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The Sports Gene
- Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
- Narrated by: David Epstein
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
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Publisher's summary
"In high school, I wondered whether the Jamaican Americans who made our track team so successful might carry some special speed gene from their tiny island. In college, I ran against Kenyans, and wondered whether endurance genes might have traveled with them from East Africa. At the same time, I began to notice that a training group on my team could consist of five men who run next to one another, stride for stride, day after day, and nonetheless turn out five entirely different runners. How could this be?"
We all knew a star athlete in high school. The one who made it look so easy. He was the starting quarterback and shortstop; she was the all-state point guard and high-jumper. Naturals. Or were they? The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture. In the decade since the sequencing of the human genome, researchers have slowly begun to uncover how the relationship between biological endowments and a competitor’s training environment affects athleticism. Sports scientists have gradually entered the era of modern genetic research. In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle.
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- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Jordan credits George Mumford with transforming his on-court leadership of the Bulls, helping Jordan lead the team to six NBA championships. Mumford also helped Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom and countless other NBA players turn around their games. A widely respected public speaker and coach, Mumford is sharing his own story and the strategies that have made these athletes into stars in The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance.
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For the athlete to learn mindfulness....
- By Amazon Customer on 06-27-17
By: George Mumford, and others
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Why We Swim
- By: Bonnie Tsui
- Narrated by: Angie Kane
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now in the 21st century, we swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. Swimming is an introspective and silent sport in a chaotic and noisy age; it’s therapeutic for both the mind and body; and it's an adventurous way to get from point A to point B. It's also one route to that elusive, ecstatic state of flow.
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Sublime Swimming
- By Jason on 05-22-20
By: Bonnie Tsui
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Conscious Coaching: The Art and Science of Building Buy-In
- By: Brett Bartholomew
- Narrated by: K Foster
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In the world of strength and conditioning, learning how to move others not just physically, but also psychologically and emotionally is paramount to getting the most out of them. People are the ultimate performance variable, and understanding how to effectively blend knowledge of proper training with the nuances of human behavior is integral to helping athletes achieve their ultimate goals. Unfortunately, while much attention has been given to the science of physical training, little attention has been given to the science of communication.
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Narration was distracting.
- By 4-Pack on 01-24-18
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The Confident Mind
- A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance
- By: Dr. Nate Zinsser
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Nate Zinsser has spent his career training the minds of the U.S. Military Academy’s cadets as they prepare to lead and perform when the stakes are the very highest—on the battlefield. Alongside this work, he has coached world-class athletes including a Super Bowl MVP, numerous Olympic medalists, professional ballerinas, NHL All-Stars, and college All-Americans, teaching them to overcome pressure and succeed on the biggest stages.
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Redundant and uninsightful
- By Chris Rogers on 06-06-23
By: Dr. Nate Zinsser
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Mind Gym
- An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence
- By: Gary Mack, David Casstevens
- Narrated by: Kevin Young
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Noted sports psychology consultant Gary Mack explains how your mind influences your performance on the field or on the court as much as your physical skill does, if not more so. Through 40 accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes from prominent athletes—many of whom he has worked with—you will learn the same techniques and exercises Mack uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle". Mind Gym will give you the "head edge" over the competition.
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A Stream of Trite Cliches
- By Blake on 05-12-23
By: Gary Mack, and others
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The Science of Running
- How to Find Your Limit and Train to Maximize Your Performance
- By: Steve Magness
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Science of Running, elite coach and exercise physiologist Steve Magness integrates the latest research with the training processes of the world's best runners, to deliver an in depth look at how to maximize your performance. It is a unique book that conquers both the scientific and practical points of running in two different sections. The first is aimed at identifying what limits running performance from a scientific standpoint. In section two, we turn to the practical application of this information and focus on the process of training to achieve your goals.
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Awesome insights
- By alterbreaker21 on 11-12-20
By: Steve Magness
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How Champions Think
- In Sports and in Life
- By: Dr. Bob Rotella
- Narrated by: Dr. Bob Rotella
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From best-selling author Bob Rotella, America's preeminent sports psychologist, a groundbreaking guide to success in all aspects of life - not just sports - from business to relationships to personal challenges of every variety.
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A good purchase.
- By H. Peterson on 04-24-19
By: Dr. Bob Rotella
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Why Buddhism Is True
- The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of America's greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. In Why Buddhism Is True, Wright leads listeners on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age.
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Clear Explanation of How the Mind Works
- By George on 08-10-17
By: Robert Wright
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Why We Sleep
- Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
- By: Matthew Walker
- Narrated by: Steve West
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don't sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life - eating, drinking, and reproducing - the purpose of sleep remained elusive.
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I recommend this to EVERYONE
- By meggiemine on 12-11-17
By: Matthew Walker
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Do Hard Things
- Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness
- By: Steve Magness
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Toughness has long been held as the key to overcoming a challenge and achieving greatness, whether it is on the sports field, at a boardroom, or at the dining room table. Yet, the prevailing model has promoted a mentality based on fear, false bravado, and hiding any sign of weakness. In other words, the old model of toughness has failed us. Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, rebuilds our broken model of resilience with one grounded in the latest science and psychology
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Starts alright, but ends up going nowhere
- By Joseph G. Chernowski on 08-11-22
By: Steve Magness
What listeners say about The Sports Gene
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- CBlox
- 09-09-13
5 stars for a reason! Best non-fiction of 2013
Regardless if you interested in sports writing or not this book can be enjoyed by all lovers of non-fiction. Written in the same style of Outliers and Freakonomics David Epstein takes the listener down the road of ultra-athletes, bio-genetics, and nature vs. nurture. Im very impressed with the way he waded into the complicated waters of race and genetics in sports.
You'll be hooked and wont want it to end.
Well done David Epstein!
He also nailed the narration!
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9 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 08-08-13
Perfect for anybody who has ever been an athlete!
What made the experience of listening to The Sports Gene the most enjoyable?
Well constructed and narrated, this book systematically examines stereotypes about athletes and training using data from research studies. As a runner, I easily related to the anecdotes Epstein wrote.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Sports Gene?
I particularly enjoyed the explanation and examination of the "10,000 hour rule" of training.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Ryan
- 06-29-16
Very interesting
Great stories of exceptional athletes. Pretty in depth on science but still good. Enjoyed this book.
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- ybd
- 10-28-16
DNA matters! It matters in sports. It matters in many other aspects of human endeavor.
Cheers to Mr. Epstein. Having the courage to tackle such a taboo subject.
Natural selection is not dead. Evolutionary biology continues to surprise us.
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- Larry Hinman
- 08-21-19
Incredibly interesting
This book is packed full of fascinating detail that has, I think, Been the result of the authors careful sifting of a very extensive literature. Well worth reading, or listening to, more than once. I just returned to it after reading Epstein’s latest book called Range, which is even better.
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- flo pag
- 08-29-18
fascinating
the science behind the physical advantages and disadvantages of humans beings is discussed in this book. I enjoyed it very much.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-20-20
Nature vs Nuture? Or both??
Any athlete, or person interested in athletics, will find this book very interesting. Learning about athlete development, and even stories about specific athletes, was beneficial to my own training, nutritional, and exercise habits.
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- Mary
- 07-30-14
LOVE THIS BOOK!
Any additional comments?
I am not a scientist nor an athlete, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommended to or bought for all my friends and family!
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- LongerILiveLessIKnow
- 02-20-14
Practice makes perfect?
When I read Outliers, I thought Malcolm Gladwell oversold his “10,000 hour” thesis. That is, in critiquing our culture’s emphasis on innate talent, he immediately swung too far the other way, overemphasizing deliberate practice. He hinted (or contended?), for example, that the apparent genius of Tiger Woods or Mozart is in fact primarily a function of their incredibly early start on the competition… An intriguing thesis, for sure, but maybe only because it flies in the face of an obvious and contrary reality.
Epstein has the empirical data that shows the extent to which Gladwell oversold his thesis at least with respect to certain athletic endeavors. At the elite level of athletic performance, genetics often matters. For example, Epstein tells us that a male between the ages of 20 and 40 who is 7 feet or taller has something like a 16% chance of being a current NBA player. That undercuts Gladwell’s contrary and offhand assertion in Outliers that once a person achieves a threshold height, say 6’4”, additional height matters less and less, and practice more and more. Epstein explores the genetic link in dozens of different sports.
While I think Gladwell got it wrong that genius is practically nothing more than years upon years of smart practice, I think he got it right as a formula for being pretty darn good. While I may not have the ingredients to become the best of the best at anything, through sheer force of will and effort, I believe I can become workman-like at almost anything at all. To me, that’s empowering. As much as I didn’t like Kaufman’s “The First 20 Hours,” his core message is similarly empowering – it doesn’t take as much time as you may think to achieve a level of enjoyable competence.
(There’s a tricky counter-point towards the end of the book where Epstein suggests that even one’s appetite for practice and ability to improve through it may have a genetic component. That proposition is worth a double take – your propensity for hard work necessary to overcome your genetic shortcomings may itself be genetically driven.)
Dan McLaughlin, aka “The Dan Plan,” discussed in the Sports Gene, is perhaps the living embodiment of my thoughts on this subject. In his early thirties, he quit his job and took up golf, setting a goal of making the PGA tour after he accomplished 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. On the one hand, his goal is patently ridiculous because it naively discounts the importance of talent and age. But on the other hand, 5000+ hours in, McLaughlin’s a good golfer by amateur standards (a 4 handicap). And he’s garnered enough attention and money(?) so that he can play golf full time. He’s living proof that hard work can take you to great heights, even if it won’t take you to the peak by itself.
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- James
- 10-20-13
Brilliantly researched and narrated.
Ever since I started competing in Track and Field, as far back as freshman year in High School, I was always fascinated with athletic performance, and what contributed to an elite athlete’s athletic performance.
This book finally cleared up that mystery. The answer - no surprise - is a combination of Nature and Nurture - one needs to have the right genetics (i.e. ‘hardware’), to be able to respond to training, but also the right ‘software’ (i.e. the training itself).
Here are a few factoids from the book that I found especially facinating:
the single best predictor of a major league hitters batting average is not reaction time but visual acuity. A study of this comparing batting averages of elite players (even as far back as Ted Williams) all had eyesight around 20/10 - some with score of 20/8 - approaching the biological limit of human sight. This allowed the players to not only see the type of pitch being thrown in the 1/16th of a second it takes to leave the pitchers hand - but gave them the ability to mentally process this information in milliseconds, based on subconsciously viewing the the ball’s trajectory, spin and pitchers’ shoulder (i.e. they had the hardware (eyesight) but the software part (thousands of hours of batting practice) imprinted these patterns on their brain.
A study of Kenyan marathon runners (some of the best distance runners in the world) found NO difference in Vo2 MAX, hemoglobin levels or other physical trains when compared to european runners. What made Kenyans so great? For any given size Kenyans evolved with very narrow leg bones, which made their legs 1-2 lbs lighter than the europeans. A study done showed that even 1/10th of 1lb lighter leg weight contributes to 8% greater running efficiency. That’s why sneaker companies strive to make lighter shoes. Kenyans have significantly more efficient running as a result. Another factor of the Kenyans is that they train at altitudes of 6,000 - 8,000 feet, which is considered ideal for adaptation to endurance. Lastly, Kenyans have a system whereby all students are required to train for endurance sports - so they have a lot more people to choose from.
What makes a great sprinter - someone with long legs relative to body height, with narrow hips, high concentration of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and a center of gravity that’s 3 cms above the navel. It just so happens that Jamaicans have evolved with this set of physiology - but they also have a structured system whereby they seek out the best of the best and have an elaborate training system when they find athletes with potential.
About 6 in 1,000 people come ‘out of the box’ with elite genes - and this blows away the 10,000 hours rule (a reference to the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell) which states that the average time it takes to become elite - is based on 10,000 of ‘deliberate practice’ - in all fields from music, sports or Chess. Not so. The original study of this had a range from 1,000 hours to 40,000 hours. The book talked about the 2007 world champion high jumper - who literally took up the sport 7 months prior to competing - and his first jump ever (taken on a dare when he was in high school - he cleared 7 feet.
The book gave many more examples and was written in a very eloquent manner.Overall - the book reinforced the point that all people benefit from training. But to be elite, you need to have the right genetic factors specific to the sport AND the right training.
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25 people found this helpful