how he has struggled to deal with the expectation of others and talked about always seeing disgust in peoples faces that he threw away his talent. One point he says that it wasn't there's to throw away, so why should they matter.

He still has a great although not perfect relationship with his father. The old was was addicted to training, Todd became addicted to drugs.

Both Marv and Todd studied art at college. This is now their connection point, both painting and both worked on a sculpture of a large tree.

Hopefully ESPN will replay the doco soon and I can watch it all.

Well usually if it's on FOX then it's going to be on again - can you remember what the name of the program (other than The Marinovich Project if that is the case) that the doco was shown under?

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

^^ Natman it was titled ESPN docos and then when you hit the info button the title is The Marinovich Project.

 

[Northalives]

I'm going to make a lot of enemies here but when it comes to basketball, it is a tragedy to see young boys who will never grow to be anywhere near 6'6" playing basketball at school to the exclusion of other sports.
Basketball has always been for the taller guys but when the law that said that touching the rim of the basket was OK (it used to be illegal), then basketball become an even more highly restrictive sport ie. you must be very tall to have a chance of playing basketball at an elite level because there are only one or two "smaller" players on a roster and the rest are mountainous. It's one sport where you have to be naturally tall to play - still got to work hard mind you but if you're under 6'4'', forget it.

 

[CrimsonRaven]

I'm going to make a lot of enemies here but when it comes to basketball, it is a tragedy to see young boys who will never grow to be anywhere near 6'6" playing basketball at school to the exclusion of other sports.
Basketball has always been for the taller guys but when the law that said that touching the rim of the basket was OK (it used to be illegal), then basketball become an even more highly restrictive sport ie. you must be very tall to have a chance of playing basketball at an elite level because there are only one or two "smaller" players on a roster and the rest are mountainous. It's one sport where you have to be naturally tall to play - still got to work hard mind you but if you're under 6'4'', forget it.

Allen Iverson and Patrick Mills say hi

 

[WHOME]

Watching 5 minutes of Gary Ablett Jnr play footy will settle this argument. He certainly didn't get that good on hard work alone.

 

[D_One]

Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley is a good read.

Ridley basically claims that “God given” ability is nothing without the proper nurture. But in the end it is easier to make a skilful player more determined than a determined player more skilful.

 

[Adz2332]

But i do think God given talent is there! and its up to the person to improve on it.
Im "lucky" enough to be able to play most sports and be good at it. doesnt matter what it is im useally handy at it.
On the other hand my slightly younger bro doesnt have that same God given talent. He struggles at some sports but when he works hard he becomes handy.
But for me when i work hard at it i become excellent.

Not tooting my own horn. i just mean it as, if you have the God given talent and work hard you will always be better then some one who just works hard....

 

[WHOME]

But i do think God given talent is there! and its up to the person to improve on it.
Im "lucky" enough to be able to play most sports and be good at it. doesnt matter what it is im useally handy at it.
On the other hand my slightly younger bro doesnt have that same God given talent. He struggles at some sports but when he works hard he becomes handy.
But for me when i work hard at it i become excellent.

Not tooting my own horn. i just mean it as, if you have the God given talent and work hard you will always be better then some one who just works hard....

Hi Chad, How you finding Sydney? Give our love to Choco.

 

[ClintEastwood]

Hi Chad, How you finding Sydney? Give our love to Choco.

Heh .... a reasonable call.

 

[Ford Fairlane]

The real focus on the here and now as far as Port Adelaide is concerned - which was suggested by some earlier posts - of Syed's contention around the myth of talent is that we should be able to improve markedly with the extra tuition around the club.

It even suggests that it would not be a bad idea to engage former players even in volunteering capacities if possible to work one on one with players on particular skill areas. This would have the dual advantage of improving the players as well as bringing past players back into the club's fold.

Syed's two main contentions are that dedicated purposeful practice will improve whatever skill a person works at and that the brain will continue to adapt beyond the previously recognised years of maximum plasticity. So improving the skill set of footballers for example is an evolutionary process.

And as his chess examples show knowledge is also a continually developing area. Tony Shaw noted in his commentary that it takes footballers around two years to understand how to execute zones properly within their team.

West Coast in 2011 had a remarkable rise which was often attributed to the return of star players. This was likely a factor, but they also lifted their skill set across the board and ran their team plans consistently well. They drafted to meet needs in terms of the physical type for the game they were playing.

These are factors we can control and should see an improvement in the team results in 2012 as we equip our players with the tools they need to succeed at their game plan.