• Question: If two people are talented in something, a sport lets say, why is it that one will be better than the other even if they do the same bit of hard work?

    Asked by to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 13 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Susanna Martin

      Susanna Martin answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Because everybody is different about abilities and talents are also different, so while we might do the same amount of work/effort, one person might perform better, for instance somebody who has a bigger long capacity and stronger legs might be able to run further than someone without those things, even though they both feel like they’ve put the same amount of effort in.

      It would actually be really hard to measure the amount of work put in by the two people as who would judge it, and would it be just from that single time, eg the race or would you also think about how long the practiced for before, how long they’ve been running for and even something random like the route they took to get the race track (eg if they walked next to a main road they might have been affected by the fumes from the cars).

    • Photo: Michael Craig

      Michael Craig answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      This is a good question. Some people are just naturally suited to particular spots, for example if a really tall person and a really short person both trained as hard as each other to play basketball, the tall person would probably be better as they have the height advantage. This also relates to the brain as well though, some people are better at certain things than others e.g. memory, puzzle solving. Our brains could play a big role in how good we are at e.g. football for example. Some people are better at perceiving how far away an object is than others, this is called depth perception. If you wanted to pass the ball to someone else, you need to calculate how far away they are and how hard you need to kick the ball so that it reaches them. Even if two people who trained as hard as each other tried this, someone who could perceive distances better would be better at accurately passing the ball. We also have a fascinating thing called muscle memory, this is where we instinctively learn how much force to put behind something to succeed, e.g. throwing a dart at a dart board, you need to repeat the exact same motion each time to hit treble 20. I don’t know too much about this but it may play a role in how good someone is at sports!

      Michael

    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I think these guys have got this question! Physical action or activity in sports is controlled by the brain like any other process we have as humans, and like other things such as learning languages, or being good at music, everybody is different. It can seem unfair that we are born with some abilities seemingly already set, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still work very hard if we enjoy doing something!

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