“My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
A friend and training mentor once told me, “The secret of the pros is that they train in secret.” For a while that made sense. It seemed that where performance is highly optimized — and where optimization is highly coveted — it would make sense that methodology would be closely guarded.
But secret methodology is the province of world-class athletes; not of participants; nor of enthusiasts. Most people — if sufficiently motivated, and if unencumbered by lame excuses that they assign to genetics — want to know the secret that distinguishes the pros from themselves. The real “secret” of the fit, the fast and the “talented” is no secret at all; it’s a much harder pill (than genetics) to swallow. And no one will accept it because of what it demands: real commitment in the form of regular, consistent, indefinite practice. And real practice demands devotion.
THE PROS TRAIN. And they train consistently and indefinitely. In other words, they commit.
People love to say that they don’t train (or practice or study…) They think it makes their mediocre performance more impressive. Or they use a hero as an example, saying he or she doesn’t practice either. But the truth is that anyone who becomes really world-class good at anything has devoted a large part of their lives to that thing — often to the exclusion of all else. They may not call it “training” or “practice;” the actual labels are irrelevant. It’s the time spent that counts.
“Practice” and “training” are not timelines and diet plans — although those are effective parts of it. Real training means committing to the process: showing up at the keyboard or behind the lens or in the ring or on the rope, and doing it religiously, even when you’re tired, even when you’ve got nothing to say, even when it’s too cold, too hot, too hard.
People wish they had talent. They see it as a practice-free ticket to crowd-stunning skill. But talent doesn’t exist. “Talent” doesn’t get results; practice and devotion do.
Was Picasso gifted from birth with the talent to become an artistic genius? Or was he gifted with the tenacity to become a genius at anything? As he wobbled down the street on his first bicycle, did his mother see her son’s uncommon ability, or his uncommon focus and determination? What led her to predict that he would be great? Was he out-of-the-womb a brilliant finger-painter? Or was he just stubborn?
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The Talent Myth has also been posted here.
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All too true. Famous climbers and training:
– we are always impressed by Peter Croft and Dean Potter’s amazing free-solos and long link ups. What you don’t hear about is how Croft regularly has thirty and forty pitch alpine days (climbing easy ground, mid-10s and more often below), on routes that for most rock climbers are really very moderate. Potter does much the same. This base training is esssential, and a whole lot less glamorous or interesting than putting up 5.13 routes ground up, or freeesoling 12s.
– Lance Armstrong’s Tour seasons featured two and three hundred kilometer base days from September into December (six days a week), followed by hundreds and hundreds of hours of riding hills and doing accelerations. Incredibly boring and repetitive. And all so that, for about four hours during an 85 hour Tour, he can drop the hammer on his opponents. It’s weird– a year of training for four hours of performance.
A great example of this is the late Guy Edwards. Long before I met Guy I had heard about the talent and accomplishments that he possessed in the art of climbing mountains. A good friend of his mentioned how “Guy does not train, he climbs”. I
Guy was the the person that all the “best climbers” thought had the natural talent.
After meeting Guy and spending some time with him it became pretty obvious why he excelled. Guy did not ‘train’. Guy loved climbing mountains, all parts of them. Guy had a love far greater than any of the highly sponsored, heralded, cover-boy alpinists I have ever met. Perhaps a true, honest, uninhibited love for something is the true key behind hidden talent.
I've read this before through Gym Jones. I just re-read it again today. What inspirational truth. I just started a fitness blog and I'd like to share this in it. I've read your permissions page and have provided the hyperlink back to this page.
Love the essay and the comments, Scott.
In line with the other comments on the great climbers and Lance Armstrong: Jerry Rice was well known for following a conditioning regimen that went way, way beyond everybody else’s. He looked fluid and “natural” on the field, but his running sessions in the off-season were so strenuous that other NFLers who tried to work out with him would typically finish either zero or one of his workouts, then never come back. The sprint intervals, accelerators, cone drills, catching drills, and mountain runs added up to too much punishment for them. (And then came the afternoon session, which was for lifting weights.)
Meanwhile, Rice completed workouts at that level six days a week, every single week without exception, throughout every off-season. His baseline level of work was just a lot higher than others were willing to contemplate.
@Norvin: Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. Big thanks also for the link back to the site. Cheers!
Very much welcome. I just had a friend read it over the phone and she was confused by 'unemcumbered' since I practically just copy-pasted what you wrote. Mind if I correct that spelling typo bit in my blog repost? I'm a freak that way. Cheers!