Good athletes vs Elite Athletes? | One Good Question

0:09 Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to our Friday episode One Good Question, where we answer your question. If you want to get involved, all you gotta do is ad to good Company Discord dot com. You get early access to all our clothing drops, discounts, like minded community, and also a chance to be on the show which wonderful. Dingleberry come quat but he spelled coop quat crazy. I think I know that's a fruit because we had him in my yard as a kid, But I don't think that's how you spell it. But you know, teach their own. His question is what separates a good athlete from an elite athlete? Is a genetics, luck, disciplined and or resources? You know, I don't know what most people would say, but I think one you have to define already what a good athlete is from elite If we're talking about a professional athlete from an all time great, or are we talking about pretty good varsity basketball guy versus Michael Jordan, you know, like or even powerlifting someone who wins a local meet versus Russ Swoll or an ed cone who will go down like kind of in the Mount Rushmore's. So it depends what you consider good and great. I think resources probably has to be number one because without exposure to something, you just don't know if you're good. So if you never you know, if you grew up in an island that doesn't have a barbell gym, you could be the best powerlifter on the planet. Doesn't matter. Kind of like Yannis. Yeah, yeah, like Yannis in a sense, Jannis had no clue then he just stumbled upon

1:40 a basketball court. I think in Greece when he was sixteen. Francis and Gano I don't think, fought anyone until he's twenty, and you can go down as one of the best mma fighters of all time. So exposure and resources probably have to be number one in America. That's why kind of the basketball football joke or whatever of inner city not joke but stereo type of inner city people being good at is because it's super accessible. You buy a basketball for twenty bucks and there's outdoor basketball courts everywhere you can go get good versus something like soccer, where in other countries it still works, but here it's just not as common to find a public place to play it. It's not as common culturally obviously, but you also need like twenty people to play a game, and even a practice. It's much different practicing something like baseball or soccer versus just yourself and a basketball hoop is all you need to get better power lifting, et cetera, et cetera. But beyond that, and this may not be a very popular thing, I think the biggest factor is genetics.

2:32 And you can take genetics however you want. There's obviously physical genetics if you're built for something. The whole causation argument, right like you people say, like, I'll stop that rant, but basically to be tall, you gotta be to be tall will help you go to the NBA. Right, that's all genetics. But between the ears I think has a lot of genetics too, for sure, and you can learn stuff. And we had a sports therapists on this podcast back the day if you want to go search those episodes up. But they talk about like being a gamer, being clutch, or being hard working or discipline, and I think those things are able to be approved improved upon. But from firsthand knowledge, you know, I've rubbed doubles with some pro athletes and strength and conditioning coaches and regular coaches in the pro pro level of sports, and I've heard of people that have become literal NBA All Stars and don't train or work out a day in their life.

3:28 So that just proves to you that he's probably built a little bit different than all of us. Where I played basketball eight hours a day once I was out of high school. I would literally go to college in the morning until like ten am, and then the rest of the day I was either lifting weights or playing basketball till like eight at night. And I got pretty good. But I did not just coast not coast because obviously there's some effort involved everywhere. But I did not find my way to the NBA. I think we take these four things. Okay, so resources is a must, you have to have that, Yeah, I think you have to have at least mid levels genetics. Yeah, I think depending on where I was talking about before, Yeah, do you have elite genetics, you can have you can be an elite player. Yeah, mid level genetics are probably not going to make you an elite player. And depending where you go, right, because like powerlifting genetics, the pool is just much smaller, right, So like, yeah, you could probably maybe in powerlifting you could have good genetics and elite everything else and become the best. But that's not having an NBA right where everyone in the NBA are absolute fucking freaks, And unless you've played against NBA caliber or Pro caliber people, you don't even know what a freak is.

4:40 Like I was the fastest kid at every basketball camp, every recess, every everything I ever went to. And I'm not even close to a freak because I'm talking about like a Northern California baby circle of who happened to show up at my camps. Right then I go and play in some pro am stuff, I'm like, well, these are freaks. You know, there's sixteen year olds. I'm twenty two. Sixteen year olds dunk all over me, and shit, you know, there's different levels to everything. So the sport dependent for sure. So I would say that there's a an kind of potentially an inverse relationship between genetics and discipline, because if you have elite genetics, you might not need the level of discipline. If you have midland genetics, you're gonna need the discipline. Yeah, I agree, And even if you have elite genetics, you need like base discipline, yeah, because you got to like show up the games. You have to like show up somewhere, and you have to practice somewhere, right, But do you have to go like hard, probably not. Do you have to like go to bed on time, probably not. I mean, even Michael Jordan, they say it was a fucking alcoholic drinking every night. Yeah. Bones Jones, who's world regarded as the best MMA fighter of all time right now. I think he even said it in an interview that a week before his fights. I mentioned this in another podcast, but I misquoted who it was. It's Bones Jones. A week before every fight, he goes and gets like hammer drunk at a club to almost give himself a mental out in case the week doesn't go good. That's just part of his routine. But still the point is, if you're dialed in on everything, you're eating chicken right and going to bed the week before, you're not going to a club. I think, looking at luck, I think that you don't necessarily have to have good luck, but it's difficult to overcome bad luck, particularly a streak of it,

6:13 I'd agree, And I think that ties into resources in some sense. Yeah, Like there's probably still, to this day, the best basketball player that's not discovered because he his high school coach cut him for some reason, or he didn't have grades, or like, there's many little pieces of the resource luck conundrum that can go hand in hand. Maybe you're in the foster system and you literally couldn't get a basketball right or your parents just hated Maybe you're the best basketball player that never was found and your parents despise basketball for some reason and won't let you play. You know, but that's all part of kind of the luck resource and that makes I mean, I would imagine that there's a good chance that talent may fall off in the NFL because of parents keeping their kids out of football due to the concussion. For sure in the next maybe now, but for sure in the next twenty thirty years play.

7:04 Yeah, and maybe maybe soccer as well. Yeah, yeah, a lot of sports. Or MMA is an MBA as big as it could be, because yeah, I don't want my twelve year old fucking choked out every weekend. Like I get it, I mean I do. I wouldn't care because I think the coaching and stuff is very safe and practical. But I understand the argument of all that. Yeah, I agree, LUCKI plays a role, I think, and everything in life. Resources play a role. But I think discipline. Yeah, you might be able to argue to genetics or nature versus nurture, nature and nurture being raised too, Like it's just how hard working you are, But it is hard to say, you know, the whole, the whole hard work beats talent. When talent isn't working hard is actual dog shit. If you're depending on the scale we're going on, you know, ten out of ten genetics is going to beat your one out of ten genetics with ten out of ten work ethic. It's just I've seen it in my own eyes. There's probably basketball kids that work harder than me, and I beat the fuck out of him just because I was genetically gifted.

8:01 I was gonna say, a Dennis Rodman. You look at Dennis Rodman, bro was out clubbing or he was going out before games. By in the opposite of that, he didn't play basketballun till junior college. Yeah, he didn't play he was five ten until he was twenty years old. Oh my lord, his story's crazy. We should do that documentary. Sometimes I think it's a he is it thirty for thirty or sixty? I don't know that. I get them all confused, but I think he was a janitor at the junior college or something. Oh wow, we should get Dino in and do that. Yeah, the Dennis Rodman was so good, but yeah, it's similar. He lived his whole life a little distraught after he got popular as well. But I don't think he got drafted until he's twenty six, No, which is crazy because most people are getting you know, the best players are getting drafted in nineteen twenty now. There's tons of examples like that. I think powerlifting, despite people wanting to argue all this stuff, consistency is very very important, and you can argue that's discipline, but like I mean, you're training four hours a week, like, it's not crazy, and you can eat pretty good and be very good at powerlifting. I think it's a very genetic driven sport. Same with bodybuilding. But people get mad when you say that because they think about powerlifting is hard work, and it is. It's difficult. You know, your back hurts and you still got a deadlift and whatever. But you you know, there's literal folks that train their entire life and barely scraped by a five hundred pound deadlift. And there's people that deadlift, even me, even though I'm not on the top top end, But like I pulled five hundred in my first like four years of deadlifting, three years of deadlifting, Like that's kind of rare. You know, some people were pulling four hundred. I think Ed Cone even said

9:35 he pulled four hundred like a second time ever deadlifting or something like that. You know, like, sometimes you're just built a little bit different and you can't there's nothing we can do to change that. So I think the bigger take home lesson if we're gonna wrap this up into a beautiful Disney sitcom, the real moral of the story is like if you overthink all those things, you're probably already losing. If you want to make an excuse for your discipline or that guy's success or why you're not where you are, you've already lost and the other thing because of the resource and luck. You don't know any of it until you've put in the work. Even the guy who is the greatest that never trained, he found at some point the sport and he showed up and played the sport enough to get to the elite levels. So you're just spinning your wheels and wasting your time. If this is what you're baiting in your head rather than just showing up and actually doing it, because the exposure is number one. You just have to do it. You have to do whatever you want to be good at to be good at it, whether you're minimal genetics or not. And the other thing with lifting is genetics are slightly different where sometimes it takes a long time for them to like express themselves.

10:37 Where like basketball, basketball same thing, like you take time, but like some people are just a little bit more coordinated. And then also you just can't like fake express being six' eight, like that just kind of happens. You can't be four to eight and yeah you're six eight, Yeah, it just doesn't really happen. So you can't really fool around with that. But these other sports, and the point is too, like powerlifting shouldn't be your goal to be like the old best ever. I mean, it can't be your goal, and that's great, but like that shouldn't be the only reason you do it, per se. The beauty is in the grind, so stick to it as much as ken, ladies and gentlemen. I'm slo Mike. New episode Wednesday, Friday, thresp dot C for all your clothing needs. Stay tuned. I think we're looking at April fifteenth or so for a drop good company Discord dot com that you want to get involved in that and I'll catch you next time. I am Matthew mcdna those social media that shows fifty percent facts. For a percent is a word and fifty is just numbers. Fifty percent of facts is a speaker, Prime Podcast and association with iHeartMedia on the Obscurity Celebrity Network, and we'll talk to the next time.