Athleticism- trainable or inborn?

Mark E Dixon wrote: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6) I'm sure many of us appreciate your comments, when you have time to weigh in. And thanks for inspiring me to look up the entire "pearls before swine" quote.

Thanks, Mark, very appreciated!!! Sometimes it feels like contributing to the Proj is a just a big ole tear-to-pieces waiting to happen.

slim wrote: soooo, you're sayng lebron would look like urkel? there are so many things in this post that are in left field it is hard to even address all of them. first, i have known a bunch of people who never did anything remotely physical, yet were insanely strong. in general, you could instantly tell by looking at them they were strong as a brick shithouse. but, there were also a few head scratchers that were frail and still strong as a brick shithouse. i have also known a bunch of people (myself included) who spent a LOT of time working really really hard to almost have average strength. these folks generally looked like what you would expect, but there were also a few folks that i knew who weren't nearly as strong as they 'should' have been. second, who said anything about a sturdy person as having wide hips and small shoulders (???? this is a total baffler here...). i think your misconception of the somatypes is part of the problem. i didn't agree with anything you said back in your somatypes post, it was just so so out of touch with reality (starting with type 1 being the best body builder). i would 'generally' equate people with small hips and broad shoulders with power, which i would 'generally' equate with elevated athleticism, which shockingly is pretty consistent with the 'general' elite athlete population for most sports. obviously there will be exceptions to this. there always are. third, i don't agree that strength is just extended power. at all. have you ever seen steve hong climb? if you ever do, you will realize this math just doesn't compute. honestly, your take on all of it is so all over the map that, it almost makes a circle, yet never really comes full circle. i actually find it kind of fascinating.

The only thing you have truly right IMO is the bolded bit. Wider shoulders denotes ancestral access to plentiful resources, and thus correlates with a high metabolism, and as such correlates with athleticism regardless of whether the person is thickly or thinly built. What I think you are missing is the fact that animals such as birds are light and powerful, and animals such as bears are sturdy and strong, and their musculature (red vs. white meat, so nutrient rich vs. nerve-packed) is a general principle: light and powerful or strong and sturdy are two reliable designs, or heuristics, in nature. This is why I argue many athletes with a lighter bone structure, namely the ones like myself who have to work at it a little more, would be (even more so) skinny guys with no training: a light bone structure and fast twitch muscle which does not necessitate the same size to be as strong in a brief encounter as a larger individual. Look at a guy like Usain Bolts bone structure and you can see it is fine for a larger guy. Lebron James is a bit thicker built on the other hand, but again he is not that thick all in all: remember volume, and therefore weight, does not scale linearly with height. Also keep in mind a BIG part of those guys jobs is loading on high performance muscle.

I think your main misconception is that you don't seem to understand I am talking averages, and averages with wide distributions at that. As such, again, your counterexamples don't mean much, especially considering your describing a population of outliers. Remember, in this context 'extremely strong' refers to world-class athleticism (not saying I count myself in that category, just for clarity: the limits I pushed were locally existent), as opposed to strong compared to your self-described much less than average strength.

Nivel Egres wrote: A nice review of testing for proprioception (aka body awareness)

Thanks for the reference. It's a little on the technical side regarding the specifics of proprioceptive testing, at least for my purposes.

But amongst it's references are quite a few interesting papers, including this one-

researchgate.net/publicatio…

Conclusions:Proprioceptive acuity is significantly associated with the performance level achieved by sports elites. The amount of improvement in proprioceptive acuity associated with sport-specific training may be constrained by biologically determined factors.

It is inborn. No doubt in my mind. I grew up being very athletic. I was one of the best at everything. But about 7 years ago I suddenly lost my balance and stumbled around like a drunk for almost a year. I've been working on it for years and I'm climbing and hiking again.
It has occurred to me that I should not have teased the awkward guy in gym class because I suddenly became that guy. Now looking back I think they were actually trying very hard but their talent was quite modest as mine is now.

Here's another article on the side of inborn.

Can proprioception really be improved
by exercises?

www1.udel.edu/PT/MCJC/Ashto…

The present study examined whether targeted exercises
improve proprioception. Our results show little evidence
to support such a contention and suggest that the appropriate
experiments remain to be conducted.