The Other Talent: Why the Best Athletes Get Better with Age

At the recent Paris Olympics, American runner Yared Nuguse finished third in the men’s 1500 meters. Although he might have preferred to win the race, the fact that he made it to the Olympics at all would have surprised a younger Nuguse. As a high school senior he ran a 4:06 mile, which is outstanding, but his time didn’t even rank him among the top 15 in the nation that year, whereas today Nuguse sits at number four on the list of history’s fastest milers (3:43.97). Meanwhile, the runner who topped the list of fastest high school milers in 2015—Reed Brown—is no longer running competitively.

Surprised? Don’t be. Statistically speaking, the best youth athletes and the best adult athletes are seldom the same people, not just in running but in all sports. In any given year, less than one in five basketball players recognized as a first-team freshman All-American goes on to play in the NBA, while just 3 percent of British soccer players selected to one of the country’s elite soccer academies makes it to the Premier League.

RELATED: The Most Effective Way to Improve Your Running Form

The reason, quite simply, is that the requirement for winning at the youth level is different from the requirement for winning at the professional level. Among inexperienced athletes at the beginning of the developmental process, whose ultimate potential remains largely untapped, physical talent rules the day. Fast forward a decade or so and this is no longer the case, as it’s now the athletes who improved the most through the developmental process that dominate. An athlete with A- physical talent who fulfills 100 percent of their potential will ultimately outperform an athlete with A+ natural ability who fulfills 80 percent of their potential. While it’s nice to have loads of physical talent, it’s better to have what I call “the other talent,” or the ability to make the most of one’s ability.

In my latest book, The Other Talent: The Curiously Complex Relationship Between Mental Health and Athletic Greatness and Why It’s Never Too Late to Reach Your Potential, I explore this overlooked “other talent” in an effort to specify what it is that enables certain athletes to get the absolute most out of their natural ability and surpass athletes of superior physical talent to achieve greatness. My research process was unconventional but effectual, consisting of reading more than twenty biographies and autobiographies of legendary athletes representing a wide variety of sports, nationalities, and time periods. My key finding was that, although different in most respects, these athletes share two key mental traits that, in combination, explain their ability to make the most of their ability.

“Screw Loose, Shit Together”

“Every great athlete is a little crazy,” wrote elite triathlete turned Oscar-nominated screenwriter Lesley Paterson in a 2012 op-ed for the Guardian newspaper. Not “crazy” in a diagnosable sense, they have a “screw loose” in the sense that they are willing to take bigger risks, make deeper sacrifices, and endure greater suffering than any “normal” person would do in pursuit of victory. Whereas lesser athletes want to win, great athletes need to win. And in each case, I discovered, this need is rooted in some underlying psychological need that has not been met in everyday life.

RELATED: Why Every Runner Should Be a Sprinter

Some are born this way, driven to fill an inner void by latching onto sport with addiction-like avidity. Boxing champion Jack Johnson is one example, impelled by an insatiable hunger for self-determination that found a perfect outlet in the ring. Others get their driving need from adverse life experiences, as was the case for two-sport Olympic medalist Clara Hughes of Canada, who was raised by an alcoholic and abusive father. For Hughes, winning became a substitute for the unconditional love that was withheld from her by her dad.

The second key mental trait found in all great athletes is very nearly the opposite of the first. If the only thing these individuals had going for them was a willingness to risk, sacrifice, and endure more than any competitor, they would self-destruct instead of becoming legends. But the true greats in sport also “have their shit together,” meaning they are supremely skilled self-regulators who control their thoughts, emotions, and actions in the athletic environment. If the void inside supplies the power that drives them to high achievement, their self-regulatory ability supplies the steering, enabling them to make good decisions consistently and to course-correct whenever they make a bad decision.

RELATED: Personality: The Overlooked Key to Athletic Performance

What’s fascinating to me about the minds of great athletes like Jack Johnson and Clara Hughes is the way these contrasting traits (the original title of my book, incidentally, was Screw Loose, Shit Together) coexist harmoniously in their minds. Driven to extremes by the void within, they are at the same time unfailingly disciplined in their goal pursuit, seeming both “crazier” and saner than the rest of us. But if I’m right that the traits I’ve identified are indeed essential to fulfilling athletic potential, what does this mean for the rest of us?

Follow the Leaders

Good news! There’s plenty of evidence that everyday athletes like us can transform a mere desire to succeed into a perceived need. In Chapter 8 of The Other Talent I name seven common types of “screw-loosening” life experiences that achieve this effect. The one that worked for me was healthy regret. As an adolescent I allowed an inordinate fear of race pain to ruin a promising running career. When I got back into running ten years later, regret became the fuel I needed to belatedly reach my full potential.

There’s also plenty of evidence that everyday athletes like us can get our shit together and become better self-regulators. Proven methods of improving one’s capacity to self-regulate include mindfulness, cognitive reframing, structured goal-setting, journaling, and using small self-regulatory tasks (such as pacing) as stepping stones to bigger self-regulatory challenges (such as staying on track with a multiweek training plan).

RELATED: The Psychological Power of Endurance Sports

The minds of great athletes are valuable sources of useful information on what it takes for any athlete to reach their full potential. What we learn from studying them is that it takes a dash of “crazy” in the form of a need to excel that is rooted in a deeper psychological need, combined with a well-developed capacity to regulate one’s thoughts, emotions, and actions in the pursuit of goals. If you haven’t yet reached your full potential and you want to take your athletic development as far as possible, take the time to cultivate “the other talent.”