Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles To be the best athlete, musician, or even gamer, you have to train relentlessly. But to what degree does natural talent come into play? Are some of us just born with a better chance to be the best at what we do? To study this question in sports, scientists have tried subjecting untrained individuals to identical exercise regimes, to see if the same amount of training would lead to varying results. Not so surprisingly, different individuals saw different improvement - some improved in leaps and bounds while others seemed stagnant. But interestingly, individuals who were related by blood saw similar improvements, indicating that their genetics played a role in their athletic potential. If your parent or sibling saw incredible results from training, so would you. These individuals are considered 'high responders' to training. After statistical analysis of endurance, it was determined that 50% of athletic improvement was linked to genetics. In other words, great athletes are born with great genes. With time, scientists have been able to isolate particular sets of genes which they believe are responsible for these traits. High responders have them and experience significant improvement, regardless of how fit they are to start. On the other hand, if your genes deem you a 'low responder' for endurance training, cross-country skiing may not be for you. But even before training, scientists noticed something else; individuals all had different baseline endurance levels as well. Without any training, some individuals were simply more fit than others. It turns out, a different set of genes give some people a higher baseline. In the case of endurance, these genes can code for larger volumes of blood, which are generally only seen in trained athletes. So, you can have a high baseline or high trainability - or both! And it's likely that our greatest athletes train as hard as they can, on top of having some great genetics. It seems that talent is trainable, under the right circumstances. So have you got what it takes to be an Olympic athlete? Science says, you'll never know until you try. Don't forget: we have a new video out every day of the Olympics. Can't wait? Our amazing partners at the CBC already have five of the videos up now for you to binge on. Just head to cbc.ca/olympics/ScienceSays to watch them before anyone else. Link in the description. But we also want to know your questions for this special series. Use the hashtag ScienceSays and let us know your burning olympic questions. And subscribe for more awesome science videos!
B1 training endurance baseline genetics improvement talent Talent vs Training 4214 278 hihi teacher posted on 2014/08/03 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary