zlacker

>>i7l+(OP)
Tiger woods. I can't think of any tennis player who has been in the top 100 for the past few decades who didn't commit to it totally as a young child. Start tennis at 10? Too old. Swimmers. Has anyone stumbled into sporting greatness from being outside the top 5%? Or 1% when they hit adulthood?

So what is being said? A huge amount of elite success is in the hardware, i.e. the body &/or brain. These go through rather large changes between ages 10 an 18. Puberty. This shakes up the ordering among those who showed enough promise to have already committed to becoming elite.

What am I missing here? Seems like this research is nothing more than "Kids change through puberty, the nature and sizes of the changes are a bit of a lottery for each kid." Much like the the genetic factors are also a lottery so you can't reliably predict who is going to be great from the results of their parents. (But if your parents are both 5ft, the NBA seems an unlikely destination for you).

>>harry8+2b
What is being said is not simply that people who engaged in a certain activity since childhood do not become top performing adults. Obviously that happens a lot. But rather that the top child or youth performers are not reliably the ones that turn into top adult performers.

>>kazina+Mb
Let me express it another way.

Think of 5 relevant attributes of your body for playing something well.

Guesstimate where they were on the population bell curve when you were 10.

Guesstimate if these would have been on a different spot on the population bell curve for that attribute when you were an adult. Would you have guessed it when you wee 10? Would others have guessed it about you at that age?

Puberty changes you in unpredictable ways. Do we need a study to know that?

Everyone committing to tennis before they are 10 are elite, you wouldn't do it otherwise. Who is the best player of that elite set changes given the great puberty shake up.