Train in athletics long enough and you will most likely hear the quote “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” Seems pretty straight forward. But what about when talent does work hard? Does that talent off set the balance and allow the more “talented” athlete to prove superior? Or what if we take natural talent out? Would that imply that maybe this hard work results in talent? What is seemingly a simple concept turns complex quite quickly depending on your definition of talent, hard work, and success. In this article, I plan to dive deep into what hard work vs talent can accumulate in and whether there is a threshold at which hard work will beat talent.
While the nature vs. nurture is an argument for another time, one thing we can all agree on is that there are talented individuals out there that seem to excel at certain sports. Now these individuals have the ability to stand out in their chosen sport. Now, keeping everyone at an equal level of effort, I think it is quite simple to state that those of us that are gifted with talent will come out as the victors more often than not. Now you can argue that we see this in youth sports. It’s hard to distinguish when a child is excelling due to added effort in the domain of practice (although this is arguable in itself). However, for the most part, just about all kids hate practicing and drilling, but love to play the game and scrimmage. In this regard, we are going to make an assumption that this can relatively equalize the hard work variable among children in the same level of play (i.e. rep, house league, etc.).
Yet, the older the athlete becomes, the more we see athletes taking practice into their own hands. Whether this is an innate desire, or a concept of delayed gratification is passed the scope of this article, so let’s keep the psychology out of it for the mean time. But it is absolutely seen that as an athlete progresses and starts to envision a grander goal, they begin to take on extra practice outside of the team scheduled practice. Now, we can get to the good stuff. In the realm of soccer, it has come to light that Lionel Messi would practice without his coach having to tell him to work on things. Even if the coach did mention something, Messi would take it upon himself to improve on it outside the domain of organized drills. For some more insight into Messi, and his background, check out The Coaching Manual Podcast Episode 4 with Guillem Balague.
Well, we have all seen what Messi has turned into, he is a superstar. Yet, without all that hard work, do you think he would be where he is today? I, for one, would argue no. The talent pool and effort put in by these players is too deep for someone to rely simply on natural talent these days. So, with that settled, let’s get to the hard work principle.
Yes, I would be hard pressed to argue that talent level is not different among different people. This is simply reality. However, hard work is one thing that is in our control. With that said, lets return to the quote, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” Here is where a little bit of faith comes in. I believe that with enough hard work, we can self-generate our own talent. That being said, hard work is also something that is not genetically determined. With these two things in mind, I present my opinion. With enough hard work, you can overcome anyone with talent. Yet here is the tricky thing. Talent is almost like a hard work multiplier. The more talent you have, the more beneficial hard work is. Cyclically, the more hard work you put in, the more talent you develop. And, we have already stated that the talent starting point is out of our control, and is built by hard work. So, our variable to alter is this hard work. Think of it in terms of an equation:
Hard work + talent = success
Hard work + number of training sessions = talent
Therefore, Hard work + hard work + number of training session = success.
Now, before anyone decides to go crazy on the number of training sessions variable, let’s just say there is a dose-response relationship that does rely on genetic composition, so this doesn’t always necessarily mean more is better (I’m saving dose-response on athletic performance for another article). So again, we see our only variable capable of manipulation is hard work. So, let us further quantify and simplify. We get at the end, hard work = success. So now, how do we maximize success? By maximizing hard work. At the end of the day, you get what you put in and that leads me to personally believe that it is hard work that determines winners. It’s those who are willing to practice and drill when they don’t want to, or study when others aren’t that end up being successful and attaining their goals. The question “How bad do you want it?” always applies, because it is the extra effort you put in when you can that often makes the difference between failure and success.
You can’t rely on your initial talent. Realistically, genetics aren’t fair. Many of us know this already by being diagnosed with a genetically initiated disease. So why would anyone worry about your initial natural talent. This is out of your control, so throw that stress away. Real talent, and real success will come with the hard work you put in. Yes, it will be hard at first. Yes, it’s true, you won’t always win, especially in the beginning. But that’s when you need to be stubborn and keep showing up, keep putting in work, keep believing in yourself, and force that talent to materialize within in. With hard work comes talent, and with talent and even more hard work comes success. With that said, never underestimate the power of hard work.
NOTE: The image associated with this post is not my own, it was found via a post on facebook by Conor McGregor's trainer John Kavanagh.
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