Athletes: Born to Succeed? Or Developed to Thrive?

When we talk about athletic ability, if it is nature or nurture, it is difficult to determine whether it is biological or it is made up in the environment. Why some athletes are taller than others? That is because of nature and biological traits. Why are some athletes stronger or more technical than others? Here is where it comes from the environment the athlete comes from. I believe that athletic ability of a person has both nature and nurture. We can never say that it is completely one, since analyzing deeply would change our perspective.

We talk about biological characteristics, where we might say it is about the parent’s traits passed to their offspring. Javier Hernandez is a Mexican football player, who is young and with a great caliber. His father was a good football player also. Here we think that this topic could be biological one.  Also we can see that traits like height are a major factor in athletic ability. That is for certain nature side. Psychologists have done twin studies to determine not also personality or behavior, but also athletic ability. We can see results that one is a good athlete and the other might not be. Could that be because the one who isn’t didn’t inherit the proper genes we must have had? Well, twin studies aren’t like proper studies to study athletic ability. The only thing nature has to contribute to athletic ability are characteristics such as height.

On the other hand, studies on athletes are shown to have the major factor of the environment. We can see that when it comes to swimming, an African man would hardly win the competition. The reason is because their environment in which they grew, which is the African continent, had less resources to develop a strong and well-toned body to render more effort on the competition. Therefore, they cannot compete fairly against someone stronger since their bones and muscles are pretty weak compared to the rest of the swimmers who grew on a comfortable environment. Now think about sprinting. We can see on tracks that the black people win without any doubt. The reason could be since they had a childhood where they ran a lot. That is why they have a better capability to break records when it comes to running.  We can see that the environment is a powerful cause to make athletes the way there are and be better. Football player Lionel Messi had leg problems since little. Now we see he is a top football player in the whole world. So, why there are good athletes when their family aren’t very agile in sports? It is because of the environment in which they develop, in other words, nurture.

As a conclusion, we can say that nurture contributes more than nature. We can say that nature is about 30% and nurture could be approximately on the 70% of athletic ability. The most logical reason could be that nurture is throughout peoples’ lives, while nature is just the moment you were born. As final comment, nurture is the dominant side of this topic and throughout the athlete’s life, it makes him used to a certain environment and much capable on the sport he/she dedicates to.

Works Cited

-expertfootball.com/training/naturevsnurture

-www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=91

-http://www.badders.com/news/item/524/are-athletes-born-or-madeor-engineered.html

-www.athleticsnews.net/nature-vs-nurture/