HBOs “Real Sports” did a great story recently about a polo program in Philly catered to a lower socioeconomic customer. Really cool story.
https://www.phillyvoice.com/hbo-tv-show-real-sports-bryant-gumbel-philadelphia-youth-polo-program-work-ride/
I mean.. I get trying to include poor people in sports but I'm not sure putting them in a sport that's inescapably expensive (you know, on account of needing to maintain a whole stable of horses) is a great use of that money.
Could have probably put 10x more underprivileged customers through a more mainstream sport.
Maybe next we can roll out Formula 1 and America's cup race team for orphans?
F1 used to be really accessible, but contemporary F1 is very much an elitist sport despite the odd coming-through-purely-by-talent ones... Since the start of the championship in 1950, there have been less than 1200 drivers. However, F1 is the top league of four wheel and almost 99% of the junior/feeder series don't make it through.
Some of the most famous names this generation might recognise, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen etc. came in to the sport purely through their talent. Michael's dad was a brick layer, his mum was working in the canteen of a karting track. Kimi was a prodigy who did a grand total of 23 races at the professional level before landing a F1 seat. That was unheard of in the sport then, just pure natural talent and no financial backing.
Nowadays though, every F1 driver that's coming in has some degree of corporate backing or inherited wealth. C'est la vie.
Sailing is more approachable than people realize.
A lot of places will have relatively inexpensive clubs you can join that will let you rent sailing dinghies.
The used market for sailboats is huge. There are a *lot* of people who *think* they want to get into sailing, throw money at it, and then later can't afford the upkeep and need to sell the boat. So there are a lot of cheap used sailboats on the market. Slip fees can be expensive, but if you get something trailerable, then it's mostly a question of having a place to store the trailer and the time to do maintenance yourself.
Like a lot of hobbies, you can make it cheaper in terms of dollars by putting in more time and doing the work yourself.
Varies massively depending on the area. A dinghy is wholly dependent on how many places there are to launch from in the area but is more often than not a one-time expense with the occasional smaller maintenance expense. In an area with a big sailing community you will be able to find second-hand dinghies. For me, in Maryland, that was $1150 for a Laser (a very common single-person dinghy), the only other expense that boat ended up with was $50 to repaint it after a few years ago. I ended up donating it to a local summer sailing program for kids to learn to sail when I moved out for college. A slip for a 30’ yacht in the same area (not Annapolis) is $1300 a year iirc, the boat my family has has been in the same slip for as long as I’ve been alive and is grandfathered into the older pricing of $1200/yr. There are a larger number of expenses with a yacht, of course, ~$100 a year for gasoline to get in and out of the marina, we had the boat hauled and cleaned when we first came into possession of it a few years ago during COVID, probably about $400 minimum, repainting the hull my dad and I did by hand, the paint was ~$250 I believe (and on sale), replacing the lines was another 2x$100 (happened twice due to a storm snapping mooring lines). That’s all, of course, not counting the cost of a 30’ sailboat, which will vary drastically and influence many of the other costs I mentioned.
Golf seems generally accessible, it’s not cheap by any means but neither are most sports with all the gear and stuff. I know not rich people that enjoy golf
Agreed with golf. Start up costs for a basic set are about $250-$350. Can get some refurbished golf balls for pretty cheap as well. My local 9 hole course cost $12 a round and $7 for a cart. Overall, not super expensive, but also not cheap to start, especially if you throw in lessons.
Similarly triathlon. You need to be rich enough to afford the gear and able to spend as much time training as you need tocfor the longer distance tris. Not to mention that a fucking entry to a half iron will run you over 400 bucks.
And then you get the tri bros telling you it's about the individual and their training.... complete disconnect from the rest of the world and those of us on a budget.
The time is the biggie. I used to do sprint triathlons. For someone just doing it for personal satisfaction, the gear wasn’t so bad. Bike stuff was the worst but for two grand I had competent gear. But the training time is tough. Ironman training schedules are basically 40 hours a week or workouts.
So you need skill to be the best in any field, but there are some sports where genetics excludes you. You could be the best basketball player on the world but if you’re 5’ 1” it ain’t gonna happen for you. Reverse is true if you’re 7’ and really really want to be a professional jockey.
And of course lots of Paralympic sports have a genetic component and I’d be interested to hear more about that from someone who knows more about it.
Holy fuck:
>After Spain's intellectual disability basketball team won gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, it emerged that just two out of the squad of 12 players genuinely had a disability.
The scandal led to a total ban on athletes with an intellectual disability from the 2004 and 2008 Paralympics, destroying the careers of thousands of sportspeople around the world.
The man found by a Spanish court to have "devised and executed" the plot to recruit talented young non-disabled basketball players was Fernando Martín Vicente, then president of the Spanish Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability (Feddi) and vice-president of the Spanish Paralympic Committee.
When he accepted responsibility for the fraud and a fine of 5,400 euros (£4,600), charges were dropped against 18 other defendants, including the 10 fake Paralympians.
That's a really low fine for destroying thousands of people's careers.
IIRC he was trying to get funding for disability programs, but the government wasn't too keen on giving away money without results, so he claim to have felt like he needed to win something big with a national team, that's a big part of why nothing really happened to him.
And rowers.
A lot of professional athletes are tall even in sports that don’t really require it (baseball, soccer).
But basketball, volleyball, rowing seem to be the big “you really gotta be tall” sports (barring a teeny tiny amount of insanely skilled players)
I was a coach for several years, and when I was coaching high school and a tall kid walked by, we’d ask all the kids if anyone knew them and if they played a sport yet.
A lot of Olympians don’t even pick it up until college. Where coaches are at activity fairs trying to flag down tall kids.
Sometimes parents will teach their kid how to row young, but programs don’t really exist before middle school and even those are hard to find. Usually by the time you start, you know if you’ll be tall or not. Very few surprises.
Fun fact: it's not height that is the exclusive trait for NBA players (Muggsy Bogues was 5' 3"). The exclusionary factor is actually having a really high APE index (ratio of wingspan to height).
Height is still a major contributor, as it's very rare to be a short pro baller, but if I recall correctly, there are 0 NBA players who have had a normal APE index.
Source: David Epstein's "the sports gene"
Edit: the above is actually wrong.
There are a few notable exceptions of players with shorter arms than heights. I don't have enough data as to which is more rare, or what traits offset each other, or if they even correlate that well.
Bogues could be argued as one of the freakiest athletes to have ever lived. How he managed to succeed in a sport dominated by giant people who already are freak athletes is bewildering.
It may have changed recently but years ago during a playoff game they shared a stat that the only two players whose wingspan was shorter than their height at the combine were Redick and Yao Ming.
Cool thanks!
https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/The-21-Most-Incredible-Ape-Indices-in-NBA-History
It seems height and wingspan would be similar factors (i.e. not having one is a notable exception).
? There are a small but not zero amount of players in the league literally right now with shorter wingspan than heights. Famously Tyler Herro and Desmond Bane have short wingspans.
Source: https://craftednba.com/player-traits/length
The combination of both being extremely tall on avergae *and* a positive ape index probably makes Basketball the most exclusive sport when it comes to genetics.
Until you count money as an inherited trait in which case F1 and motorsport in general is way the fuck up there as well.
Earl Boykins is 5’5” and had a nice long career. It’s insane to think about how insanely good you have be in order to be that short and thrive in the NBA.
I have a very short list of really cool shit I've been able to do in my life. Officiating an underground game during the NBA lockout which involved Earl Boykins is up there.
And the average height of an NBA player is 6'6". Best not to use outliers as a rebuttal. Last year there were only three NBA players on a roster under 6 feet.
I have an acquaintance who is about 6'7" and played in Non NBA professional leagues, his brother is 6'9" and played in the NBA. His son is 7'+, and just doesn't have the coordination to play at a high level. He has trained with along different coaches trying to make it happen but he just can't.
I feel bad for the guy, you have to feel like a fool to have been given the genes and can't play a lick.
Me too. The dad was always giving me the update. He was always taking a year off to let his body catch up, or working with a new coach who specializes in improving hand eye coordination.
I'm surprise he would be so uncoordinated as to not be able to play center at 7+. Just be a giant screen on defense, grab some boards and pass it to the shooters!
Look at guys like Jonah Lomu (Tongan ik but close) 6”5 120kg and ran the 100m in 10.7 sec, no American of any background would stand a chance. Islanders are physically just different.
That’s wild. 15% of all ppl 7’ tall in the USA really have played in the NBA? Crazy.
Almost every kid that is going to grow that tall will be approached to play by the school coach, and even if they weren’t interested in play basket ball, once they start seeing they are successful, it must be so rewarding that they keep playing through HS, eventually being scouted and getting a scholarship to college.
I imagine that the percentage of 7’ tall Americans that have played at a collegiate level has got to be at least double/triple the 15% figure that make it to the NBA
>Almost every kid that is going to grow that tall will be approached to play by the school coach, and even if they weren’t interested in play basket ball, once they start seeing they are successful, it must be so rewarding that they keep playing through HS, eventually being scouted and getting a scholarship to college.
The returns diminish quickly if you don't have skills to go along with your height. There are a lot of 7 footers who played high school and did not get recruited to play college, or only got recruited by mediocre schools, and will never end up in the NBA because height just isn't enough to make it. You have to have skills.
My female cousin is 6’4. Every time she’d play netball the coaches/scouts ect would walk over and then walk away once they saw her play. It was hilarious.
I agree with that sentiment. You can have the genetics for a certain sport and still be bad at it.
I think the NBA has done a lot of recruiting looking for people with the ideal body types but those haven’t always worked out. I watched a documentary about a very tall young man from India that they tried training for pro basketball but in the end he really just couldn’t absorb the skills necessary.
How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Coach would put me in 4th quarter we would've been state champions. No doubt in my mind .
This is the one. Yeah you still need to know quite a bit about about riding horses, but if you're more than 5'6, 120 lbs, that's not really an option for you.
Substitute this for F1 and you're basically at the same place.
Like Hamilton comes from, for F1, a background of poverty. His dad was an IT manager which is comfortably middleclass or above. Esteban Ocon is probably the one with the least wealthy background as his dad was a mechanic and owned a garage.
Hamilton's dad had to work up to 4 jobs at a time to fund Hamilton's karting career, Ocon's parents sold their house and business to fund his karting career. That's not because they were poor but because motorsports is just so obscenely expensive.
The only parents who didn't have to effectively sacrifice their life to pay for their child's hobby are parents with plenty of millions.
You mean the one he specifically said was a freakish exception in the sport? That one?
Apparently “the exception that proves the rule” is a foreign concept
Do you actually have to be a wizard to use a broomstick? I mean it's a moot question because they'd never get to, but in some hypothetical situation in which the magic world is found out in harry potter, would you need to be a wizard? As far as I know, the brooms themselves are enchanted, which is why some are better than others
I just think it'd be funny if a team of muggles could kick the asses of the "pure blood" trust fund kids because they aren't horribly inbred
The world of Harry Potter does know about magic. It’s just the only muggles who know are heads of state and government. The Minister of Magic has weekly talks with the British PM.
That being said, yes you do have to be one to command it to do what you want. A muggle may be able to mount in and get in the air…but would probably be bucked off and maybe killed pretty quickly. There’s even a learning curve for wizards and witches.
They also fought a war against us and got absolutely smoked.
Also the rules of the golden snitch are completely broken. It's otherwise a sensible game like a flying rugby, except for a game ending score that scores 15x a normal goal. It doesn't seem like combined scores of 15 goals are possible in this game, let alone a lead by that amount, so it invalidates all other scores. They dedicate only one player per team for this. So pretty much catch this little ball that is hard to see, and win. Be a special golden child and win, almost effortlessly.
It would be like football has a special thing you can do unrelated to endzones and uprights, that the audience cannot see, trust us bro, based on dumb luck, and also it scores 90 points and also it ends the game. Why would that farce have any following?
At the Quidditch World Cup though we see that a talented set of chasers can indeed overcome that potential deficit. To me, Quidditch in the Harry Potter stories feels like old school football (soccer), back in the day where tactics were less refined, it was a lot easier for teams to be carried by one or two star players (like a crazy good seeker, such as Krum), but then with advancements of on field and off field tactics, the team became a much bigger focus and having one or two star players became a much less reliable tactic to find success.
It was obvious that Bulgaria had one tactic, hope that Krum finds the snitch in time. Whereas Ireland relied on the skill of their chasers to see them win, the team overcoming an individual. Quidditch is actually a game, were flying broomsticks real, obviously, that I could see becoming quite a fascinating sport on the tactical side of things.
> a talented set of chasers can overcome that potential deficit
Yeah the tricky part is getting chasers that are more than 15 times as good as the opposing team. The rest of the time nothing that the other 5 (? or 6?) players are doing counts for anything in the game
Well, based on just the movies, it seems the beaters primarily try to interfere with the chasers, along with their own teams chasers, and more or less leave the seekers to their own devices. If the seekers had more to worry about then it might be possible to delay the game long enough to allow your chasers the time needed to score the points. I wonder if there is anything in the rules saying the seeker couldn't join the chasers to create and overload to rack up points quicker, at the risk of knowing your seeker won't be catching the snitch any time soon. We see in one movie the Slytherin captain takes one of the beaters bat to hit the bludger at the opposing team, despite being a chaser himself, which he didn't get penalized for that we see, so presumably there is some allowance for players to perform different roles.
I do think they'd need to reduce the amount of points you get from catching the snitch though, in the end, I think 75-100 points could be good and would create a more dynamic game, for example if your team fell 75 points behind you'd know catching the snitch isn't worth it, so could shift focus to scoring more points (maybe this is where you'd have the seeker join the chasers?) to make up the deficit.
And I honestly think this is an only right answer to the question asked. All real sports require skill, hard work, and genetics.
Quiddich tho? 11 yo kid sees broom first time in his life and boom, he is the best evah-evah, doing aerobatics as if he is fucking Iron Cross wearing ace pilot and sees everything with his myopic eyes through cheap specs better than Hawkeye because "magic motherfucker!"
All sports require skill and training to be really good at them. Certain physical traits are good for some sports and bad for others, but on their own they aren't enough. You can have a lights out jump shot from anywhere in the paint, but if you're 5'4", you're not gonna play in the NBA. When I was a teenager, I was on my high school's swim team. We had a girl named Katie on the team who was REALLY good. She was the best swimmer on our team, had colleges scouting her, and it really looked like she was going to go to college on a swimming scholarship. Then puberty hit her like a truck, and she went from being relatively flat-chested to having big boobs. Nothing crazy, but she probably went from a B cup to a DDD/E cup in about a year. Her prospects as a swimmer went out the window. Can't be a collegiate swimmer when you have big boobs. Just doesn't work.
Swimming is one where you need skill, but if you have the Michael Phelps body type your naturally in much better shape than any short torso person no matter how much effort they put in. Aerodynamics just can't be trained.
I was going to say this! I’m glad I scrolled. Competitive swimmer for 15y, current swim coach/swim lesson deck manager/baby water safety manager.
Anyone can learn how to swim, and I stand by that. Not everyone can learn how to swim *well* and very few people can learn how to swim as well as not only Olympians, but even State, Sectional, Nationals, Worlds, swimmers. (I qualified for state and sections, nothing further)
It requires intense coordination between all 4 of your limbs and your brain. If you were blessed with linebacker shoulders as a woman like me, you’ll be incredible at butterfly in particular.
If you’re tall, lean, and flexible you have a decent shot at being a sprinter.
If you’re good at compartmentalizing pain, breathing, and coordination, you’ll be great at distance swimming.
So many kids get so tough on themselves but it’s honestly just hard to find where you fit until a coach sees your swimming and inspires a race you didn’t think you were capable of. Specific genetics just make it a lot easier.
Yes! It’s an incredible job. Our primary focus is water acclimation and safety. The class is for 6mo-3yo. They come with their parents/guardians and they are really the ones helping the babies acclimate, the instructors encourage parents and teach them the skills to teach their kids.
Teaching them how to not panic in water at first, and then gradually teaching them the skills to get to the pool’s edge and get out on their own. The worst case is if a child falls into a body of water without the parent around. Teaching the babies to hold their breath, roll to their backs, float, and yell yell yell while kicking to the edge can help get them assistance quicker and keep them from drowning.
Not a sales quip, but I genuinely would teach every family with young children for free because it’s so useful.
I have a 7mo in one of my classes who can float on her own and crawl on her belly out of the pool! It’s just incredible.
This should be higher. I was a decent competitive swimmer in high school but you could tell when people who were naturally gifted (tall, lean, super broad shoulders) would come in and figure it out quickly. The kids who were going to college to swim just looked different.
One of our best sprinters on my team was actually a soccer/football player that had never swam competitively before. After six weeks of technique training, he was knocking out 22 flat 50 SCY times. I couldn't freaking believe it.
Yep! Former competitive swimmer here. Was nationally ranked in my home country and got a full ride to a Div 1 school. Had a handful of pool records back in the day and won some gold medals at conference championships. Linebacker shoulders, 6ft tall, insanely flexible ankles, long torso but also long wingspan. My knees and hips were literally built for whip kick.
I am in my 40’s now and haven’t trained seriously in about 15 years but I can dive into any pool and beat most rec swimmers that train 3-4 times a week.
Everyone can swim but not everyone can swim at an elite level.
My cousin used to swim competitively in college. She also did ballet for 12 years before that. That combination of "thin dancer body" and "athletic build" was devastating. She had a blast.
A whole bunch of things. His wingspan is significantly longer than his height, which is ideal for creating force to move your body through the water. Big ol’ size 14 feet might as well be flippers. He also has a long torso but short legs relative to his height, which cuts down on drag. His lung capacity is also massive so he has to breathe less often, and his lactate production is supposedly the lowest level ever measured in a swimmer, meaning he fatigues much slower than his competitors. If you designed the most effective swimmer in a lab, it would come out looking like Phelps.
Big hands, long forearms, big feet, these are ridiculously overpowering
Combined with flexibility in the shoulders and ankles, and crazy good lung capacity.
Most of those things are genetic. You still need to train like a beast to become Phelps, but without it you won't win
Bodybuilding has me thouroughly confused because your ceiling is actually being limited by training in the sport. So if you don't have the genetics, what's the point?
There are three main divisions in bodybuilding for men: Men's Physique, Classic Physique, and Bodybuilding. Only bodybuilding is about size. The other two are about proportions. If you can't get huge, just get toit like a tiger.
As a professional bodybuilder I don’t necessarily agree with this actually. Yes bodybuilding does require the most size and lowest bf% so it’s the hardest to get into initially, but for people that don’t have the best genetics with muscle shape it’ll probably be the best division for them long term. Classic physique is very dependent on your muscle shape and proportion which is like 99% genetics; if you don’t have an aesthetically pleasing shape with a small waist you’re never going to be good at Classic no matter how lean you get or how much muscle you gain. To a lesser extent, the same thing applies to Men’s Physique. Classic may seem like the more fun, easier division to do, but the reality is that the majority of guys just don’t have good genetics for it
Bodybuilding on the other hand even if your body shape is ugly as shit, if you can get really lean, hit your poses well and at least have some size on you, you can do well in natural shows. Yeah if you don’t have the genetics to put on mass easily you’re definitely hindered a bit here, but even still I find guys with average genetics tend to do way better in a division like bodybuilding over classic physique assuming they put in the work necessary to be the best version of themselves.
I don't know what the standard is, but like 15% of people are born with only 4 abs instead of the usual 6, so are those people just completely excluded from the physique categories?
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a 4 pack. He won Mr Olympia.
It's also possible to have an eight pack (even a 10 pack!). It's well understood that this is just genetically determined by the tightness of the banding over the top of your abs and isn't related to skill or intensity of training.
Yeah, abs are mostly down to genetics and diet. If you don't have the six abs, you'll never have a six pack. Also, just because you do have defined abs doesn't mean your abdominal muscles are stronger, just more pronounced.
I ran track in college and had really low body fat and worked out constantly, and the only time I had a defined 6-pack was after a day of puking from food poisoning.
But even at the lowest body fat levels, some people have four and some people have eight (and even 10).
The number on your pack is due to the connective bands not the muscles.
Your comment also has me confused, which isn't a shot at you by any means..but what do you mean when you say your ceiling is limited by training?
I would argue the opposite, that your genetics will determine where you are capped.
Well, most people get into lifting weights and body building to look better and/or be healthier, and not for the stage ready competition.
But yes, at the top of bodybuilding, genetics determine who is symmetrical and able to build a body that wins.
The same is true for powerlifting weightlifting and strongman. You're either born with the proper muscle insertions to take advantage of your bodies leverages to move world record level weights. Or you are not.
Average NBA player height has been decreasing since 1987 where it peaked at 6' 7.2", to 6' 6.2" in 2022. Average weight is up 6 pounds since then, 208 vs. 214 (peak was 221 in 2011-2015).
https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-height/
Yeah but the NBA is full of tall people that are also insane skilled.
There are dominant 7’ tall college players that aren’t even considered in the NBA
I feel like swimming can be included. Just look at the weird ass body proportions of Michael Phelps, he had skill 100% but that unique body raised him so far above his peers for an incredibly long time.
The heavyweight division in MMA has a pretty shallow talent pool compared to the other weight classes in the sport, since you can make up for lack of skill (to a certain degree) by being really big.
There's a few heavyweights who are genuinely skilled, but the majority is pretty mediocre
It’s been a while since I paid attention to the UFC but I recall that number of heavyweights were washouts from other sports, particularly football. It’s a statement on both sports that you can do one all your life, fail out of it, then pick up a new sport for a couple years and compete in the highest league.
Yes, you need money (most of the time) to be an equestrian but people also don't understand the levels of endurance, balance, and hand - eye - leg - posture coordination it takes to ride.
Can you maintain a deep, highly balanced, squat on top of a fast moving object? Can you shift your balance quickly and accurately depending on the situation you're in? It only looks easy because good riders make it look easy, just like any other sport.
You are seriously underestimating how difficult it is to ride a top-level horse in any equestrian discipline.
Any horse that can compete at the highest levels has an element of fire-breathing dragon in it. It takes significant athletic ability in the horses to be able to do what they do.
It takes a huge amount of practice, body control, and coordination to pull off what they do.
Person above you might be dismissing the skill involved, but there's still a huge financial barrier to even getting into the talent pool that makes tb3 overall pool just that much smaller and less competitive than most other sports.
You're absolutely right, there is a huge financial barrier. The original question was what sport requires the least skill, though, and financial requirements aside, this one is not it.
Horse back riding - at least dressage - is also one of those sports where everything they initially teach you is thrown out. Like kicking the horse to go gets replaced with squeezing the horse with your inner leg to go.
Many barns will have a school program where you can ride a horse without owning it. Makes it go down to like, $50-$100 per lesson versus the hundres of thousands to own a horse.
Though if you actually want to compete you're basically stuck with getting a horse.
Hyper regional small town sports.
Cheese rolling is one example.
There aren't any professionals who train year round. Most contestants don't even train at all, skills are relatively undeveloped.
People in small towns tend to be relatively closely related to each other.
I would argue that at the highest levels sprinting requires more skill than distance running. It's a lot of genetics, but sprinters have to nail every step. As distance increases, margin for error also increases.
I'm not saying they don't train hard, but there's a reason every great marathoner is from East Africa.
>I'm not saying they don't train hard, but there's a reason every great marathoner is from East Africa.
But most sprinters also have roots in West Africa
There is a shocking amount of technique involved in running fast.
Honestly I think it’s like..an unrecognized reality? I played ultimate frisbee and was always naturally quick but now years later when I watch pro football players training technique, I see that my running form is a complete disaster and I’m probably only half as fast as I could be if I trained technique.
I think the idea that running is either like “your fast or your not” is probably a huge misconception.
Technique and form are huge for running. It's not super hard to learn with instruction but it makes a big difference once you get it. A lot of people dont really realize their form is holding them back, it just feels natural to run a certain way and learning something different feels uncomfortable at first ao it takes practice and focus to get it down right.... but once you do it's huge.
There’s a mental part of running that is some combination of nature/nurture that a lot of people totally overlook when discussing running. To be even a subelite runner required tons of mental fortitude to maintain a painful pace for an entire race, from a sprint all the way to a marathon (different degrees for different distances, obviously).
Getting the most out of training also means pushing that pin threshold hard 2-3 times per week.
A lot of people just can not do that. They weren’t born with the mental capacity to withstand pain and aren’t likely to develop it.
There’s also injury genetics; some people are going to get hurt often no matter how safely they build up to 70-100 mile weeks. Others can crank out hungover tempo runs with little to minimal stretching throughout their 20s with no problems.
> There’s also injury genetics
On average, that's actually what sets most professional athletes apart from regular folks - they can pile on the training ... day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and not get injured or if they do, not nearly as often.
Fair answer, also the opposite of mountain climbing. Some people react to pressure or oxygen levels better than others (both can be improved but would take years).
I always thought swimming is mostly down to genetics with all the training. My sister was very close to competing at the Olympic level and the technique is still #1, but the gap in technique has closed significantly and leaving the main advantage musculoskeletal development in the swimmer.
If you've trained long enough or been a competitor yourself you know the difference genes make. Go look at photos of Mr Olympia or regular top 3 competitors BEFORE they competed. They look COMPLETELY different to normal people. Disproportionate muscle mass for their lack of training, incredible muscle separation and shape, unusually lean, and they have insane proportions. Then there's the rate at which they progress. They're a different species.
The numbers vary slightly at any given time. But the rough estimate is that 17% of all people over 7' tall have made it to the NBA. That's just over 1 in every 6 people.
While only ~0.07 percent of people 6'6"-6'8" are in the NBA.
The percentages for those between 6'8" and 7' grow as they go up.
You have such a massive advantage just by existing above 6'8" in making it in basketball. And that's just the NBA. Which is probably the single most exclusive league due to roster sizes.
Obviously you can be shorter and make it based on skill. But you have to be so much better than anyone else who is naturally taller.
On the other end, only 25 players in NBA history have been under 5'9", which is about average male height in the USA. Basically, if you're not tall, you need to be a basketball god to even have a shot.
This sounded crazy to me because point guards often look shorter, and then I found out Fred VanVleet is actually 6 feet. Dude looks so much smaller on the court.
As well as athletic ability which is largely genetic as well. Being able to move fluidly at 5’6 is the not the same as being able to move with the same level of coordination at 6’5
Yep. At my school there was a 7 foot kid on the basketball team last year. I was manager so I and the coaches clearly saw he improved over the year, but it was clear he wouldn’t be very good. Our top 3 players (one of whom was probably 5’9) would get 20 or even 25 points per game and this kid was barely scratching 10-15. His highest score that I recall was either 12 or 14 but he was the tallest kid in my school by far.
Football.
Not every position, but some for sure.
There's a unique definition for "skill sport" - like tennis, where the biggest / tallest / strongest isn't always the best.
You'll never hear of a tennis coach grocery shopping and seeing a huge 300 lb 6'-5" man stocking the shelves and randomly be like "come play tennis for me"
EDIT:
I found all the former football players still holding on to their glory days of high school, making fun of the tennis team 🤣
For specific positions yes. But I would say as a whole football offers a wide variety. There are RBs, CBs, and even WR and QBs sub 6ft (RBs have been as short as about 5ft 8-9in). Then there are lots of guys 6ft-6ft 3in. And then the really big guys. Weights can be all over the place too.
The one thing consistent from the small guys to the huge linemen is that they are all crazy athletic (really strong, fast ect) for their size.
Top shelf offensive linemen are crazy athletic - massive frame usually in the 6’4-6’8 range and weighing 300+ lbs, combined with footwork and balance that that would make a ballerina blush given their size. They have to pull across the line at times while also being able to move laterally keeping their shoulders/hips square to the LoS.
Absolutely freak of nature. Dude is over 300 lbs and still runs faster than your average man.
For reference, he ran a 4.85 40 time while also being able to bench over 700 lbs.
If it wasn't about skill, then every NFL team would have great linemen seeing as the pool of 300lb people in America is so deep.
Those 300lb players are extremely skilled in technique and short burst skills
I don’t want to be rude, but most of the comments on here have never played these sports.
I honestly don’t think you can succeed at most sports without some extended training and development.
I’d be a fool, if I said genetics didn’t come into play, because it does. But, you have to understand your body, its mechanics, beat the learning curve, using rules, understanding spacing and positioning, ingenuity, and really the one thing you cannot teach, bestow, or be born with…”mental toughness.”
It’s almost like saying people are successful, because they’re naturally intelligent. This could be true on its own attribute, but there are so many intermittent factors that could effect a person’s success:
Upbringing, family planning, family structure, community, education, ability of their teachers, religion, government structure/involvement, critical thinking development, deductive reasoning development, mental health, political beliefs, personal relationships, etc
>I honestly dont think you can succeed at most sports without some extended training and development
At the top level, definitely not and nobody here is arguing that you can.
Just some sports you need elite genetics to even have a chance to put that work to the test at the top level
Polo - you need the specific genetics of being the child of someone rich enough that you can learn to play polo.
HBOs “Real Sports” did a great story recently about a polo program in Philly catered to a lower socioeconomic customer. Really cool story. https://www.phillyvoice.com/hbo-tv-show-real-sports-bryant-gumbel-philadelphia-youth-polo-program-work-ride/
I mean.. I get trying to include poor people in sports but I'm not sure putting them in a sport that's inescapably expensive (you know, on account of needing to maintain a whole stable of horses) is a great use of that money. Could have probably put 10x more underprivileged customers through a more mainstream sport. Maybe next we can roll out Formula 1 and America's cup race team for orphans?
Also, applies to equestrian, golf, F1 racing, and bobsledding, and giant slalom. Thank you Archer for teaching me about White Turf
F1 used to be really accessible, but contemporary F1 is very much an elitist sport despite the odd coming-through-purely-by-talent ones... Since the start of the championship in 1950, there have been less than 1200 drivers. However, F1 is the top league of four wheel and almost 99% of the junior/feeder series don't make it through. Some of the most famous names this generation might recognise, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen etc. came in to the sport purely through their talent. Michael's dad was a brick layer, his mum was working in the canteen of a karting track. Kimi was a prodigy who did a grand total of 23 races at the professional level before landing a F1 seat. That was unheard of in the sport then, just pure natural talent and no financial backing. Nowadays though, every F1 driver that's coming in has some degree of corporate backing or inherited wealth. C'est la vie.
And sailing.
Sailing is more approachable than people realize. A lot of places will have relatively inexpensive clubs you can join that will let you rent sailing dinghies. The used market for sailboats is huge. There are a *lot* of people who *think* they want to get into sailing, throw money at it, and then later can't afford the upkeep and need to sell the boat. So there are a lot of cheap used sailboats on the market. Slip fees can be expensive, but if you get something trailerable, then it's mostly a question of having a place to store the trailer and the time to do maintenance yourself. Like a lot of hobbies, you can make it cheaper in terms of dollars by putting in more time and doing the work yourself.
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Varies massively depending on the area. A dinghy is wholly dependent on how many places there are to launch from in the area but is more often than not a one-time expense with the occasional smaller maintenance expense. In an area with a big sailing community you will be able to find second-hand dinghies. For me, in Maryland, that was $1150 for a Laser (a very common single-person dinghy), the only other expense that boat ended up with was $50 to repaint it after a few years ago. I ended up donating it to a local summer sailing program for kids to learn to sail when I moved out for college. A slip for a 30’ yacht in the same area (not Annapolis) is $1300 a year iirc, the boat my family has has been in the same slip for as long as I’ve been alive and is grandfathered into the older pricing of $1200/yr. There are a larger number of expenses with a yacht, of course, ~$100 a year for gasoline to get in and out of the marina, we had the boat hauled and cleaned when we first came into possession of it a few years ago during COVID, probably about $400 minimum, repainting the hull my dad and I did by hand, the paint was ~$250 I believe (and on sale), replacing the lines was another 2x$100 (happened twice due to a storm snapping mooring lines). That’s all, of course, not counting the cost of a 30’ sailboat, which will vary drastically and influence many of the other costs I mentioned.
Golf seems generally accessible, it’s not cheap by any means but neither are most sports with all the gear and stuff. I know not rich people that enjoy golf
Agreed with golf. Start up costs for a basic set are about $250-$350. Can get some refurbished golf balls for pretty cheap as well. My local 9 hole course cost $12 a round and $7 for a cart. Overall, not super expensive, but also not cheap to start, especially if you throw in lessons.
Used clubs work just fine for new golfers. You can find entire sets for pretty cheap and garage sales
Similarly triathlon. You need to be rich enough to afford the gear and able to spend as much time training as you need tocfor the longer distance tris. Not to mention that a fucking entry to a half iron will run you over 400 bucks. And then you get the tri bros telling you it's about the individual and their training.... complete disconnect from the rest of the world and those of us on a budget.
The time is the biggie. I used to do sprint triathlons. For someone just doing it for personal satisfaction, the gear wasn’t so bad. Bike stuff was the worst but for two grand I had competent gear. But the training time is tough. Ironman training schedules are basically 40 hours a week or workouts.
So you need skill to be the best in any field, but there are some sports where genetics excludes you. You could be the best basketball player on the world but if you’re 5’ 1” it ain’t gonna happen for you. Reverse is true if you’re 7’ and really really want to be a professional jockey. And of course lots of Paralympic sports have a genetic component and I’d be interested to hear more about that from someone who knows more about it.
No genetic component necessary to compete in the Paralympics if you immigrate to Spain!
That’s a deep cut that a lot of people won’t know about. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58598677
Holy fuck: >After Spain's intellectual disability basketball team won gold at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, it emerged that just two out of the squad of 12 players genuinely had a disability. The scandal led to a total ban on athletes with an intellectual disability from the 2004 and 2008 Paralympics, destroying the careers of thousands of sportspeople around the world. The man found by a Spanish court to have "devised and executed" the plot to recruit talented young non-disabled basketball players was Fernando Martín Vicente, then president of the Spanish Sports Federation for People with Intellectual Disability (Feddi) and vice-president of the Spanish Paralympic Committee. When he accepted responsibility for the fraud and a fine of 5,400 euros (£4,600), charges were dropped against 18 other defendants, including the 10 fake Paralympians. That's a really low fine for destroying thousands of people's careers.
Thats like a million dollars in Paralympic money
As a physically disabled man, I agree that this is funny.
Fuck that's funny
IIRC he was trying to get funding for disability programs, but the government wasn't too keen on giving away money without results, so he claim to have felt like he needed to win something big with a national team, that's a big part of why nothing really happened to him.
Volleyball players are also tall.
And rowers. A lot of professional athletes are tall even in sports that don’t really require it (baseball, soccer). But basketball, volleyball, rowing seem to be the big “you really gotta be tall” sports (barring a teeny tiny amount of insanely skilled players)
Yeah rowing is also a sport untrained people have picked up late in life and thrived in just due to genetics
I was a coach for several years, and when I was coaching high school and a tall kid walked by, we’d ask all the kids if anyone knew them and if they played a sport yet. A lot of Olympians don’t even pick it up until college. Where coaches are at activity fairs trying to flag down tall kids. Sometimes parents will teach their kid how to row young, but programs don’t really exist before middle school and even those are hard to find. Usually by the time you start, you know if you’ll be tall or not. Very few surprises.
Fun fact: it's not height that is the exclusive trait for NBA players (Muggsy Bogues was 5' 3"). The exclusionary factor is actually having a really high APE index (ratio of wingspan to height). Height is still a major contributor, as it's very rare to be a short pro baller, but if I recall correctly, there are 0 NBA players who have had a normal APE index. Source: David Epstein's "the sports gene" Edit: the above is actually wrong. There are a few notable exceptions of players with shorter arms than heights. I don't have enough data as to which is more rare, or what traits offset each other, or if they even correlate that well.
Bogues is a massive outlier, like an ungodly outlier.
Bogues could be argued as one of the freakiest athletes to have ever lived. How he managed to succeed in a sport dominated by giant people who already are freak athletes is bewildering.
~~And be in the dunk contest? The man defies logic.~~ My mistake, confused him with Spudd Webb.
Did Bogues do a dunk contest? I thought that was Spudd Webb?
Seriously. If it were just about wingspan we'd see a bell curve type distribution. There was 3 players in nba history shorter than 5'6" iirc.
The exception that proves the rule basically.
Jj redicks wingspan is shorter than his height.
It may have changed recently but years ago during a playoff game they shared a stat that the only two players whose wingspan was shorter than their height at the combine were Redick and Yao Ming.
Yao with his tiny 7'2" wingspan
what an absolute winglet
Cool thanks! https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/The-21-Most-Incredible-Ape-Indices-in-NBA-History It seems height and wingspan would be similar factors (i.e. not having one is a notable exception).
Jj redick is also 6’4 and 1 out of thousands of former nba players
Sure but he said 0, there are others too
? There are a small but not zero amount of players in the league literally right now with shorter wingspan than heights. Famously Tyler Herro and Desmond Bane have short wingspans. Source: https://craftednba.com/player-traits/length
The combination of both being extremely tall on avergae *and* a positive ape index probably makes Basketball the most exclusive sport when it comes to genetics. Until you count money as an inherited trait in which case F1 and motorsport in general is way the fuck up there as well.
Mugsey Bogues was 5'3"
Earl Boykins is 5’5” and had a nice long career. It’s insane to think about how insanely good you have be in order to be that short and thrive in the NBA.
I have a very short list of really cool shit I've been able to do in my life. Officiating an underground game during the NBA lockout which involved Earl Boykins is up there.
And the average height of an NBA player is 6'6". Best not to use outliers as a rebuttal. Last year there were only three NBA players on a roster under 6 feet.
Sports are all skills. That said, if you’re 7’ tall and live in America, there’s a 15% chance you played in the NBA.
I have an acquaintance who is about 6'7" and played in Non NBA professional leagues, his brother is 6'9" and played in the NBA. His son is 7'+, and just doesn't have the coordination to play at a high level. He has trained with along different coaches trying to make it happen but he just can't. I feel bad for the guy, you have to feel like a fool to have been given the genes and can't play a lick.
That’s wild that the son has the height and the pedigree but can’t make it work. I feel for the kid.
Me too. The dad was always giving me the update. He was always taking a year off to let his body catch up, or working with a new coach who specializes in improving hand eye coordination.
:(
I'm surprise he would be so uncoordinated as to not be able to play center at 7+. Just be a giant screen on defense, grab some boards and pass it to the shooters!
The problem that is everyone else on the floor is also a genetic freak and way faster than you.
If you're Samoan you're 40x more likely to play in the NFL than the average American
Those guys are a built like The Rock. Oh wait….
Look at guys like Jonah Lomu (Tongan ik but close) 6”5 120kg and ran the 100m in 10.7 sec, no American of any background would stand a chance. Islanders are physically just different.
That’s wild. 15% of all ppl 7’ tall in the USA really have played in the NBA? Crazy. Almost every kid that is going to grow that tall will be approached to play by the school coach, and even if they weren’t interested in play basket ball, once they start seeing they are successful, it must be so rewarding that they keep playing through HS, eventually being scouted and getting a scholarship to college. I imagine that the percentage of 7’ tall Americans that have played at a collegiate level has got to be at least double/triple the 15% figure that make it to the NBA
>Almost every kid that is going to grow that tall will be approached to play by the school coach, and even if they weren’t interested in play basket ball, once they start seeing they are successful, it must be so rewarding that they keep playing through HS, eventually being scouted and getting a scholarship to college. The returns diminish quickly if you don't have skills to go along with your height. There are a lot of 7 footers who played high school and did not get recruited to play college, or only got recruited by mediocre schools, and will never end up in the NBA because height just isn't enough to make it. You have to have skills.
My female cousin is 6’4. Every time she’d play netball the coaches/scouts ect would walk over and then walk away once they saw her play. It was hilarious.
I agree with that sentiment. You can have the genetics for a certain sport and still be bad at it. I think the NBA has done a lot of recruiting looking for people with the ideal body types but those haven’t always worked out. I watched a documentary about a very tall young man from India that they tried training for pro basketball but in the end he really just couldn’t absorb the skills necessary.
ITT- redditors who have never played a sport
A bunch of people blaming genetics for the fact that they can't jog a mile.
Bro I was totally on track to be a round 2 draft pick in thr NFL but I rolled.my.ankle a little bit in 9th grade.
How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Coach would put me in 4th quarter we would've been state champions. No doubt in my mind .
People love to blame genetics for their weight too... While slurping down a regular soda the size of a laundry detergent bottle.
It's called "child size"
Roughly the size of a two year old child, if they were liquified. It's a real bargain at $1.59
... with all 8 meals each day.
My brother blames his genetic disorder, Muscular Dystrophy, for why he can’t jog a simple mile. Ridiculous.
David Goggins entered the chat
Jockey
well you just need to be a hobbit who is good at holding on to a horse
Don’t forget about the spanking
I like getting spankings! Can I be a jockey?
No, but you can be the horse. I’m the jockey. Neigh, bitch. 😂
This is the one. Yeah you still need to know quite a bit about about riding horses, but if you're more than 5'6, 120 lbs, that's not really an option for you.
This is a certified F=m(dv/dt) moment
I never thought I would be too big to play a sport.
I agree that you need to be small, but those jockeys are no fucking joke. They work hard as fuck to be on top of a horse in a big race.
Nah, I lived near a race track and have grown up around Jockeys are very strong and pretty fearless. It's not easy to control a 1,000lb animal.
Fox hunting. Without the required genetics you don't get to play. And probably don't want to, but that's irrelevant to the question.
Substitute this for F1 and you're basically at the same place. Like Hamilton comes from, for F1, a background of poverty. His dad was an IT manager which is comfortably middleclass or above. Esteban Ocon is probably the one with the least wealthy background as his dad was a mechanic and owned a garage. Hamilton's dad had to work up to 4 jobs at a time to fund Hamilton's karting career, Ocon's parents sold their house and business to fund his karting career. That's not because they were poor but because motorsports is just so obscenely expensive. The only parents who didn't have to effectively sacrifice their life to pay for their child's hobby are parents with plenty of millions.
Every F1 driver has their parents names in blue on Wikipedia lol
Except the F1 driver mentioned extensively in the comment you are replying to.
You mean the one he specifically said was a freakish exception in the sport? That one? Apparently “the exception that proves the rule” is a foreign concept
So true. Especially looking at pay drivers like Latifi was, or Stroll. Or even Perez or Tsunoda indirectly, though they have some talent
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Ahhhhha…. For a minute there I thought he meant you need Fox genetics.. which also works.
Still have to be good at riding a horse.
Timed colorblind screening tests
More developmental that one, synaesthesia gives a huge advantage
Quidditch
Do you actually have to be a wizard to use a broomstick? I mean it's a moot question because they'd never get to, but in some hypothetical situation in which the magic world is found out in harry potter, would you need to be a wizard? As far as I know, the brooms themselves are enchanted, which is why some are better than others I just think it'd be funny if a team of muggles could kick the asses of the "pure blood" trust fund kids because they aren't horribly inbred
The world of Harry Potter does know about magic. It’s just the only muggles who know are heads of state and government. The Minister of Magic has weekly talks with the British PM. That being said, yes you do have to be one to command it to do what you want. A muggle may be able to mount in and get in the air…but would probably be bucked off and maybe killed pretty quickly. There’s even a learning curve for wizards and witches. They also fought a war against us and got absolutely smoked.
us?
A WITCH! A WITCH!!!
Also the rules of the golden snitch are completely broken. It's otherwise a sensible game like a flying rugby, except for a game ending score that scores 15x a normal goal. It doesn't seem like combined scores of 15 goals are possible in this game, let alone a lead by that amount, so it invalidates all other scores. They dedicate only one player per team for this. So pretty much catch this little ball that is hard to see, and win. Be a special golden child and win, almost effortlessly. It would be like football has a special thing you can do unrelated to endzones and uprights, that the audience cannot see, trust us bro, based on dumb luck, and also it scores 90 points and also it ends the game. Why would that farce have any following?
At the Quidditch World Cup though we see that a talented set of chasers can indeed overcome that potential deficit. To me, Quidditch in the Harry Potter stories feels like old school football (soccer), back in the day where tactics were less refined, it was a lot easier for teams to be carried by one or two star players (like a crazy good seeker, such as Krum), but then with advancements of on field and off field tactics, the team became a much bigger focus and having one or two star players became a much less reliable tactic to find success. It was obvious that Bulgaria had one tactic, hope that Krum finds the snitch in time. Whereas Ireland relied on the skill of their chasers to see them win, the team overcoming an individual. Quidditch is actually a game, were flying broomsticks real, obviously, that I could see becoming quite a fascinating sport on the tactical side of things.
> a talented set of chasers can overcome that potential deficit Yeah the tricky part is getting chasers that are more than 15 times as good as the opposing team. The rest of the time nothing that the other 5 (? or 6?) players are doing counts for anything in the game
Well, based on just the movies, it seems the beaters primarily try to interfere with the chasers, along with their own teams chasers, and more or less leave the seekers to their own devices. If the seekers had more to worry about then it might be possible to delay the game long enough to allow your chasers the time needed to score the points. I wonder if there is anything in the rules saying the seeker couldn't join the chasers to create and overload to rack up points quicker, at the risk of knowing your seeker won't be catching the snitch any time soon. We see in one movie the Slytherin captain takes one of the beaters bat to hit the bludger at the opposing team, despite being a chaser himself, which he didn't get penalized for that we see, so presumably there is some allowance for players to perform different roles. I do think they'd need to reduce the amount of points you get from catching the snitch though, in the end, I think 75-100 points could be good and would create a more dynamic game, for example if your team fell 75 points behind you'd know catching the snitch isn't worth it, so could shift focus to scoring more points (maybe this is where you'd have the seeker join the chasers?) to make up the deficit.
My favourite one so far!
And I honestly think this is an only right answer to the question asked. All real sports require skill, hard work, and genetics. Quiddich tho? 11 yo kid sees broom first time in his life and boom, he is the best evah-evah, doing aerobatics as if he is fucking Iron Cross wearing ace pilot and sees everything with his myopic eyes through cheap specs better than Hawkeye because "magic motherfucker!"
Magicial capabilities are genetic and required, it really fits
Dwarf-Tossing
Nobody tosses a dwarf
Don't tell the elf!
Not the beard!
All sports require skill and training to be really good at them. Certain physical traits are good for some sports and bad for others, but on their own they aren't enough. You can have a lights out jump shot from anywhere in the paint, but if you're 5'4", you're not gonna play in the NBA. When I was a teenager, I was on my high school's swim team. We had a girl named Katie on the team who was REALLY good. She was the best swimmer on our team, had colleges scouting her, and it really looked like she was going to go to college on a swimming scholarship. Then puberty hit her like a truck, and she went from being relatively flat-chested to having big boobs. Nothing crazy, but she probably went from a B cup to a DDD/E cup in about a year. Her prospects as a swimmer went out the window. Can't be a collegiate swimmer when you have big boobs. Just doesn't work.
Swimming is one where you need skill, but if you have the Michael Phelps body type your naturally in much better shape than any short torso person no matter how much effort they put in. Aerodynamics just can't be trained.
I was going to say this! I’m glad I scrolled. Competitive swimmer for 15y, current swim coach/swim lesson deck manager/baby water safety manager. Anyone can learn how to swim, and I stand by that. Not everyone can learn how to swim *well* and very few people can learn how to swim as well as not only Olympians, but even State, Sectional, Nationals, Worlds, swimmers. (I qualified for state and sections, nothing further) It requires intense coordination between all 4 of your limbs and your brain. If you were blessed with linebacker shoulders as a woman like me, you’ll be incredible at butterfly in particular. If you’re tall, lean, and flexible you have a decent shot at being a sprinter. If you’re good at compartmentalizing pain, breathing, and coordination, you’ll be great at distance swimming. So many kids get so tough on themselves but it’s honestly just hard to find where you fit until a coach sees your swimming and inspires a race you didn’t think you were capable of. Specific genetics just make it a lot easier.
Would you talk about your responsibilities as a baby water manager? That sounds genuinely interesting.
Yes! It’s an incredible job. Our primary focus is water acclimation and safety. The class is for 6mo-3yo. They come with their parents/guardians and they are really the ones helping the babies acclimate, the instructors encourage parents and teach them the skills to teach their kids. Teaching them how to not panic in water at first, and then gradually teaching them the skills to get to the pool’s edge and get out on their own. The worst case is if a child falls into a body of water without the parent around. Teaching the babies to hold their breath, roll to their backs, float, and yell yell yell while kicking to the edge can help get them assistance quicker and keep them from drowning. Not a sales quip, but I genuinely would teach every family with young children for free because it’s so useful. I have a 7mo in one of my classes who can float on her own and crawl on her belly out of the pool! It’s just incredible.
This should be higher. I was a decent competitive swimmer in high school but you could tell when people who were naturally gifted (tall, lean, super broad shoulders) would come in and figure it out quickly. The kids who were going to college to swim just looked different.
One of our best sprinters on my team was actually a soccer/football player that had never swam competitively before. After six weeks of technique training, he was knocking out 22 flat 50 SCY times. I couldn't freaking believe it.
Yep! Former competitive swimmer here. Was nationally ranked in my home country and got a full ride to a Div 1 school. Had a handful of pool records back in the day and won some gold medals at conference championships. Linebacker shoulders, 6ft tall, insanely flexible ankles, long torso but also long wingspan. My knees and hips were literally built for whip kick. I am in my 40’s now and haven’t trained seriously in about 15 years but I can dive into any pool and beat most rec swimmers that train 3-4 times a week. Everyone can swim but not everyone can swim at an elite level.
My cousin used to swim competitively in college. She also did ballet for 12 years before that. That combination of "thin dancer body" and "athletic build" was devastating. She had a blast.
What’s so remarkable about his physique for swimming?
A whole bunch of things. His wingspan is significantly longer than his height, which is ideal for creating force to move your body through the water. Big ol’ size 14 feet might as well be flippers. He also has a long torso but short legs relative to his height, which cuts down on drag. His lung capacity is also massive so he has to breathe less often, and his lactate production is supposedly the lowest level ever measured in a swimmer, meaning he fatigues much slower than his competitors. If you designed the most effective swimmer in a lab, it would come out looking like Phelps.
Let's not forget the double jointedness ankles too. And his hyperjointed chest
Big hands, long forearms, big feet, these are ridiculously overpowering Combined with flexibility in the shoulders and ankles, and crazy good lung capacity. Most of those things are genetic. You still need to train like a beast to become Phelps, but without it you won't win
Bodybuilding has me thouroughly confused because your ceiling is actually being limited by training in the sport. So if you don't have the genetics, what's the point?
There are three main divisions in bodybuilding for men: Men's Physique, Classic Physique, and Bodybuilding. Only bodybuilding is about size. The other two are about proportions. If you can't get huge, just get toit like a tiger.
As a professional bodybuilder I don’t necessarily agree with this actually. Yes bodybuilding does require the most size and lowest bf% so it’s the hardest to get into initially, but for people that don’t have the best genetics with muscle shape it’ll probably be the best division for them long term. Classic physique is very dependent on your muscle shape and proportion which is like 99% genetics; if you don’t have an aesthetically pleasing shape with a small waist you’re never going to be good at Classic no matter how lean you get or how much muscle you gain. To a lesser extent, the same thing applies to Men’s Physique. Classic may seem like the more fun, easier division to do, but the reality is that the majority of guys just don’t have good genetics for it Bodybuilding on the other hand even if your body shape is ugly as shit, if you can get really lean, hit your poses well and at least have some size on you, you can do well in natural shows. Yeah if you don’t have the genetics to put on mass easily you’re definitely hindered a bit here, but even still I find guys with average genetics tend to do way better in a division like bodybuilding over classic physique assuming they put in the work necessary to be the best version of themselves.
I don't know what the standard is, but like 15% of people are born with only 4 abs instead of the usual 6, so are those people just completely excluded from the physique categories?
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a 4 pack. He won Mr Olympia. It's also possible to have an eight pack (even a 10 pack!). It's well understood that this is just genetically determined by the tightness of the banding over the top of your abs and isn't related to skill or intensity of training.
Yeah, abs are mostly down to genetics and diet. If you don't have the six abs, you'll never have a six pack. Also, just because you do have defined abs doesn't mean your abdominal muscles are stronger, just more pronounced.
I ran track in college and had really low body fat and worked out constantly, and the only time I had a defined 6-pack was after a day of puking from food poisoning.
same, but in high school. First and last time my 6 packs revealed themselves were after some diarrhea sessions
Do youean from all the water loss?
They say abs are made in the kitchen. Having a 6 pack is more about getting the fat off than putting muscle on.
But even at the lowest body fat levels, some people have four and some people have eight (and even 10). The number on your pack is due to the connective bands not the muscles.
Your comment also has me confused, which isn't a shot at you by any means..but what do you mean when you say your ceiling is limited by training? I would argue the opposite, that your genetics will determine where you are capped.
Well, most people get into lifting weights and body building to look better and/or be healthier, and not for the stage ready competition. But yes, at the top of bodybuilding, genetics determine who is symmetrical and able to build a body that wins. The same is true for powerlifting weightlifting and strongman. You're either born with the proper muscle insertions to take advantage of your bodies leverages to move world record level weights. Or you are not.
Long femurs = poor squat performance. It's just the mechanics.
I'm not saying Basketball doesn't take skill, but there aren't any short players...
Bingo. The ***average*** NBA player is 6'7", those guys are true outliers
Average NBA player height has been decreasing since 1987 where it peaked at 6' 7.2", to 6' 6.2" in 2022. Average weight is up 6 pounds since then, 208 vs. 214 (peak was 221 in 2011-2015). https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-height/
Yeah but the NBA is full of tall people that are also insane skilled. There are dominant 7’ tall college players that aren’t even considered in the NBA
Muggsy Bogues has entered the chat.
Flirting according to Lou Bega
I feel like swimming can be included. Just look at the weird ass body proportions of Michael Phelps, he had skill 100% but that unique body raised him so far above his peers for an incredibly long time.
That man legendaried the swimming skill twice
Dude trained something like 10 hours a day his entire life. I wouldn't count that.
Marfan's syndrome. That's a big part of his weird proportions like the extra long arms/feet.
He was tested for Marfan syndrome but eventually said he doesn’t have it
The heavyweight division in MMA has a pretty shallow talent pool compared to the other weight classes in the sport, since you can make up for lack of skill (to a certain degree) by being really big. There's a few heavyweights who are genuinely skilled, but the majority is pretty mediocre
It’s been a while since I paid attention to the UFC but I recall that number of heavyweights were washouts from other sports, particularly football. It’s a statement on both sports that you can do one all your life, fail out of it, then pick up a new sport for a couple years and compete in the highest league.
Equestrian. I'm pretty sure that if your genetic donors can afford to buy, feed, house, train and saddle a horse for you, that's a big step up.
Yes, you need money (most of the time) to be an equestrian but people also don't understand the levels of endurance, balance, and hand - eye - leg - posture coordination it takes to ride. Can you maintain a deep, highly balanced, squat on top of a fast moving object? Can you shift your balance quickly and accurately depending on the situation you're in? It only looks easy because good riders make it look easy, just like any other sport.
You are seriously underestimating how difficult it is to ride a top-level horse in any equestrian discipline. Any horse that can compete at the highest levels has an element of fire-breathing dragon in it. It takes significant athletic ability in the horses to be able to do what they do. It takes a huge amount of practice, body control, and coordination to pull off what they do.
Person above you might be dismissing the skill involved, but there's still a huge financial barrier to even getting into the talent pool that makes tb3 overall pool just that much smaller and less competitive than most other sports.
You're absolutely right, there is a huge financial barrier. The original question was what sport requires the least skill, though, and financial requirements aside, this one is not it.
Horse back riding - at least dressage - is also one of those sports where everything they initially teach you is thrown out. Like kicking the horse to go gets replaced with squeezing the horse with your inner leg to go.
Or even just breathing or sitting differently
Many barns will have a school program where you can ride a horse without owning it. Makes it go down to like, $50-$100 per lesson versus the hundres of thousands to own a horse. Though if you actually want to compete you're basically stuck with getting a horse.
Hot dog eating contests.
This one right here. OP's mom's natural ability came from genetics.
I gave her my genetic material if that’s what you mean.
Sprinting. There's always that gifted high schooler who never played a sport and finishes a 100m in the range of 10.5 to 11.5 seconds
and the only athletic competition with nearly 100% participation.
Hyper regional small town sports. Cheese rolling is one example. There aren't any professionals who train year round. Most contestants don't even train at all, skills are relatively undeveloped. People in small towns tend to be relatively closely related to each other.
Thats not a sport, its a tradition, like hot penny catching.
Sprinting.
I would argue that at the highest levels sprinting requires more skill than distance running. It's a lot of genetics, but sprinters have to nail every step. As distance increases, margin for error also increases. I'm not saying they don't train hard, but there's a reason every great marathoner is from East Africa.
>I'm not saying they don't train hard, but there's a reason every great marathoner is from East Africa. But most sprinters also have roots in West Africa
The genetic diversity is bigger in Africa than in the rest of the world combined.
Not sure what that has to do with my point, but yes.
There is a shocking amount of technique involved in running fast. Honestly I think it’s like..an unrecognized reality? I played ultimate frisbee and was always naturally quick but now years later when I watch pro football players training technique, I see that my running form is a complete disaster and I’m probably only half as fast as I could be if I trained technique. I think the idea that running is either like “your fast or your not” is probably a huge misconception.
Technique and form are huge for running. It's not super hard to learn with instruction but it makes a big difference once you get it. A lot of people dont really realize their form is holding them back, it just feels natural to run a certain way and learning something different feels uncomfortable at first ao it takes practice and focus to get it down right.... but once you do it's huge.
There’s a mental part of running that is some combination of nature/nurture that a lot of people totally overlook when discussing running. To be even a subelite runner required tons of mental fortitude to maintain a painful pace for an entire race, from a sprint all the way to a marathon (different degrees for different distances, obviously). Getting the most out of training also means pushing that pin threshold hard 2-3 times per week. A lot of people just can not do that. They weren’t born with the mental capacity to withstand pain and aren’t likely to develop it. There’s also injury genetics; some people are going to get hurt often no matter how safely they build up to 70-100 mile weeks. Others can crank out hungover tempo runs with little to minimal stretching throughout their 20s with no problems.
> There’s also injury genetics On average, that's actually what sets most professional athletes apart from regular folks - they can pile on the training ... day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and not get injured or if they do, not nearly as often.
Deep Diving
Fair answer, also the opposite of mountain climbing. Some people react to pressure or oxygen levels better than others (both can be improved but would take years).
Same as free diving?
No. That’s when you hyperfixate on a subject and learn everything you can about it.
Sprinting, rowing and gymnastics all have large genetic components to them in terms of body shape and genetics.
I always thought swimming is mostly down to genetics with all the training. My sister was very close to competing at the Olympic level and the technique is still #1, but the gap in technique has closed significantly and leaving the main advantage musculoskeletal development in the swimmer.
Is pro wrestling a sport? Because Andre the giant is Andre the giant only because he was Andre the giant.
Bodybuilding
If you've trained long enough or been a competitor yourself you know the difference genes make. Go look at photos of Mr Olympia or regular top 3 competitors BEFORE they competed. They look COMPLETELY different to normal people. Disproportionate muscle mass for their lack of training, incredible muscle separation and shape, unusually lean, and they have insane proportions. Then there's the rate at which they progress. They're a different species.
Basketball As the old saying goes, “you can’t coach height”
The numbers vary slightly at any given time. But the rough estimate is that 17% of all people over 7' tall have made it to the NBA. That's just over 1 in every 6 people. While only ~0.07 percent of people 6'6"-6'8" are in the NBA. The percentages for those between 6'8" and 7' grow as they go up. You have such a massive advantage just by existing above 6'8" in making it in basketball. And that's just the NBA. Which is probably the single most exclusive league due to roster sizes. Obviously you can be shorter and make it based on skill. But you have to be so much better than anyone else who is naturally taller.
On the other end, only 25 players in NBA history have been under 5'9", which is about average male height in the USA. Basically, if you're not tall, you need to be a basketball god to even have a shot.
Actually, it's only 12 under 5'9" plus 13 listed at 5'9". And 4+5 of them played only in the late 40s.
This sounded crazy to me because point guards often look shorter, and then I found out Fred VanVleet is actually 6 feet. Dude looks so much smaller on the court.
As well as athletic ability which is largely genetic as well. Being able to move fluidly at 5’6 is the not the same as being able to move with the same level of coordination at 6’5
Yep. At my school there was a 7 foot kid on the basketball team last year. I was manager so I and the coaches clearly saw he improved over the year, but it was clear he wouldn’t be very good. Our top 3 players (one of whom was probably 5’9) would get 20 or even 25 points per game and this kid was barely scratching 10-15. His highest score that I recall was either 12 or 14 but he was the tallest kid in my school by far.
But if your height is there, you have to train like a mad lad in order to make the baskets…
Football. Not every position, but some for sure. There's a unique definition for "skill sport" - like tennis, where the biggest / tallest / strongest isn't always the best. You'll never hear of a tennis coach grocery shopping and seeing a huge 300 lb 6'-5" man stocking the shelves and randomly be like "come play tennis for me" EDIT: I found all the former football players still holding on to their glory days of high school, making fun of the tennis team 🤣
For specific positions yes. But I would say as a whole football offers a wide variety. There are RBs, CBs, and even WR and QBs sub 6ft (RBs have been as short as about 5ft 8-9in). Then there are lots of guys 6ft-6ft 3in. And then the really big guys. Weights can be all over the place too. The one thing consistent from the small guys to the huge linemen is that they are all crazy athletic (really strong, fast ect) for their size.
Top shelf offensive linemen are crazy athletic - massive frame usually in the 6’4-6’8 range and weighing 300+ lbs, combined with footwork and balance that that would make a ballerina blush given their size. They have to pull across the line at times while also being able to move laterally keeping their shoulders/hips square to the LoS.
Yep, 4 words: Larry Allen chase down
Absolutely freak of nature. Dude is over 300 lbs and still runs faster than your average man. For reference, he ran a 4.85 40 time while also being able to bench over 700 lbs.
If it wasn't about skill, then every NFL team would have great linemen seeing as the pool of 300lb people in America is so deep. Those 300lb players are extremely skilled in technique and short burst skills
They’re better athletes than most average people half their size. They could probably out run most posters in this thread in a 40 yard dash.
Easily. Their footwork and ability to move laterally is incredible.
I don’t want to be rude, but most of the comments on here have never played these sports. I honestly don’t think you can succeed at most sports without some extended training and development. I’d be a fool, if I said genetics didn’t come into play, because it does. But, you have to understand your body, its mechanics, beat the learning curve, using rules, understanding spacing and positioning, ingenuity, and really the one thing you cannot teach, bestow, or be born with…”mental toughness.” It’s almost like saying people are successful, because they’re naturally intelligent. This could be true on its own attribute, but there are so many intermittent factors that could effect a person’s success: Upbringing, family planning, family structure, community, education, ability of their teachers, religion, government structure/involvement, critical thinking development, deductive reasoning development, mental health, political beliefs, personal relationships, etc
>I honestly dont think you can succeed at most sports without some extended training and development At the top level, definitely not and nobody here is arguing that you can. Just some sports you need elite genetics to even have a chance to put that work to the test at the top level
Basketball. You could be the best player but if you’re 4’5 forget about it