The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (32 page)

Our ethnic, geographic, and individual family histories have shaped the genetic information we carry at the nucleus of our every cell and, in turn, our bodies. It is breathtaking to think that, in the truest genetic sense, we are all a large family, and that the paths of our ancestors have left us so wonderfully distinct. In the very last line of his paradigm-shattering
On the Origin of Species
, Charles Darwin says this of his revelation that all the biological variation he sees springs from common ancestry: “. . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Because we are each unique, genetic science will continue to show that just as there is no one-size-fits-all medicine, there is no one-size-fits-all training program. If one sport or training method isn’t working, it may not be the training. It may be
you,
in the very deepest sense.

Don’t be afraid to try something different. Donald Thomas and Chrissie Wellington weren’t, and Usain Bolt, after all, had his heart set on cricket stardom.

In the early twentieth century, before the Big Bang of body types, physical education instructors thought the “average” body type was the perfect form for all athletic endeavors. How wrong they were! And now geneticists and physiologists are bolstering evidence that successful practice plans might be as varied as the individuals who would undertake them.

At the end of 2007, the prestigious journal
Science
put “human genetic variation” on its cover as the top scientific breakthrough of the year. As DNA sequencing became cheaper and faster, “researchers are finding out how truly different we are from one another,” read the cover story.

To pursue athletic improvement is to embark on a quest in search of the practice plan that suits your inimitable biology. As the HERITAGE Family Study showed, a single exercise program will produce a vast and individualized range of improvement for any particular physical trait. Wonderfully, though, even in HERITAGE there were no “nonresponders” to everything. Sure, there were subjects who saw no improvement in aerobic fitness, but perhaps their blood pressure dropped, or their cholesterol levels improved. Everyone benefits from exercise or sports practice in some unique way. To take part is a journey of self-discovery that, largely, is beyond even the illuminating reach of cutting-edge science.

As J. M. Tanner, the renowned growth expert and world-class hurdler, so elegantly put it: “Everyone has a different genotype. Therefore, for optimal development . . . everyone should have a different environment.”

Happy training.

The list of those who deserve thanks is too long for this space. Fortunately, many of their names can be found throughout this book. These are the athletes, scientists, and others who shared their thoughts.

Some, like Yannis Pitsiladis, made time for dozens of interviews. When I followed him to Jamaica, Pitsiladis made sure I could be right there in the operating room as he biopsied a former Jamaican Olympian. I am a richer person for the time I’ve spent with him.

Physiologists Stephen Roth and Tim Lightfoot scrutinized the entirety of the exercise physiology descriptions in search of errors or imprecisions. Boiling down scientific descriptions while maintaining accuracy is no mean feat, and insofar as I was able to do it, I owe thanks to the patience of dozens of scientists. I also thank my fact-checker, Rebecca Sun, a budding screenwriting talent. If mistakes remain, they are my fault alone.

Every so often I came across a book that humbled me with its depth of research and originality of thought. In two such cases, the authors—J. M. Tanner and Patrick D. Cooper—had passed away. To my regret, I will never have the chance to interview them, but their hard work and liberated thinking will remain in my mind as sources of motivation and courage.

Several colleagues at
Sports Illustrated
deserve special thanks. Without Richard Demak, I doubt I would be writing about sports science for a
living. Without Chris Hunt and Craig Neff, I doubt I would’ve had the space in
SI
for the story that became the seed of this book. Without Terry McDonell and Chris Stone, I doubt I would’ve had the freedom to work on this book. Without the unfailing encouragement of L. Jon Wertheim and my agent, Scott Waxman, I certainly would have stopped this book before it got started. Thank you, Scott, for foiling my attempt to back out. (Thanks to Farley Chase for work with foreign rights.)

If not for my friendship with Kevin Richards, I most likely would never have turned to sports science writing. Kevin was born in Jamaica and died in Evanston, on a track meet Saturday more than thirteen years ago. I expect that the wound will always be fresh for those of us who ran beside him. I thank Kevin’s parents, Gwendolyn and Rupert, and coach David Phillips for their strength. And Kevin Coyne, for teaching me how to write about death and a friend.

In Kenya, I could not have gained access to the places and people (and languages) that I did without Ibrahim Kinuthia, Godfrey Kiprotich, James Mwangi, and Tom and Christopher Ratcliffe. Without Ibrahim and Harun Ngatia, I might still be stuck on the side of the road between Nyahururu and Nairobi looking for a tire that freed itself and bounced over a sheep and away into the brush. (Thanks to the Kenyan children who were kind enough to pluck lug nuts from the dry grass.)

In Jamaica, I thank the University of Technology staff, and particularly Anthony Davis, director of sport, and Colin Gyles, dean of the faculty of science and sport.

In Japan, I thank Noriyuki Fuku and Eri Mikami, of the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.

In Finland, I thank the Mäntyranta family, but particularly Iiris. And thanks to Elizabeth Newman for helping with phone conversations in Finnish, just as I was beginning to despair in my attempt to track down Eero Mäntyranta.

Puss och kram
to my Swedish “family.” Especially Kajsa Heinemann, for her friendship in my journeys to Sweden, and also for
translating Swedish articles so that I could prepare for my time with Stefan Holm.

On that note, for translation of conversations, papers, or videos, I thank Shiho Takai (Japanese), Alex Von Thun (German), and Veronika Belenkaya (Russian).

My name may be the one on the cover, but if the curtain were removed, many wizards would be visible. Thank you to the staff of the Current imprint at Penguin, particularly marketing director Will Weisser, director of publicity Allison McLean, publicist Jacquelynn Burke, and Katie Coe. I reserve special gratitude for editors Adrian Zackheim and Emily Angell. The best way to measure their belief in this project and patience with me is in words: 40,000 of them. That’s how many too long I was in the first draft. I also thank Matthew Phillips and Louise Court of Yellow Jersey Press.

Psychologist Drew Bailey’s contributions can hardly be overstated. They include tolerating discursive discussions at any time of day, helping with data analysis of NBA bodies, and acting as a personal alert system for new findings that might influence my writing. Genetic science is a moving target, and I could not have tracked it alone. (Thank you, Will Boylan-Pett, for help accessing journals.)

As far as I can tell, my father, Mark Epstein, had scant interest in genetics until I did. Now he is constantly on the lookout for genetics articles and has even had bits of his own genome tested. What greater example can a father provide? My sister, Charna, and brother, Daniel, probably heard “I don’t think I can do this” more times than I care to recall. They never believed me. My mother, Eve Epstein, seems always to have known I would write a book. In addition to her help with Swedish translation, her encouragement sustained me. In the course of working on this book, I came across a letter sent from a music teacher to my mother’s parents—both of whom fled Germany—when my mother was seven. It reads:

I wish to report to you that your daughter is doing exceptional work for the amount of time I have been able to give her. She has an unusual high musical IQ and deserves an expert to give her special attention. I do not have more than a scattered few minutes to show her any special attention and this worries me. In this past twenty years of meeting and working with children, I have never encountered a more alert, exceptional child than Eve. Possibly we could talk it over soon.

Sincerely yours,

Howard Baker

It is a reminder that the requisite nature and nurture are nothing without one another.

Lastly, thank you, Elizabeth. I like to joke to myself that the high pain tolerance of MC1R gene mutants must explain her threshold for my antics. If I ever write another book, I’m sure that one will be dedicated to her too.

The page numbers on these notes refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding note reference on your e-reader.

The reporting of this book included hundreds of interviews. In many instances, the interviewees are quoted directly, making the source of that information obvious. In a few cases, high-performance scientists shared with me their data from elite athletes, but asked not to be named, citing the fact that the work is conducted for the purposes of gaining a competitive advantage for a particular team or athlete. Because I do not name scientists or athletes in such cases, I used their data strictly as supporting information for other work.

Additionally, I gained invaluable background at conferences, like the 2010 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences conference, and several editions of the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting. By 2012, I’d been pesky enough in the sports medicine world that I was invited as an ACSM speaker. At that meeting, I also had the profound pleasure of co-organizing, with Yannis Pitsiladis—he of the globe-trotting DNA gathering—an ACSM panel on the nature/nurture of sports expertise. The panel included: Claude Bouchard (the most influential exercise geneticist in the world); K. Anders Ericsson (the man known for the 10,000 hours and the study of deliberate practice); and Philip L. Ackerman (the motor skill acquisition expert who designed the air traffic controller test). Needless to say, the debate was intense, but the dinner afterward amiable and delightful. To me, it was science at its best, contentious and collaborative all at once.

Here I present copious but not comprehensive citations. Throughout the text, it is often easy to track the books and studies I used, as I frequently name the researchers and/or publications. For example, dozens of studies by Janet Starkes and Bruce Abernethy were useful for the first chapter. However, I will not recount their stacks of papers here. These notes are meant to highlight the sources of facts when the source isn’t spelled out in the text, and as a detailed point of entry for anyone interested in exploring primary sources. The vast majority of spoken quotes in this book came directly from my interviews. Whenever that is not the case, the source is identified either in the text itself or here.

1

Beat by an Underhand Girl

The Gene-Free Model of Expertise

2
Jennie Finch told me in an interview that she was nervous about Pujols hitting a line drive back at her, and that Bonds refused to allow certain pitches to be filmed. Many of Finch’s strikeouts of major leaguers, and Pujols’s “I don’t want to experience that again” quote, can be found in the DVD titled
MLB Superstars Show You Their Game
(Major League Baseball Productions, 2005).

4
On the problem a human confronts in trying to hit a fastball: Adair, Robert K.
The Physics of Baseball
(3rd ed.)
.
Harper Perennial, 2002. Land, Michael F., and Peter McLeod (2000). “From Eye Movements to Actions: How Batsmen Hit the Ball.”
Nature Neuroscience
, 3(12):1340–45. McLeod, P. (1987). “Visual Reaction Time and High-Speed Ball Games.”
Perception
, 16(1):49–59.

5
Joe Baker (York University) and Jörg Schorer (University of Muenster) taught me about reaction speed and gave me an occlusion test in which I had to tend a virtual goal against female professional handball players. My results can be inferred from the original chapter 1 title in a first draft of this book:
Beat by a Digital Girl.

5
For anyone who has ever been told, “Keep your eye on the ball”: Bahill, Terry A., and Tom LaRitz (1984). “Why Can’t Batters Keep Their Eyes on the Ball?”
American Scientist
, May–June.

6
A sampling of Janet Starkes’s work on perceptual expertise and simple reaction time:

Starkes, J. L., and J. Deakin (1984). “Perception in Sport: A Cognitive Approach to Skilled Performance.” In W. F. Straub and J. M. Williams, eds.
Cognitive Sports Psychology,
115–28. Sport Science Intl.

Starkes, J. L. (1987). “Skill in Field Hockey: The Nature of the Cognitive Advantage.”
Journal of Sport Psychology,
9:146–60.

8
De Groot’s experiments that laid the foundation for the study of chess expertise:

de Groot, A. D.
Thought and Choice in Chess
. Amsterdam University Press, 2008.

10
Chase and Simon’s chunking theory of chess expertise: Chase, William G., and Herbert A. Simon (1973). “Perception in Chess.”
Cognitive Psychology
, (4):55–81.

11
Some of the innovative occlusion work by Bruce Abernethy and colleagues: Abernethy, B., et al. (2008). “Expertise and Attunement to Kinematic Constraints.”
Perception,
37(6):931–48.

Mann, David L., et al. (2010). “An Event-Related Visual Occlusion Method for Examining Anticipatory Skill in Natural Interceptive Tasks.”
Behavior Research Methods
, 42(2):556–62.

Muller, S., et al. (2006). “How do World-Class Cricket Batsmen Anticipate a Bowler’s Intention?”
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,
59(10):2162–86.

12
The visual reaction speed of Muhammad Ali, and how Ali’s test results were initially misportrayed:

Kamin, Leon J., and Sharon Grant-Henry (1987). “Reaction Time, Race, and Racism.”
Intelligence
, 11:299–304.

12
The perceptual expertise of basketball rebounding:

Aglioti, Salvatore M., et al. (2008). “Action Anticipation and Motor Resonance in Elite Basketball Players.”
Nature Neuroscience,
11(9):1109–16.

13
Psychologist Richard Abrams provided several of the results of Washington University’s 2006 testing of Pujols: http://news.wustl.edu/news/pages/7535.aspx.

13
Detailed background on the study of skill expertise in sports:

Starkes, Janet L., and K. Anders Ericsson, eds.
Expert Performance in Sports: Advances in Research in Sport Expertise.
Human Kinetics, 2003.

13
Practice at a specific task changes the brain and leads to automation:

Duerden, Emma G., and Danièle Laverdure-Dupont (2008). “Practice Makes Cortex.”
The Journal of Neuroscience,
28(35):8655–57.

Squire, Larry, and Eric Kandel.
Memory: From Mind to Molecules
(chap. 9). Macmillan, 2000.

Van Raalten, Tamar R., et al. (2008). “Practice Induces Function-Specific Changes in Brain Activity.”
PLoS ONE
, 3(10):e3270.

13
Familiarity with a familiar mode of exercise influences brain activity. A study of interest:

Brümmer, V., et al. (2001). “Brain Cortical Activity Is Influenced by Exercise Mode and Intensity.”
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise,
43(10):1863–72.

14
The best primer on the modern study of expertise, from chess to surgery to writing, with emphasis on “software”:

Ericsson, K. Anders, et al., eds.
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

2

A Tale of Two High Jumpers

(Or: 10,000 Hours Plus or Minus 10,000 Hours)

18
Dan McLaughlin’s progress can be followed at: thedanplan.com.

21
Numerous chess studies by Campitelli and/or Gobet were used in reporting, but these were the most central:

Campitelli, Guillermo, and Fernand Gobet (2008). “The Role of Practice in Chess: A Longitudinal Study.”
Learning and Individual Differences,
18(4):446–58.

Gobet, F., and G. Campitelli (2007). “The Role of Domain-Specific Practice, Handedness, and Starting Age in Chess.”
Developmental Psychology,
43(1):159–72.

Gobet, Fernand, and Herbert A. Simon (2000). “Five Seconds or Sixty? Presentation Time in Expert Memory.”
Cognitive Science,
24(4):651–82.

22
The paper in which K. Anders Ericsson writes that Gladwell “misconstrued” his conclusion:

Ericsson, K. Anders (2012). “Training History, Deliberate Practise and Elite Sports Performance: An Analysis in Response to Tucker and Collins Review—What Makes Champions?”
British Journal of Sports Medicine,
Oct. 30 (ePub ahead of print).

23
Holm’s personal Web site (scholm.com) is a testament to a lifelong obsession with high jump (and Legos).

29
Photos of Thomas’s first competition (in baggy shorts) are preserved here:

http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=7161&sid=e68562cf62585697482f1ec91c086165.

29
Most details come from Thomas himself and competition records, but the quote by Thomas’s cousin that Thomas “doesn’t know that a track goes around in a circle,” and Clayton’s “didn’t know how to warm up” quote both originally appeared in a 2007 press release issued by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association titled: “An Improbable Leap into the Limelight.”

31
YouTube has video of Thomas’s world championship win:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzmPtZyuo4s.

32
Johnny Holm’s “buffoon” quote appeared in the Swedish publication
Sport Expressen
on August 30, 2007. It can be found here:

http://www.expressen.se/sport/friidrott/han-ar-en-javla-pajas/.

32
The NHK documentary on Holm and Thomas—the title roughly translates to “Inside the Top Athlete’s Body”—is brilliant.

33
A good example of the tremendous range of practice hours accumulated by competitors of similar ability:

Baker, Joseph, Jean Côté, and Janice Deakin (2005). “Expertise in Ultra-Endurance Triathletes: Early Sport Improvement, Training Structure, and the Theory of Deliberate Practice.”
Journal of Applied Sport Psychology,
17:64–78.

34
Among papers that chronicle the number of practice hours that elite athletes accumulate:

Baker, Joseph, Jean Côté, and Bruce Abernethy (2003). “Sport-Specific Practice and the Development of Expert Decision-Making in Team Ball Sports.”
Journal of Applied Sport Psychology,
15:12–25.

Helsen, W. F., J. L. Starkes, and N. J. Hodges (1998). “Team Sports and the Theory of Deliberate Practice.”
Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology
, 20:12–34.

Hodges, N. J., and J. L. Starkes (1996). “Wrestling with the Nature of Expertise: A Sport Specific Test of Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) theory of ‘deliberate practice.’”
International Journal of Sport Psychology
, 27:400–24.

Williams, Mark A., and Nicola J. Hodges, eds.
Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory and Practice
(chap. 11)
.
Routledge, 2004.

34
On the 28 percent of Australian athletes who reached the international level after only four years:

Bullock, Nicola, et al. (2009). “Talent Identification and Deliberate Programming in Skeleton: Ice Novice to Winter Olympian in 14 Months.”
Journal of Sports Sciences
, 27(4):397–404.

Oldenziel, K., F. Gagne, and J. P. Gulbin (2004). “Factors Affecting the Rate of Athlete Development from Novice to Senior Elite: How Applicable Is the 10-Year Rule?” Pre-Olympic Congress, Athens. (Summary here: http://cev.org.br/biblioteca/factors-affecting-the-rate-of-athlete-development-from-novice-to-senior-elite-how-applicable-is-the-10-year-rule/.)

35
Thorndike, Edward L. (1908). “The Effect of Practice in the Case of a Purely Intellectual Function.”
American Journal of Psychology
, 19:374–384.

37
Even in darts, accumulated practice explains a small portion of variance in performance after fifteen years:

Duffy, Linda J., Bahman Baluch, and K. Anders Ericsson (2004). “Dart Performance as a Function of Facets of Practice Amongst Professional and Amateur Men and Women Players.”
International Journal of Sport Psychology,
35:232–45.

3

Major League Vision and the Greatest Child Athlete Sample Ever

The Hardware
and
Software Paradigm

38
Rosenbaum recounts some of his Dodgers work in his book
Beware of GUS: Government-University Symbiosis.
Lulu.com, 2010.

39
The main paper with data from the Dodgers (Daniel M. Laby kindly provided additional data):

Laby, Daniel M., et al. (1996). “The Visual Function of Professional Baseball Players.”
American Journal of Ophthalmology
, 122:476–85.

39
The theoretical limit of human visual acuity:

Applegate, Raymond A. (2000). “Limits to Vision: Can We Do Better Than Nature?”
Journal of Refractive Surgery
, 16: S547–51.

39
On the range of human cone density:

Curcio, Christine A., et al. (1990). “Human Photoreceptor Topography.”
Journal of Comparative Neurology
, 292:497–523.

40
Piazza picked as a favor to his father:

Whiteside, Kelly. “A Piazza with Everything.”
Sports Illustrated
, July 5, 1993.

40
The China and India vision studies:

Nangia, Vinay, et al. (2011). “Visual Acuity and Associated Factors: The Central India Eye and Medical Study.”
PLoS ONE
, 6(7):e22756. Xu, L., et al. (2005). “Visual Acuity in Northern China in an Urban and Rural Population: The Beijing Eye Study.”
British Journal of Ophthalmology
, 89:1089–93.

40
Studies of visual acuity in young people, including Swedish teenagers:

Frisén, L., and M. Frisén (1981). “How Good Is Normal Visual Acuity? A Study of Letter Acuity Thresholds as a Function of Age.”
Albrecht von Graefes Archiv für klinische und experimentelle Ophthalmologie
, 215(3):149–57.

Ohlsson, Josefin, and Gerardo Villarreal (2005). “Normal Visual Acuity in 17–18 Year Olds.”
Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavia
, 83:487–91.

41
As a group, hitters begin to decline at age twenty-nine: