Is training overrated? The data says yes - NewsBreak
We want to believe that working hard pays off. Parents and coaches of young athletes constantly repeat the mantra that when you’re not working out, someone else is – and sp you’re falling behind.
The path to improvement isn't what we think
- Thread starter ClayK
- Start date
Interesting read, Clay. One of the two scenarios (him and the more highly ranked runners in college) could also be attributed to (as sports psychology calls it) how well people master a skill. Task and ego orientation have a huge role in learning a skill as does Bandura's social learning theory. Great article!
There are so many factors that contribute to improvement that simply saying "we both were hard workers so why didn't he improve as much as I did" doesn't do justice to all that goes into improvement. Sleep, nutrition, external stressors, balancing maximum efforts with active recovery days, etc all play a role in improvement. I haven't read the book but plan to but it seems like unless everything was the same in the majority of those categories, its hard to make the claim that some people are "untrainable". I think we all know that some people are more genetically gifted than others but especially when it comes to running, there is such a science to training programs that maybe his teammate was overtraining and that's why he wasn't improving as much as he was. Or maybe he was getting an extra hour more of sleep on average and that was improving his recovery, etc. I'm just not buying that "the data says training is overrated"
The whole foundation of his argument was one guy improved more despite both working hard therefore one must have been more trainable but there's no way to prove that without exploring those other factors. I think the whole thing is just pretty misleading and I think everyone knows that some people are more gifted than others
I think his point is that what we usually think of as "gifted" is limited. We tend to think that "gifted" means what you are born with and nothing more, but his point is that "gifted" includes the ability, or lack thereof, to improve on what we were born with, among other things.
And it is a whole book, so that one example hardly explains his thesis, which is backed up by lots of research.
It's comforting to believe that hard work will always pay off, but even though hard work definitely helps, it's not as much an explanation of athletic, or any kind of, success, as we might like.
And it is a whole book, so that one example hardly explains his thesis, which is backed up by lots of research.
It's comforting to believe that hard work will always pay off, but even though hard work definitely helps, it's not as much an explanation of athletic, or any kind of, success, as we might like.
