“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them” – 1 Corinthians 12:4
In Chapters 7 and 8, we looked at athlete profiling, i.e. the often vast differences between athletes among different physiological and morphological qualities. The Bible says that God created us all different, unique and wonderfully made, and I must say, as a physiologist who has looked at the physiological composition of many, many athletes over many years, truer words were never spoken!
It is a sad fact that too few athletes give these differences a lot of thought. While there is certainly an important element of doing what’s fun, most people – young and old, tend to find being inherently good at something fun and, while accruing all kinds of experiences, as young athletes, it is smart to keep a running tally of those experiences that led to favorable outcomes vs those experiences that did not, and, perhaps, to progressively head in the general direction of more positive athletic experiences.
Tweet 17.1: Horses for Courses
As Canova’s quote implies, the event that the individual is best suited to is less a matter of the specific training done towards that event and more a matter of training the individual optimally and seeing which strengths surface. And, this approach is not new, it has been practiced in many successful squads throughout history with many of the greatest coaches of all time. One in particular comes to mind…
Tweet 17.2: Same squad, same training, very different athletes!
You will remember in chapter 14 we profiled Master Coach, Arthur Lydiard and some of his top runners - 800m Olympic Champ, Peter Snell, 5,000m Olympic Champ, Murray Halberg, and Olympic Marathon Bronze Medallist, Barry Magee.
Master Coach, Arthur Lydiard with freshly crowned 800m World Record Holder, Peter Snell |GB2FB1 | s&g | Alamy
All men belonged to the same squad and all trained together, and similarly, for a large part of the year. As Lydiard, states[i], it wasn’t the training that determined the event that the athlete would race in, but rather their natural speed…
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