The Sports Gene

Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

By: David Epstein

Narrated by: David Epstein

Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins

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.

©2013 David Epstein (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"Step by surprising step, David Epstein takes our hand, grips our mind, and leads us deeper and deeper into the fascinating jungle of sports and genetics... until we finally begin to see the miracle we've been watching in our stadiums and on our TV screens all our lives.” (Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated writer and four-time National Magazine Award winner)

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!

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.

Very interesting

Great stories of exceptional athletes. Pretty in depth on science but still good. Enjoyed this book.

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.

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.

fascinating

the science behind the physical advantages and disadvantages of humans beings is discussed in this book. I enjoyed it very much.

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.

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!

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.

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.