I recently wrote the below feature on the topic of Natural Talent, and when I went to add it to the website, I realised that I’d written an article on the same subject many years ago. So, instead of deleting the old one, I have added the new one above it. So, below, enjoy not one but two different essays on this fascinating concept of sports psychology.
What Exactly Is Natural Talent?
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in concepts related to natural talent. How significant is nature (genetics) regarding human excellence versus nurture (lived experience)? While researching this article, I thought I would try to see if there is an agreed definition of natural talent and what it’s not. Surprise, surprise, I could not find a standard clarification, but this was my favourite:
“Natural talent is an innate or inborn gift for a specific activity, either allowing one to demonstrate some immediate skill without practice or to gain skill rapidly with minimal practice.“
Full credit to Blue Print Tennis for this definition contained within this fascinating article on the same topic.
Natural Talent Vs. Natural Ability
It’s important to emphasise the context in which we tend to come across the concept of natural talent in our work here at Condor Performance. Virtually everybody that we work with has one thing in common. They want to get better at something … or a bunch of things.
Sometimes, this performance area is evident and tangible. They want to improve their golfing consistency because they won’t be able to secure their tour card for next year without it. A surgeon gets nervous before surgery and needs to improve her composure to be the best possible surgeon she can be.
Other times, this performance area is far less obvious but still a performance area. The athlete who wants to be a better husband struggles due to the sheer amount of time they spend training. A soldier desires to be a better father by not allowing traumatic and recurring memories of the battlefield to impact his time with his young children.
Each of these examples, along with many others, has an element of talent or ability. The last example is probably the best to emphasise this. We know from the research that, for some reason, specific soldiers who return from the battlefield seem to cope very well with adapting to everyday life. On the other hand, some military personnel who experience precisely the same situations return home and have their functioning compromised by their experiences. What is going on here?
Earned and Unearned Competence
Sometimes, I think it might be better to think of the Natural Talent debate in terms of earned and unearned competence at something.
Earned competence is essentially the most common type of competence whereby you are good at something because you have spent a lot of time becoming good at it. However, not all competence is a direct result of hard work.
Unearned competence is when you are good at something without having spent hours and hours honing that skill. Why? How? We are not sure. Genetics undoubtedly plays a part. But maybe there are also many environmental factors that we are entirely unaware of. Perhaps the soil in the country in which you live is much richer in nutrients than in other countries. So without you having to do anything, the quality of the vegetables you’re putting into your body is slightly better.
Undoubtedly, at the end of the day, how good you are is a combination of the two types of talent/ability/competency. It’s also worth pointing out that some performance areas are arguably more susceptible to one than the other. In other words, it’s incorrect to say that ability is 50% natural and 50% nurture.
Let’s Look At A Few Examples
First and foremost, the more complex and challenging the performance area, the less likely experts will be as such because of inherited advantages. Let’s look at a sport like the decathlon.
The vast amount of different motor skills, physical, psychological and technical requirements needed to be an excellent decathlete means that it would need to be more influenced by hard work and less by Mum and Dad’s genetic offerings.
Maybe the opposite example also comes from track and field. If we look at sprinting, it is easy to see that there appears to be a more significant genetic predisposition to running incredibly fast.
I am not taking anything away from the hard work of the world’s fastest men, women, boys and girls. But here is a fact: if you were born into a family of Caucasian shorties, good luck trying to win a 100m or 200 m Olympic medal.
Fortunately, due to advances in sports science, we don’t need to guess these things any more. There now appears to be universal agreement amongst the academic community that in the case of sprinting, fast-twitch fibres (which are entirely genetic and cannot be increased post-birth) play a significant role in how quick you will be. Of course, you still need to put in the training, BUT the training seems to pay much more dividends to those with more fast-twitch fibres.
How Much Influence?
As is often the case, it can be beneficial to consider how much influence we have on all of this. For virtually every performance area, a certain percentage of how good you can get will result from inherited elements. A better question should be, “How much influence do we have on our natural abilities or lack thereof?”.
The answer is simple. None, nada, zilch!
So because we have no influence on these, I suggest you accept and ignore them equally. Instead, focus on aspects of improving that you have the most influence over.
What’s that? I hear you shouting.
The answer is simple. The quality and quantity of improvement endeavours. This might be called training, practice, preparation, or something else depending on your performance area.
A Personal Example
I have two children. One finds most sports far more straightforward than the other. During Covid, when they were homeschooled, we spent a lot of time just working on basic physical literacy. Throwing, catching and kicking basics. One of our favourite activities was throwing tennis balls between one another and trying to catch them with a baseball glove.
Because of natural gifts, one of my children spent no extra time trying to learn how to catch the ball better. The time the three of us spent outside was all the practice they got.
But my other child, who, for some reason, even though they have the same mother and father, found catching a much trickier proposition. So this child, without being prompted, spent far longer in the backyard trying to improve by themselves. What was the result? Two children who are exceptionally good at catching a baseball.
But What If …
I sometimes ponder how good the first child would be if they had/have the same work ethic as the second child. In most cases, this never happens. The natural talents work less because they can get away with it. The less naturally gifted try harder because they have to.
And every once in a blue moon, you get someone who combines extraordinary natural liabilities with exceptional quality and quantity of practice. These rare individuals are already mentally very healthy yet go out of their way to further improve the mental aspects of what they do. They choose to work with sports psychologists (like the ones at Condor Performance) not for a couple of months but for a couple of decades in the knowledge that there is never an end to improving.
We have names for these unique creatures. They are the top 0.1%. Some are called GOATS. They are the Hall of Famers, world champions.
Suppose you are following the logic of this theory. In that case, you might realise that, unfortunately, for some people, their genetics will mean they will not be able to reach the summit, irrespective of the quality and quantity of practice. Maybe you are one of these people. If you are, then I would suggest this mindset. Let’s see how far we can get without the biological head start.
If you need a hand, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Natural Talent – Previous Article
Words or combinations of words, primarily when spoken, are powerful and need to be treated delicately. As a general rule, I try hard not to dislike certain words. Instead, I choose not to use specific combinations myself. For example, the word control is used prolifically in performance psychology circles. As my colleagues and clients know, I prefer to use the word influence. In my opinion, it’s just a much better word for exerting an impact on something.
As a sport psychologist who doesn’t use direct cognitive therapy techniques, I try not to correct my sporting clients when they use the word control. Instead, I just choose not to use it myself. I refer to our varying degrees of influence on different aspects of our life and performance.
Two Words Not One: Natural + Talent
But I am particularly offended by one pair of words: natural talent. Before pulling it apart and explaining why I feel these words should be banned, let’s look at each word by itself.
The ‘natural’ part refers to genetics, what we’re born with, and our DNA. In other words, it is the former in the Nature Versus Nurture concept/debate. Like most scientists, I believe most of our abilities are made up of a combination of nature and nurture.
Most experts now believe it’s a fairly even contest between genetics and environment. And this may well be the case in many areas I know little about. However, in sports, I firmly believe that genetics is vastly overplayed as a determinant of success. Let me be 100% clear here. I am not dismissing the role of genetics. I am simply saying that factors such as height and hand size play a much smaller part than many people believe they do.
Not All Performance Areas Are The Same
As performance psychologists, we work right across a multitude of performance domains. Some of the most exciting work I have done is with male and female professional models. By models, I’m referring to men, women, boys, and girls who make a living by doing catwalks and photoshoots. Imagining a performance domain with a more significant genetic component to professional modelling is hard. After all, height is considered critical for most adult models.
And the last time I checked, it didn’t matter how hard you tried, but you couldn’t make yourself taller. Yet even in this cutthroat industry, I still assert that success is more than 50% about non-genetic factors. Chief amongst these uninherited factors is effort, or how you apply yourself. Suddenly, natural talent doesn’t feel that natural.
What About Sports?
Not too far behind professional modelling are sports that benefit from particular physical attributes. Height is useful for basketballers, netballers, and high jumpers.
But what about sports which are much less physical? Sports such as golf, lawn bowls and figure skating. Are there some genetically predetermined characteristics that allow some people to have an advantage in these psychologically brutal sports? Instead of sharing my views, I invite you to add your thoughts to the comments section below.
I appreciate this article, although it seems to end before you complete your point. I’m seeking scholarly papers on this topic, and in my reading I came across this article. I work with 10-14 year olds in cycling sports. Each year we hear the term “natural talent” pop up, and each time I challenge our volunteer coaches to recognize the impact that youth development has on young athletes. In my opinion we start with genetics, evolve through environmental stimuli (good and bad), develop traits (into attributes?), expose learners to different facets of a given process, and practice the relevant behaviors. When we find the right fit we not only build talent, we begin to build character and help humans do and be their best.
Pido disculpas por el idioma, no se inglés pero he leído el artículo traducido y me parece muy acertada su enfoque y de gran persona de como trata está terminología.
Yo esto del talento natural siempre me ha gustado más vinculado como una divinidad que no como una genética. Aunque es evidente que hay talentos naturales que es gracias a la genética sobretodo en el deporte, pero también hay otros talentos que son un misterio y que se aleja de la genética. Bueno, el talento a la cual se basa a la pregunta última que fórmulas. El talento imnato en las actividades relacionadas a la inteligencia.
Yo no me considero un talento natural pero he tenido algunas buenas experiencias en mi vida, y te puedo contar una que tuve de cuando mi padre me enseñó a jugar al ajedrez de niño. Tendría unos 6 años y las reglas y el juego me lo fue enseñando durante la primera partida y al final de la partida ya sabía jugar, las reglas, el jaque mate etc. Pero algo curioso es que durante la partida recuerdo de haber tenido conceptos muy acertados sobre el juego sin que nadie me lo explicara y sin haberlo visto de alguien antes. Detalles como saber que si colocaba más piezas en el centro del tablero cerca del rey contrario, tenía más posibilidades de ganar antes. Y aquí esto es lo que me fascina de mi mismo en esa experiencia y ahora también me sucede cuando veo a niños comportarse y desenvolverse como si ya hubieran vivido una vida entera, y todo esto puede parecer un milagro. Y me gusta creer que es un milagro.
Bueno, pero ahora poniéndonos serios, lo que me gusta creer es una cosa pero también tengo mi parte realista en todo esto, también tengo una teoría que puede tener explicación científica. Creo que lo cierto en todo esto es que muchas personas nacen con el cerebro alineado al universo, y lo que parece milagro en realidad es parte de su simetría nativa en relación a la naturaleza, por eso lo que ellos crean de manera natural, en realidad es tan natural como los milagros que suceden en la naturaleza que no dejan de ser más que acciones alineadas al universo.
Sinceramente leyéndole creo que usted siente ese “conector”de la alineación con el universo, y la tiene, pero la vida tiene inconvenientes, y por el camino nos metemos muchas ecuaciones inútiles que nos alejan de la verdad, de la verdad de explicar algo tan efectivo con la simplicidad de trazar una linea en una pizarra.
Es como decir que cuando somos bebes sabemos nadar, pero con el tiempo si no lo practicamos se nos olvida. Con esto pasa igual, muchas cosas que parecen de educación en realidad nos alejan de ese potencial. Tampoco digo que su educacion en alguna fase de su vida fuera equivocada, cuando la educación se equivoca en alguien por otro lado está beneficiando a miles, aunque quizás ninguno de ellos lleguen a esa alineación total con el universo, pero así es la vida, al final es todo en su conjunto la alineación.
Volviendo a mi experiencia con el ajedrez, no me quiero quedar sin decir que de lo que si que puedo coincidir es con el ambiente con la que vivia la experiencia, lo recuerdo como la de tener una mente totalmente libre de presión, sin miedo, y bueno el clima, día soleado, todo ayuda mucho.
Definitivamente para mí la clave en alinear el talento con el universo es en la experiencia misma de como lo vives en tiempo real, y de como té puedes sentir anímicamente, y todo puede influir mucho para conectar tu talento con alguna actividad que te acabe gustando para toda la vida. No digo que mis experiencia sean de las mejores en comparación a las que puedan tener o hayan tenido otros, pero no me quejo. Cada persona es un mundo, y como bien dices en el artículo, tanto el talento como trabajo, la finalidad es la misma, es ser bueno en algo.
Un saludo muy grande.
Translation using Google Translate: I apologize for the language; I don’t speak English, but I’ve read the translated article and I find its approach very insightful, and it shows great character in how they handle this terminology.
I’ve always preferred the idea of natural talent as something divine rather than genetic. While it’s clear that some natural talents are due to genetics, especially in sports, there are other talents that are a mystery and defy genetics. Well, the talent you’re referring to in your last question is innate talent in activities related to intelligence.
I don’t consider myself naturally talented, but I’ve had some good experiences in my life, and I can tell you about one I had when my father taught me to play chess as a child. I was about six years old, and he taught me the rules and the game during the first match. By the end, I already knew how to play, the rules, checkmate, etc. But something curious is that during the game, I remember having very accurate concepts about the game without anyone explaining it to me and without having seen anyone else play it before. Details like knowing that if I placed more pieces in the center of the board near the opponent’s king, I had a better chance of winning sooner. And this is what fascinates me about myself in that experience, and it also happens to me now when I see children behave and act as if they’ve already lived a whole life, and all of this can seem like a miracle. And I like to believe that it is a miracle.
Okay, but now getting serious, what I like to believe is one thing, but I also have my realistic side to all of this; I also have a theory that may have a scientific explanation. I think the truth in all of this is that many people are born with their brains aligned with the universe, and what seems like a miracle is actually part of their innate symmetry in relation to nature. That’s why what they create naturally is actually as natural as the miracles that happen in nature, which are nothing more than actions aligned with the universe.
Honestly, reading your words, I think you feel that “connection” of alignment with the universe, and you do have it, but life has its drawbacks, and along the way we get bogged down in many useless equations that distance us from the truth—the truth of explaining something so effective with the simplicity of drawing a line on a blackboard.
It’s like saying that when we’re babies we know how to swim, but over time, if we don’t practice, we forget. The same thing happens with this; many things that seem like education actually distance us from that potential. I’m not saying that your education was wrong at some point in your life. When education is flawed for one person, it’s benefiting thousands in other ways, even if perhaps none of them will reach that total alignment with the universe. But that’s life; in the end, alignment is everything together.
Returning to my experience with chess, I want to mention that I can definitely agree with the atmosphere in which I experienced it. I remember it as having a completely pressure-free mind, without fear, and the weather—a sunny day—all helped a lot.
For me, the key to aligning talent with the universe is definitely in the experience itself, how you live it in real time, and how you feel emotionally. All of this can greatly influence connecting your talent with an activity that you end up enjoying for life. I’m not saying my experiences are the best compared to others, but I’m not complaining. Everyone is different, and as you rightly say in the article, with both talent and hard work, the goal is the same: to be good at something.
Best regards.