'Natural gift' versus practice

This had been discussed in the forum before. There're books you can buy online. Talent is Overrated, Deliberate Practice, Talent Code, to name a few.

 

It's hard to distinguish "innate" ability from "learned" abilities.

For example:
Balls have always been around in my parents home since I came to earth. My father was a decent athlete.
The fact that I literally started kicking and throwing balls from earliest childhood on, gives me a HUGE skill advantage over that tabletennis guy.

But literally speaking, this ain't "natural" ability, this is learned ability, right?

 

Depends how you define success. Is being a top 50 ranked badminton player considered success? That might be the limit of your hard work. See, everyone has a ceiling, the ones with natural ability just have higher ceilings. If they put in enough work to exceed your ceiling, it would be hard for you to win against them no matter how hard you work.

 

Well, I believe in natural ability. All of my children grew up in the same house, but the one who is now "the athlete" was quite obviously more coordinated and mentally determined by the time he was a toddler.

Environment obviously has a huge role, too. But no talent, innate or acquired, is any good without the discipline of practice.

Mini-interview with Canada's national synchronized swimming coach shows her philosophy on this. Short read below for anyone interested (plus she's pretty ;-))

http://www.coach.ca/http://www.coach.ca/meng-chen-chpc-synchronized-swimming-p157487

 

i very much agree with fidgets statement

another thing i wanna bring on is that it is also very important about what sport we are talking about
take me as an example: I was my whole life very fast in running...i was always 1st to 3rd in sprint times (50m - 200m) in school
but i would always be in the last third of the pack when doing endurance running...although i would do more sportsactivities than some of the guys who would be faster than me on 1000m+

even today with me being really good in form i must see that ppl who rarely do sports can run my 1000m+ times quite easily..i was not born to run a long distance...other guys run my times very easily for what i have to train hard...
on the other hand many ppl can train a lot and would never reach me in a sprint...

I think in Badminton it is possible for very different type of players to be (relatively..) successfull because there are different talents that you can use (simplest example would be that tall players have advantage in height and angles etc...maybe power too .. but smaller players therefore have advantage in speed and agility)
or one guy has a naturally good footwork, therefore the other has a great wrist and learns many tough strokes quite easily


so in some sports talent is more important (sprint) whereas in other sports you can reach higher with pure good work (badminton)

 

There is also a less talked about natural ability of the brain. Something that's not very trainable.

Some people are just naturally good at reading the game and manipulating it. They may be slower and weaker than you but you'll never beat them.

 

I'm not sure about NEVER being able to beat them. I think an important part of practicing is reading the game, so a part of beating them is training yourself to read the game.

 

I think it depends on the competitors. In badminton/sport it's normally a very definitive outcome in terms of winning/losing titles & making a living.

Practice will get you proficient in a sport but if you run up against someone who's Practiced as much as you & has natural talent then your probably going to lose.
Simply because their practice is going to be more effective as they learn faster.

If you look at China's system. They have a raft of people in their development system training hard.
At the end of the day they probably end up with hundreds of competent & potentially world class players but whittle it down to a few showing the most potential.
They're probably the Naturally talented who also put the effort in & practiced.

In the real world where there's room to be "sucessful" without being the "Best" (i.e. winning) then yes Practice can lead to success.

 

This is true, certainly.
But,even among professionals, you can sense who's got that little extra natural talent and who's got the capacity to endure endless drills.

Chen Jin was a really good player. One had the sense that here was a man who acheived what he did through diligent hard work. He played like a well oiled machine. Boring to watch. But probably a great analytical coach for the Chinese WS.

KKK was a really good player. One had the sense that here was a man who acheived what he did in spite of diligent partying. He played like an inspired 'natural'. A joy to watch. But not sure what kind of coach he is for that Thai club.

 

So the conclusion is that someone without natural talent don't even stand a chance against someone with natural talent that works bloody hard on their game...