Good athletes vs Elite Athletes? | One Good Question

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Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to our
Friday episode One Good Question, where we

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answer your question. If you want
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minded community, and also a chance to

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be on the show which wonderful.
Dingleberry come quat but he spelled coop quat

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crazy. I think I know that's
a fruit because we had him in my

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yard as a kid, But I
don't think that's how you spell it.

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But you know, teach their own. His question is what separates a good

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athlete from an elite athlete? Is
a genetics, luck, disciplined and or

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resources? You know, I don't
know what most people would say, but

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I think one you have to define
already what a good athlete is from elite

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If we're talking about a professional athlete
from an all time great, or are

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we talking about pretty good varsity basketball
guy versus Michael Jordan, you know,

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like or even powerlifting someone who wins
a local meet versus Russ Swoll or an

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ed cone who will go down like
kind of in the Mount Rushmore's. So

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it depends what you consider good and
great. I think resources probably has to

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be number one because without exposure to
something, you just don't know if you're

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good. So if you never you
know, if you grew up in an

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island that doesn't have a barbell gym, you could be the best powerlifter on

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the planet. Doesn't matter. Kind
of like Yannis. Yeah, yeah,

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like Yannis in a sense, Jannis
had no clue then he just stumbled upon

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a basketball court. I think in
Greece when he was sixteen. Francis and

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Gano I don't think, fought anyone
until he's twenty, and you can go

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down as one of the best mma
fighters of all time. So exposure and

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resources probably have to be number one
in America. That's why kind of the

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basketball football joke or whatever of inner
city not joke but stereo type of inner

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city people being good at is because
it's super accessible. You buy a basketball

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for twenty bucks and there's outdoor basketball
courts everywhere you can go get good versus

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something like soccer, where in other
countries it still works, but here it's

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just not as common to find a
public place to play it. It's not

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as common culturally obviously, but you
also need like twenty people to play a

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game, and even a practice.
It's much different practicing something like baseball or

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soccer versus just yourself and a basketball
hoop is all you need to get better

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power lifting, et cetera, et
cetera. But beyond that, and this

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may not be a very popular thing, I think the biggest factor is genetics.

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And you can take genetics however you
want. There's obviously physical genetics if

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you're built for something. The whole
causation argument, right like you people say,

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like, I'll stop that rant,
but basically to be tall, you

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gotta be to be tall will help
you go to the NBA. Right,

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that's all genetics. But between the
ears I think has a lot of genetics

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too, for sure, and you
can learn stuff. And we had a

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sports therapists on this podcast back the
day if you want to go search those

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episodes up. But they talk about
like being a gamer, being clutch,

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or being hard working or discipline,
and I think those things are able to

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be approved improved upon. But from
firsthand knowledge, you know, I've rubbed

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doubles with some pro athletes and strength
and conditioning coaches and regular coaches in the

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pro pro level of sports, and
I've heard of people that have become literal

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NBA All Stars and don't train or
work out a day in their life.

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So that just proves to you that
he's probably built a little bit different than

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all of us. Where I played
basketball eight hours a day once I was

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out of high school. I would
literally go to college in the morning until

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like ten am, and then the
rest of the day I was either lifting

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weights or playing basketball till like eight
at night. And I got pretty good.

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But I did not just coast not
coast because obviously there's some effort involved

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everywhere. But I did not find
my way to the NBA. I think

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we take these four things. Okay, so resources is a must, you

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have to have that, Yeah,
I think you have to have at least

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mid levels genetics. Yeah, I
think depending on where I was talking about

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before, Yeah, do you have
elite genetics, you can have you can

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be an elite player. Yeah,
mid level genetics are probably not going to

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make you an elite player. And
depending where you go, right, because

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like powerlifting genetics, the pool is
just much smaller, right, So like,

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yeah, you could probably maybe in
powerlifting you could have good genetics and

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elite everything else and become the best. But that's not having an NBA right

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where everyone in the NBA are absolute
fucking freaks, And unless you've played against

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NBA caliber or Pro caliber people,
you don't even know what a freak is.

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Like I was the fastest kid at
every basketball camp, every recess,

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every everything I ever went to.
And I'm not even close to a freak

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because I'm talking about like a Northern
California baby circle of who happened to show

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up at my camps. Right then
I go and play in some pro am

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stuff, I'm like, well,
these are freaks. You know, there's

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sixteen year olds. I'm twenty two. Sixteen year olds dunk all over me,

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and shit, you know, there's
different levels to everything. So the

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sport dependent for sure. So I
would say that there's a an kind of

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potentially an inverse relationship between genetics and
discipline, because if you have elite genetics,

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you might not need the level of
discipline. If you have midland genetics,

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you're gonna need the discipline. Yeah, I agree, And even if

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you have elite genetics, you need
like base discipline, yeah, because you

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got to like show up the games. You have to like show up somewhere,

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and you have to practice somewhere,
right, But do you have to

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go like hard, probably not.
Do you have to like go to bed

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on time, probably not. I
mean, even Michael Jordan, they say

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it was a fucking alcoholic drinking every
night. Yeah. Bones Jones, who's

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world regarded as the best MMA fighter
of all time right now. I think

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he even said it in an interview
that a week before his fights. I

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mentioned this in another podcast, but
I misquoted who it was. It's Bones

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Jones. A week before every fight, he goes and gets like hammer drunk

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at a club to almost give himself
a mental out in case the week doesn't

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go good. That's just part of
his routine. But still the point is,

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if you're dialed in on everything,
you're eating chicken right and going to

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bed the week before, you're not
going to a club. I think,

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looking at luck, I think that
you don't necessarily have to have good luck,

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but it's difficult to overcome bad luck, particularly a streak of it,

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I'd agree, And I think that
ties into resources in some sense. Yeah,

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Like there's probably still, to this
day, the best basketball player that's

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not discovered because he his high school
coach cut him for some reason, or

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he didn't have grades, or like, there's many little pieces of the resource

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luck conundrum that can go hand in
hand. Maybe you're in the foster system

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and you literally couldn't get a basketball
right or your parents just hated Maybe you're

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the best basketball player that never was
found and your parents despise basketball for some

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reason and won't let you play.
You know, but that's all part of

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kind of the luck resource and that
makes I mean, I would imagine that

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there's a good chance that talent may
fall off in the NFL because of parents

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keeping their kids out of football due
to the concussion. For sure in the

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next maybe now, but for sure
in the next twenty thirty years play.

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Yeah, and maybe maybe soccer as
well. Yeah, yeah, a lot

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of sports. Or MMA is an
MBA as big as it could be,

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because yeah, I don't want my
twelve year old fucking choked out every weekend.

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Like I get it, I mean
I do. I wouldn't care because

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I think the coaching and stuff is
very safe and practical. But I understand

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the argument of all that. Yeah, I agree, LUCKI plays a role,

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I think, and everything in life. Resources play a role. But

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I think discipline. Yeah, you
might be able to argue to genetics or

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nature versus nurture, nature and nurture
being raised too, Like it's just how

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hard working you are, But it
is hard to say, you know,

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the whole, the whole hard work
beats talent. When talent isn't working hard

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is actual dog shit. If you're
depending on the scale we're going on,

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you know, ten out of ten
genetics is going to beat your one out

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of ten genetics with ten out of
ten work ethic. It's just I've seen

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it in my own eyes. There's
probably basketball kids that work harder than me,

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and I beat the fuck out of
him just because I was genetically gifted.

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I was gonna say, a Dennis
Rodman. You look at Dennis Rodman,

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bro was out clubbing or he was
going out before games. By in

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the opposite of that, he didn't
play basketballun till junior college. Yeah,

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he didn't play he was five ten
until he was twenty years old. Oh

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my lord, his story's crazy.
We should do that documentary. Sometimes I

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think it's a he is it thirty
for thirty or sixty? I don't know

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that. I get them all confused, but I think he was a janitor

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at the junior college or something.
Oh wow, we should get Dino in

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and do that. Yeah, the
Dennis Rodman was so good, but yeah,

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it's similar. He lived his whole
life a little distraught after he got

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popular as well. But I don't
think he got drafted until he's twenty six,

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No, which is crazy because most
people are getting you know, the

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best players are getting drafted in nineteen
twenty now. There's tons of examples like

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that. I think powerlifting, despite
people wanting to argue all this stuff,

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consistency is very very important, and
you can argue that's discipline, but like

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I mean, you're training four hours
a week, like, it's not crazy,

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and you can eat pretty good and
be very good at powerlifting. I

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think it's a very genetic driven sport. Same with bodybuilding. But people get

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mad when you say that because they
think about powerlifting is hard work, and

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it is. It's difficult. You
know, your back hurts and you still

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got a deadlift and whatever. But
you you know, there's literal folks that

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train their entire life and barely scraped
by a five hundred pound deadlift. And

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there's people that deadlift, even me, even though I'm not on the top

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top end, But like I pulled
five hundred in my first like four years

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of deadlifting, three years of deadlifting, Like that's kind of rare. You

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know, some people were pulling four
hundred. I think Ed Cone even said

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he pulled four hundred like a second
time ever deadlifting or something like that.

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You know, like, sometimes you're
just built a little bit different and you

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can't there's nothing we can do to
change that. So I think the bigger

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take home lesson if we're gonna wrap
this up into a beautiful Disney sitcom,

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the real moral of the story is
like if you overthink all those things,

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you're probably already losing. If you
want to make an excuse for your discipline

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or that guy's success or why you're
not where you are, you've already lost

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and the other thing because of the
resource and luck. You don't know any

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of it until you've put in the
work. Even the guy who is the

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greatest that never trained, he found
at some point the sport and he showed

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up and played the sport enough to
get to the elite levels. So you're

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just spinning your wheels and wasting your
time. If this is what you're baiting

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in your head rather than just showing
up and actually doing it, because the

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exposure is number one. You just
have to do it. You have to

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do whatever you want to be good
at to be good at it, whether

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you're minimal genetics or not. And
the other thing with lifting is genetics are

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slightly different where sometimes it takes a
long time for them to like express themselves.

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Where like basketball, basketball same thing, like you take time, but

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like some people are just a little
bit more coordinated. And then also you

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just can't like fake express being six' eight, like that just kind of

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happens. You can't be four to
eight and yeah you're six eight, Yeah,

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it just doesn't really happen. So
you can't really fool around with that.

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But these other sports, and the
point is too, like powerlifting shouldn't

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be your goal to be like the
old best ever. I mean, it

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can't be your goal, and that's
great, but like that shouldn't be the

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only reason you do it, per
se. The beauty is in the grind,

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so stick to it as much as
ken, ladies and gentlemen. I'm

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slo Mike. New episode Wednesday,
Friday, thresp dot C for all your

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clothing needs. Stay tuned. I
think we're looking at April fifteenth or so

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for a drop good company Discord dot
com that you want to get involved in

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that and I'll catch you next time. I am Matthew mcdna those social media

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that shows fifty percent facts. For
a percent is a word and fifty is

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just numbers. Fifty percent of facts
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with iHeartMedia on the Obscurity Celebrity Network, and we'll talk to the next time.