The Art of Manliness - #127： The Sports Gene With David Epstein

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so it's a debate

00:00:18.900 that goes back for millennia are great athletes made or are they born well our guest today explores

00:00:25.480 this question in his controversial book the sports dean inside the science of extraordinary

00:00:29.380 athletic performance his name is david epstein really fascinating book and today on the podcast

00:00:33.740 we're going to discuss what the latest research says about top athletic performance is it a nature

00:00:38.600 versus nurture or is it a combination of both well we talk about the differences the genetic

00:00:43.500 differences between men and women and how those differences have given men the upper hand in

00:00:48.360 athletic performance like sprinting and football and things like that then we also discuss what

00:00:54.060 this means this research means for parents we have kids right should you invest a lot of money

00:01:00.040 and time into your kid into a sport that they might not ever make it to the top echelons or even like

00:01:06.900 college level in that sport really fascinating discussion a lot of food for thought i think

00:01:11.480 you're really going to enjoy this so let's get on with the show david epstein the sports dean

00:01:15.020 david epstein welcome to the show thanks for having me all right um so your book is the sports gene

00:01:27.700 and it's about the the effect or the role of genetics in athletic ability and not just athletic ability

00:01:34.440 carries over to other uh aspects as well but before we understood the role genes play in our athletic

00:01:42.160 performance our physical abilities what was the understanding or what was the role of genetics

00:01:46.640 before our understanding of genetics i mean how did we approach athletics was it just a practice or if

00:01:51.780 you if you just practice a lot you get better what was it yeah well i think you know from the from

00:01:56.600 kind of the perspective of sports scientists things had whipsawed basically so there was there was a

00:02:02.660 period you know maybe starting early early half the 20th century where there was this idea that there

00:02:08.880 were just any someone who was athletic this sort of medium height medium weight man would be the

00:02:14.280 best for all sports and you just had to pick him out and uh you know maybe sometimes test his reaction

00:02:19.340 speed or something and then you just put them in any sport you want and so it was sort of this idea

00:02:23.420 that there was a template like very genetic and then it the pendulum totally swung back in the other

00:02:28.500 direction to the idea that genes have no other than for height because it's easily observable by

00:02:35.960 everyone have no part to play in athletic expertise sort of that birth of the 10 000 hour rule this idea

00:02:41.340 that what we think of as genetic talent is really just a manifestation of thousands of hours of

00:02:46.220 practice there is no such thing you know genetics the work and practice and motivation overwhelms any

00:02:52.880 reasonable effect of genetics so we shouldn't even bother studying genetics involved in athleticism

00:02:56.700 and that's kind of where it was when uh when i decided to pick it up yeah so this this idea of the

00:03:01.720 10 000 hour rule i mean i love it because i don't think i'm naturally gifted a naturally gifted

00:03:06.920 athlete but i love that concept if i practice hard enough if i work hard enough well eventually i'll

00:03:11.900 get there but the research is showing that that's not necessarily the case yeah and to specify in so far

00:03:19.660 as the 10 000 hour rule is shorthand for a lot of very high quality and quality probably more

00:03:26.860 important than quantity in many cases practice is really important absolutely that's great but a lot

00:03:33.120 of the people writing about it were using it to say that well genes actually don't matter and that's

00:03:37.560 in fact not not what's being found at all in fact what's kind of coming out of uh the genetic

00:03:43.440 revolution in exercise and sports is the same as what came out of medical genetics and that was

00:03:48.380 say because you have a different gene involved in the acetaminophen metabolism than i do

00:03:53.200 you might need three tylenol to get the same effect where i only need one or maybe it doesn't

00:03:57.560 work for you at all we're seeing the same thing in sports training that the amount that anyone

00:04:02.760 improves in response to a given training stimulus is mediated by their genes so no one person's 10 000

00:04:09.000 hours is another person's 10 000 hours and in fact all of these hours figures that people throw out

00:04:14.240 are just averages that have these tremendously disparate ranges so even in you know even in things like

00:04:21.160 um chess which requires a lot of the same perceptual expertise that sports like uh like football and

00:04:28.140 soccer do it takes 11 000 53 hours on average to become an international master to learn all those

00:04:33.680 cognitive skills but some people make it in 3 000 hours because they learn each chunk of information

00:04:38.260 faster and some people make it all right 25 000 hours still being tracked and haven't made it

00:04:42.420 and so really when we look at any of these hour figures there's a huge huge uh range of hours it takes

00:04:48.620 to get anywhere and a lot of that is based on the intricacies of people's talents so so my argument

00:04:53.400 is that we really need to help people find some of those hidden talents so that they don't need 10

00:04:57.600 10 000 hours yeah yeah so you talk to explain this idea that the 10 000 hour rule is there's

00:05:03.580 discrepancies right you can have you can master it in a few hours or it might take you a long time

00:05:08.100 yeah you give the example these two high jumpers which i thought was really fascinating can you tell the

00:05:12.180 story about these two guys yeah sure this that i call the tale of two high jumpers so one of the

00:05:16.660 high jumpers was this guy stefan holm and uh he's a swedish guy who became obsessed with high jump

00:05:21.960 after seeing on television at age five starts jumping in his backyard you know has his father

00:05:26.940 doesn't know anything about high jump but builds him a set in the backyard and he's he's good but

00:05:31.620 he's not great you know you wouldn't necessarily think you know with high jump jumping kind of

00:05:35.640 something you either got or you don't and he's he's good again but not great stays obsessed with

00:05:40.040 it he's pitching class in middle school to go jump um and he's he starts getting better and better

00:05:45.200 little by little improves actually one centimeter per year for 20 straight years

00:05:50.080 uh until he becomes the olympic champion he's he's about five foot ten clears a bar nearly eight

00:05:55.060 feet so he tied the record for the highest clearance over your own head and and he had like all these

00:06:01.120 traits that we idealize in competitive athletes when i first talked to him he said you know i was

00:06:06.340 asking about a girlfriend i don't have a girlfriend high jumps my girlfriend i can't cheat on her 0.90

00:06:09.720 and then when i went back to him he's he's married now he has a little kid and the kid's name is

00:06:14.640 melwin holm and that's not a typical swedish name his wife like the name melvin and stefan 0.99

00:06:19.840 insisted that win be somewhere in the kid's name so that that's the kind of guy he was you know

00:06:24.680 totally devoted to this and transformed himself into an olympic champion and at the world championships

00:06:29.860 i wrote about a rival of his a guy from the bahamas he gets a rival named donald thomas and donald

00:06:36.700 wasn't a jumper at all for most of his life he's talking trash about how good an athlete he is at

00:06:41.900 lunch one day he was a student at a small college in missouri called lindenwood and the best jumper

00:06:46.680 a guy named carlos on the track team who held the school record at six foot eight says you're

00:06:50.300 talking you know you're talking all that trash you wouldn't even clear a bar of six foot six in

00:06:53.400 competition and donald's like well yeah i would so carlos goes and sets up a bar donald gets his

00:06:58.980 sneakers takes five steps and clears six foot six so they move it up to six foot eight takes seven

00:07:03.820 steps clear six foot eight moves it up to six ten donald clears six ten seven feet clears that and then

00:07:10.480 at which point carlos stops him he thinks he's gonna hurt himself takes him to track coach coach we got

00:07:14.360 seven foot high jumper here coach doesn't believe it they convince him he called the next track meet

00:07:18.880 eastern illinois university gets a late entry for donald donald's like wearing basketball shorts

00:07:22.840 doesn't have a uniform yet clears seven foot five and sets that field house record and there's

00:07:27.720 pictures i have pictures of him with his arms behind him because he's like not used to the feeling of

00:07:31.320 falling backward coming down from seven foot five so he turns pro you know after about eight months of

00:07:36.720 training who does he face in the world championships but stefan holm so one guy has about zero hours of

00:07:41.360 training one guy stefan holm estimated his lifetime training at 20 000 hours so those guys actually

00:07:45.980 averaged 10 000 hours and donald ends up winning the world championship there actually if donald had

00:07:51.500 any semblance of form for a high jumper like donald he doesn't curl his back he looks like he's like

00:07:56.620 riding an invisible deck chair through the air you know he's like sitting straight up and like looking

00:08:00.220 around he had the highest center of mass jump ever he had known like anything whereas stefan's like curled

00:08:06.500 you know like his his his heels are like whispering in his ear they're almost touched

00:08:10.280 and had donald had any type of form he would have shattered the world record so here are these two

00:08:15.380 guys when he's you know pretty straightforward physiological sport coming from complete polar

00:08:21.480 opposite paths and some of that that went on to explain uh had to do with their very special springs in

00:08:26.940 the back of their legs the achilles tendon okay i mean what i thought was interesting too is you make

00:08:31.800 the point that you know we're just starting to scratch the surface of sports genetics um but it

00:08:38.700 seems like it there's been sort of a natural sorting uh amongst the various sports when it comes to

00:08:45.240 genetics for example swimmers because their arms are getting longer uh every year um runners they're

00:08:52.540 getting you know they have a certain type of fast twitch muscle fiber and then you're seeing that more

00:08:56.480 and more often how did that happen like how did is it just that people who had that capability like

00:09:02.980 they just they excelled in that sports they just stuck with that sport i mean how did how did that

00:09:06.960 natural sorting happen yeah that's some of it so that that natural sorting that i i write about that

00:09:12.220 the scientists discovered it called the big bang of body types so it's like the body types of

00:09:16.320 of athletes who are successful got much much more different from what they used to be it's called the

00:09:20.640 big bang because if you if you like plot on a graph that the changes it looks like the expanding

00:09:25.300 universe you know with all the galaxies flying away from one another and the way it kind of started

00:09:31.040 and like i said some of those some of the changes are are not even that visible like you said you know

00:09:35.940 with the muscle fibers some of them are very visible like elite female gymnasts have shrunk from five 0.87

00:09:40.400 foot three to four foot nine on average over the last 30 years because it makes it easier for them

00:09:44.520 to spin so those kind of things are very visible um and i mean the most noticeable one in the nba right

00:09:50.180 there's one a little more than one in ten men in the nba are at least seven feet tall but that's

00:09:57.200 incredibly rare in the general population so if you know an american man between the ages of 20 and 40

00:10:02.080 who's at least seven feet tall there's a 17 chance he's a current nba player that's how rare that is

00:10:07.680 but the way it started to happen was was partly i mean honestly for for most of at least international

00:10:15.460 sports history the only places competing were like great britain and places the great britain

00:10:20.620 had colonized in a serious way and you know the second half of the 20th century sports really opened

00:10:26.400 up to the world and what happened in the nba is kind of a microcosm of what happened everywhere so

00:10:30.780 1983 the nba strikes an agreement with the players making them partners in the league where they get

00:10:36.880 shares of ticket sales television revenue all that kind of stuff and the sport goes global and

00:10:42.200 suddenly anyone who can play in the nba wants to because the financial rewards and fame are so

00:10:46.420 great and the team starts scouting internationally and all that kind of stuff and overnight overnight

00:10:51.860 that was actually the proportion of men in the nba went from five percent to eleven percent in one

00:10:56.220 season when they started doing that and then all these other unique body traits started emerging guys

00:11:01.900 with like my arms are the same length as my height whereas the average nba player is six six and a

00:11:07.380 half with seven foot long arms and so this sort of sort of natural self-selection started happening in

00:11:13.300 sports where the body types it took more people got filtered out at lower levels because they didn't 0.63

00:11:19.000 have the advantages of the specialized body type and kept getting more and more specialized and then

00:11:23.280 once it got to a certain level in a lot of sports then people started actually looking for that stuff

00:11:26.920 once some of those things you know once we realized we should measure those things like water polo players

00:11:31.160 for example their forearm bone is getting longer in relation to their overall arm that it used to be

00:11:37.460 because that makes for more forceful throwing whip and the exact opposite is true for rowers so who pull

00:11:42.840 stuff toward them and so once people started to realize that these trends were taking place you know

00:11:47.160 just by kind of doing physiology on their athletes then they started proactively looking for it

00:11:51.200 and it's in some cases been incredibly successful like great britain who hosted the last olympics

00:11:56.560 they have um actually they have a woman who just set a world record in rowing who like hadn't rowed

00:12:01.700 three years before she won the gold medal at the olympics and they took her physiological measures

00:12:04.900 you know they used to come into play by accident now they know specifically so they said you know

00:12:08.980 dear this is where you belong interesting i mean even though they're specifically looking for

00:12:13.860 certain physiologies and i guess certain genetics are they still sort of squeamish about talking about it

00:12:20.580 like openly like yeah we're looking for someone with good genes because you know we have this history

00:12:24.680 with eugenics and things like that where people don't like to talk about sort of genetic determinism

00:12:30.140 yeah and and it's and and to be honest like the genetics has kind of a bad reputation for i mean

00:12:37.940 a rule of thumb i would say is that genetics influence essentially everything but determine very few

00:12:45.920 things right so genes there are no results or there are no you know nothing without both genes and

00:12:52.540 environment so i don't think people should think about genes in a deterministic way the problem is

00:12:56.380 like most of the news they get is like this week there's the gene for this and this week there's

00:12:59.780 a gene for promiscuity or for liking chocolate and the fact is 90 of that stuff is actually false

00:13:05.440 positives because in some cases the scientists and in most cases the journalists don't know how to

00:13:09.820 evaluate the mess of those studies most vicious crap um but yeah no there and i think there's a

00:13:16.380 reason reason to be squeamish you know i think when you go to you know you spend some time you know

00:13:21.920 with like nfl or nba uh general manager for example and they're not gonna they're they're a

00:13:28.440 little less squeamish about saying talent exists even if they don't want to get into genes

00:13:31.940 um but in some countries like when i was in australia which has what i think might be the premier

00:13:35.960 sports science institute in the world the australian institute of sport they they're one of their

00:13:40.360 head physiologists was telling me that in their grant proposals for research because they actually

00:13:43.960 fund a lot of sports performance research out there and we don't really do that so much

00:13:47.140 um they stopped using the word genetics and instead they would substitute molecular biology

00:13:54.120 and protein synthesis which is the exact same thing but they stopped using the word genetics

00:13:58.380 because people were viewing it as deterministic and you should pigeonhole someone completely and

00:14:03.040 all this kind of thing i mean i think the best approach is since we're learning about this

00:14:06.200 this talent of trainability that has a genetic component the best way we can use it instead of

00:14:10.720 limiting people's options and say well you have to do this sport so you know you can do whatever you

00:14:14.660 want but if you're not getting the experience you want over there just so you know you'd be really

00:14:19.040 responsive to training over here you know and that's that's that's in some cases it's already

00:14:23.700 being used for sort of exercise for health but i think we do have to be vigilant about not being

00:14:28.960 deterministic when it's not appropriate so you have a section that i thought was really fascinating

00:14:33.020 the genetic differences between male and female athletes and how that creates different results

00:14:39.100 what are the genetic differences and how um do those genetic differences result in different

00:14:45.200 athletic performances yeah well the single biggest one so we all kind of we all start life on the on

00:14:50.940 the path to being female that's like the default fetus path but you know six weeks in there's a gene 0.99

00:14:56.240 um on the y chromosome called sry it's actually easy to remember sex determining region y

00:15:01.680 gene on on the y chromosome that basically um start the development of these cells that

00:15:08.260 you know lead to testosterone and once the testosterone uh starts gushing it starts

00:15:14.420 arranging things in a male pattern in a way so even even in the womb men will have a longer 0.87

00:15:19.900 forearm for example like for throwing then uh or whatever you know men obviously when they're in the

00:15:25.660 womb male males um than females and and that's that gets really accentuated through puberty so a lot of

00:15:33.160 women actually their athleticism declines through puberty uh so their vertical jump height will go 1.00

00:15:38.060 down their sprint speed not everyone not the ones who go to the top but but a lot of them

00:15:41.720 um because you know they get um fat gets deposited on widened hips things like that you know that that 1.00

00:15:48.320 angle the the hips and the angle to the knee is why women tear their acl at such an epidemic rate 1.00

00:15:53.320 meanwhile men are packing in more muscle fibers even if they're not working out even if you don't work

00:15:59.960 out during puberty you're going to get more muscle fibers the testosterone causes the creation of red

00:16:04.240 blood cells so which are extremely important to endurance more density of bones that can support

00:16:09.560 more muscle longer limbs in relation to the body greater height obviously um certain bone structures

00:16:17.080 like the structure of the the jaw and the forehead become less susceptible to the kind of punch that

00:16:21.740 would knock you out for example and so there's a whole host of traits that are useful for

00:16:26.880 athleticism are accentuated in men and in some cases um diminished in women in fact if you look

00:16:32.400 at like things that are easy to measure like world track records for kids at nine years old girls and

00:16:37.740 boys are identical there's no reason for them to even be competing differently they're they're

00:16:41.800 indistinguishable but at 14 they're like a universe apart you can look at things the quarter the record

00:16:47.680 for a quarter mile so one lap around outdoor track for nine year old boys and girls is identical and by

00:16:53.400 14 it's like five seconds different or something like that you know in a race that's under a minute

00:16:58.580 wow so i mean what's amazing in the past you know i'd say half half century women have made great 0.98

00:17:03.840 strides in athletics because we've gotten over all this sort of silly pseudoscience where that

00:17:08.160 yeah we've been engaged in activities their uterus would fall out or like goofy stuff like that 0.84

00:17:13.420 um it wasn't that long ago that stuff was uh yeah i guess the ski the ski jump that was the thing

00:17:19.780 like women couldn't do the the ski jump because like something right that's like that's like one of 1.00

00:17:23.940 the activities where they're actually like closest to men into interesting well but it was with that

00:17:29.580 are while they're getting closer and closer to uh the performance of male elite athletes male

00:17:36.240 athletes are still surpassing will there ever be a moment when women will be able to surpass in like an 0.98

00:17:41.060 elite woman athlete will be able to surpass an elite male athlete or the are the genetics just 0.99

00:17:45.620 that makes it almost impossible i mean you never know if there's a one-off but as a rule there's not

00:17:50.860 going to be that time in the sports that we currently have and in fact that idea that that female athletes 1.00

00:17:55.180 are catching up is actually not true there was a period where they were catching up and it was

00:17:59.660 largely due to the fact that they had not had um opportunities to train and compete very much

00:18:04.900 or for the sport to go global and so when women started their rate of progress was really kind of

00:18:10.240 startling and if you extrapolated that it looked like they'd beat men in 100 meters in the future

00:18:14.000 but now they've actually stagnated and in fact men are opening the gap a little bit and again

00:18:19.200 i usually turn to easily measurable sports because you know it's easy to make a concrete example

00:18:23.420 um and so if you look in running for example in from the 100 meters to the ultra marathon the

00:18:29.440 difference between if you average the top 10 best men and top 10 best women any given year the

00:18:33.660 difference is going to be 11 that's basically what it is what it always is doesn't really close

00:18:37.580 um and it just kind of sticks there and in fact men are a little bit inching away and i think part

00:18:44.380 of that's because of this this mega doping era that set women's records kind of out of sight

00:18:49.640 unfortunately so a lot of them are just stuck because those drugs are much more efficacious

00:18:53.720 in women than they are men and so some of those records are stuck in the past so but there are

00:18:58.040 sports like in in long distance swimming women come within six percent of men you know i think if we 1.00

00:19:04.140 again ski jump is one where lightness is prized and women do really well i think if we tailored 1.00

00:19:09.100 more sports to use fine motor skills that's something where women you know tend to outperform 1.00

00:19:13.480 men but we we just have not really arranged sports around those i think maybe we need some more sports

00:19:18.380 you know so i think we'll see more high level women more you know maybe we'll have some more sports 1.00

00:19:23.820 that that cater to things that women are better at um but in terms of the elite elite performances 1.00

00:19:29.500 the gap's actually not closing at all interesting so another kind of controversial aspect of

00:19:34.440 genetics and sports is race um and so you talk about so jamaica is known for their sprinters

00:19:41.800 yeah and uh you there's a theory out there that's like with the warrior slave theory

00:19:47.200 um how did the the jamaican's historical genetic past affect their ability to produce such

00:19:53.520 world-class sprinters today yeah so that that warrior slave theory i i didn't i i grew up

00:19:58.540 you know i got into track when i was young because i grew up running with jamaican guys um and

00:20:02.420 you're always curious to go there and didn't didn't realize until i went there that there's

00:20:06.320 this theory on the island that this this autonomous region where a group called the maroons live they

00:20:12.180 were these kind of uh warrior slaves who who fought their way away from their masters and secluded

00:20:18.580 themselves in this very treacherous area of the island um and and they just by being fierce they won

00:20:25.320 their freedom 100 years before official emancipation and a lot of the great sprinters are

00:20:29.740 from that region that's like usain bolt right over the hill you know woman a woman who's um been

00:20:35.280 winning a lot of uh she won a couple world championships in the 100 meters is also right

00:20:39.760 from that region and so the people in that region kind of claim them and say you know they're part of

00:20:44.140 our lineage we were the strongest of of and uh fiercest and all these people are from our genetic

00:20:49.220 stock but when i looked at the i went there with a geneticist um and he collected data and and so

00:20:55.820 far the data does not look like that's the case um the maroons look very very mixed like other jamaicans

00:21:01.560 are um so i don't so so far i think um you know the evidence is against that that that story even

00:21:08.600 though it's a really nice story um but but there's some evidence that for more broadly people from

00:21:14.260 that region so since 1980 every man who's been olympic 100 meter final we boycotted the olympics

00:21:20.040 in 1980 um has whether they're from portugal um you know england canada jamaica america they all

00:21:28.340 have some ancestry in this one tiny area on the coast of west africa um and that area happens to be

00:21:34.860 like the highest malaria danger zone in the world and there's evidence in the book that i talk about

00:21:39.820 that that a possible trade-off for protection from malaria um causes kind of a shift to a more

00:21:45.960 explosive physiology or more fast twitch muscle fibers in people from that area and of course

00:21:49.600 that's where uh we wrenched people from their homes and brought them to the united states were from that 1.00

00:21:53.620 area um and so you know the people from that area you also you they basically disappear in

00:21:59.600 international competition above the half mile so they're disadvantaged for endurance sports but

00:22:04.880 but just on average you know just shifts the curve a little bit but that makes a big deal for

00:22:08.820 people at the end of the curve um you're probably going to find more of them or advantage for

00:22:12.860 explosive sports and again it's not to say that that european people or white people in america

00:22:17.260 can't have that physiology it's just it's just less common when you're only looking for the few best

00:22:20.960 people in the world that being less common can matter a lot so you uh talk about iditarod dogs

00:22:27.960 you have a chapter about these iditarod dogs and this guy who brent you really read this thing thoroughly

00:22:31.740 yeah i know it was a great book so there's this guy zoro um who wasn't like a really fast dog but he

00:22:37.740 was like a hard-working dog and uh this breeder just bred him bred dogs for hard working and i thought

00:22:44.100 it was really interesting because like okay yeah again like i'm not an athlete a natural athlete but

00:22:48.040 i always kind of had this chip on my shoulder like well if i work hard enough i got the determination i

00:22:52.380 got heart right so i can like make it up for that and i like that idea because it's sort of like it was

00:22:58.640 in my control right my effort was in my control and my determination was in my control but now

00:23:03.660 there's research saying that genetics influences or might influence our determination too or our grit

00:23:09.580 that's right and and so and again this is this is where we should remember that genetics influence

00:23:15.340 is just about everything but doesn't determine almost anything um but the that's right so i knew

00:23:20.900 for example when i was going into researching a book that like training we do impacts our dopamine

00:23:26.460 system you know the system involved in pleasure and reward for whatever sex food drugs whatever

00:23:30.860 in in the brain and but i didn't know that there's a large body of work that shows the reverse is true

00:23:36.180 too like the way that our dopamine system is set up actually has a lot to do with what we're going

00:23:40.960 to feel pleasure doing if that's a certain kind of physical activity or whatever and in these dogs

00:23:45.660 what happened was the speeds of iditarod dogs plateaued after not that you know after not that long

00:23:52.940 of breeding and so i wrote about this guy lance mackie who'd been like a drug addict was really down

00:23:57.700 and out but his his father had helped invent the iditarod and one at once and he wanted to do it

00:24:02.660 so he got himself together and started getting dogs he couldn't he couldn't afford you know the ones

00:24:07.320 that were bred to be the fastest and they were plateauing anyway so he just went for these ones

00:24:11.340 that would never stop going like that he you know he had to chain them to get them to stop and if he

00:24:17.180 you know he tried to stop the sled like he could hardly do it unless he you know dug spikes into the

00:24:21.800 snow and things like that so he started breeding um for those kinds of dogs who just wanted to

00:24:27.140 always go and then he won the iditarod four times in a row and so then everybody started copying that

00:24:33.020 strategy and now it's now it's a dog strategy like you're not going for the fastest dogs in fact there

00:24:37.660 there's been some genetic analysis and you can breed in certain dog breeds to make your dogs have

00:24:43.520 like a greater desire or more motivation and some of what's happening their dopamine system is very

00:24:47.680 similar to things we see in humans and one thing one thing i regret in the book is using the phrase

00:24:53.540 one of the scientists saying there is such a thing as couch potato jeans because while that's kind of

00:24:58.860 true it's you know occasionally people have asked me they said oh so so there really is a reason like i

00:25:04.640 don't have to get up and exercise and that's first of all where's that going to get you you know do you

00:25:08.760 really want justification for you know not being healthy or not being athletic no it means you know anyone

00:25:14.700 who's ever been in the training group like i was a i was a division one runner and you know there

00:25:19.120 there are people you train with there guys you train with some of whom have to be managed to train more

00:25:22.960 a lot of them and some of whom have to be managed to train less because they'll overdo it and so

00:25:27.620 you know i think most people have been in the training group know that intuitively we just never

00:25:31.400 think about where that comes from and so for the people who don't have that zorro like you know

00:25:36.220 motivation to get up and move i think um those people just have to work on manipulating their

00:25:40.680 environment a little more whether that's with a training group or finding activity they like or

00:25:44.480 or whatever it is you know it's not it's not a reason to give up yeah i also should say coming

00:25:49.820 out of that research it did make me when i was looking at some of the research on mice who have

00:25:53.860 a high drive to be active and then you can give them like ritalin they stop moving around it is a

00:25:58.700 little bit scary because you think about hyperactivity in kids and it's basically a drive to move around

00:26:02.600 and you can give them a medication and then they won't move around as much i'm not sure that's necessarily

00:26:06.540 a good thing in all cases right because you want them to pay attention but we also want them to move around

00:26:10.560 yeah yeah you even kind of made the case that we're might we might be creating you know like

00:26:15.900 might be contributing to the obesity obesity epidemic amongst young people because we're

00:26:20.080 giving those drugs so they sit still it's exactly what you see in these mice when they're bred to

00:26:24.680 basically be crackheads for physical activity like you can breed them really easily to like be just

00:26:29.640 voracious runners where and then if you take them away they get depressed if you don't allow them to

00:26:35.200 do their exercise but then you can give them these drugs and and then they're cool with not exercising anymore

00:26:39.860 so what what are the ethical issues that that come up with all this new athletic uh gene research i

00:26:49.600 mean are teams sports organizations starting to use genetic testing to figure out whether they should

00:26:55.060 sign a player or whether they should you know tell us the player well you know thanks but we're gonna

00:27:00.660 we'll pay you a little bit but you can't play um what's going on there yeah i mean there are

00:27:06.460 so sports teams are always using genetic information they're just not looking at genes

00:27:11.740 right like whether they're measuring people's physiology which is better because that's a

00:27:15.300 combination of your genes and your environment um but there are some kind of more actual looking

00:27:21.040 at genes starting like i know the kazakhstan's olympic committee decided they were going to start

00:27:25.120 screening kids for certain genes but i i've seen some aspects of their program and it's basically

00:27:30.160 nonsense what they're going to do is they're going to look at these genes that matter but have

00:27:33.200 really small effect and you'd be better off like using a stopwatch or a bench press or something

00:27:36.760 like that um but the way where it is working in is for things that are related to like injury and

00:27:43.300 illness so there are there are genes that are related to uh the strength of collagens which are

00:27:48.940 kind of like quote unquote the body's glue and so people have certain versions are more likely to

00:27:53.320 tear tendons and ligaments and so people being identified in that way maybe they can do what

00:27:57.600 what some of these exercise geneticists are now calling pre-habilitation like strengthening to reduce the

00:28:02.900 chance of those injuries um there's a gene we know that is influences the ability to recover from

00:28:08.700 brain trauma so pretty relevant to things like boxing nma and of course football um and obviously

00:28:15.460 the most important thing is getting hit in the head for brain damage but some people are more

00:28:19.820 susceptible and less and take longer to recover and so on so forth at the very first brain that

00:28:25.060 the researchers at bu you know have made a lot of headlines for dissecting brains of x nfl players

00:28:29.980 the first one they ever did had two versions of this gene only two percent of the population have

00:28:34.320 that and so they're just not as likely to get over brain injury um there there have been questions

00:28:39.340 in in new york in 2002 actually the medical commission that licenses boxers thought about

00:28:45.660 requiring it and then decided that they couldn't you know it was too too ethically fraught basically um

00:28:51.400 and and some years ago the the chicago bulls actually tested when they got eddie curry they thought

00:28:57.960 he might have this this genetic heart condition that could cause him to drop dead on the court

00:29:01.400 and so they they screened him for it um decided they thought he had it he wouldn't submit to a

00:29:07.780 genetic test they said okay if you have this this a gene for this we'll give you i think it was

00:29:12.900 four hundred thousand dollars a year for like the next 40 years but we won't let you play anymore

00:29:16.720 and he refused to take the test and they traded him based on that based on his non-willingness to

00:29:21.940 take a genetic test and so that was kind of an interesting precedent there but but would not be

00:29:26.140 allowed again today because of legislation to protect genetic information from your employer

00:29:29.920 that's been introduced interesting what about for just not not high at performing athletes but like

00:29:36.040 parents who have kids right as i was reading this um i have a four-year-old and he's about to get that

00:29:42.160 age we're gonna start playing sports you know what do you tell your kid who's like i want to be a

00:29:47.300 professional football player and you know you know your genetic history you're like oh you know i don't

00:29:53.680 know if that's really in the picture for you and they you know or parents who spend lots and

00:29:58.540 i live in you know suburban tulsa it's sort of affluent parents will send their kids to football

00:30:03.300 camps for you know it costs lots of money and their kids aren't probably going to play d1 football

00:30:08.360 they might not even play start on the high school football team here what do what do parents do i mean

00:30:14.220 how with this idea that genetics does is not deterministic but it plays a role for sure is there anything

00:30:19.980 we can do to like help our kids like still enjoy athletics but still keep their expectations real

00:30:25.340 or should we even should we not even attempt to keep their expectations real let them dream

00:30:29.320 yeah i mean it's it's like you said genetics certainly plays a role um i did some rough analytics that

00:30:36.160 you know i i that but anyway some very ballpark analytics that pro the children of pro athletes were

00:30:44.060 about 55 times more likely to get an ncaa scholarship in some sport even if it wasn't the sport of their

00:30:49.540 parent played so there's you know presumably something being passed down there in terms of

00:30:53.340 athleticism and honestly i think i've been big i added an afterword to the book about specialization

00:30:58.160 in youth sports because it's completely backfiring actually so it turns out that the best way to

00:31:03.900 develop uh elite athletes not the exclusive way but the best way is like the roger federer path or the

00:31:10.060 steven ash path where you play a whole bunch of different sports you don't even i mean steven ash didn't

00:31:13.980 even own a basketball to his 13 federer's parents forced him to keep playing badminton soccer

00:31:18.520 basketball before he could focus in on tennis and that's actually the norm and so i think the

00:31:22.960 piece of advice i'd give parents because i don't i don't want to discourage kids dreams is one let the

00:31:28.200 kids have their dreams right obviously we know there are a lot of parents who i think are well

00:31:31.080 intentioned but are really playing out their dream yeah um and give the kids what's called a sampling

00:31:36.760 period because elite athletes have that so they're going to be elite it's more likely if they have that

00:31:41.200 it's also a lot more likely they'll find the sport that fits their talents and one that they like

00:31:45.360 so basically i would i would say allow them to develop the dream and and give them that sampling

00:31:51.460 period because the pro athletes have it but the problem now is that there are people who run a lot

00:31:56.640 of leagues and travel teams and camps and aau and everything whose economic interests are in

00:32:03.880 conflict with giving kids the sampling period that produces elite athletes and in fact this canadian

00:32:09.600 research named john cote has this really interesting research showing that the the odds of becoming a pro

00:32:15.000 athlete in any sport based on the size of your hometown has all gone down to really small hometown

00:32:19.320 sizes because the kids in the big towns have to specialize too early just to like make a middle

00:32:24.520 school team you know yeah and so with these good intentions have really backfired so i'm a big

00:32:29.500 proponent of the sampling period that's great yeah that's what it's like here and i live right next

00:32:34.700 to a suburb called jinx oklahoma it produces one of the top football teams and like they start

00:32:39.460 the kids on like the high school football program when like they're in kindergarten there's like a

00:32:43.240 a draft period like the kids get drafted and it's kind of it's pretty nuts so um if it made better

00:32:50.840 athletes ultimately you know i'd kind of be for it but that's like not what most of the evidence i

00:32:54.560 think the i think the evidence on golf is out actually juries out nobody's done like a good job

00:32:58.600 studying it but for most sports uh you know the australian institute of sport did some fascinating

00:33:03.540 research where they showed that kids who play three different anticipatory sports those are sports

00:33:09.100 where you have to react faster than your biology can so you have to learn visual cues like in

00:33:13.280 you know in football or in soccer or in basketball volleyball attacking sports basically they will

00:33:18.800 then pick up any subsequent sport like that much more quickly than people who've only played one

00:33:22.740 interesting well david epstein where can people learn more about your work

00:33:25.780 uh well definitely the the book the sports gene uh the website sportsgene.com but i haven't been

00:33:31.380 updating it lately and i'm always you know shooting my mouth off on twitter so that's one way

00:33:35.380 awesome well david epstein thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you

00:33:39.060 pleasure is mine our guest today was david epstein he's the author of the book the sports dean

00:33:42.820 inside the science of extraordinary athletic performance and you can find that on amazon.com

00:33:47.120 and bookstores everywhere well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:33:54.840 for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:33:58.320 art of manliness.com and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:34:03.080 so

00:34:10.720 you

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00:34:33.080 You

The Art of Manliness - August 06, 2015

#127： The Sports Gene With David Epstein

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