This past summer, David Epstein, who ran for Columbia in college and used to write for Sports Illustrated, made a big splash in the running world with the release of his first book. It's called The Sports Gene and, inspired by Epstein's own curiosity, it explores the role of genetics in elite athletic achievement. The chapter that I'm going to focus on in this post is called 'The Talent of Trainability.' The chapter opens with a superbly-written anecdote of Jim Ryun's rapid ascension from high school wannabe to teenage world record holder. Epstein then transitions over to science, in particular the HERITAGE study, which produced a couple of stunning revelations:
1) There is a lot of variation in how much different people improve even while doing the same training.
2) There is much less variation in how much relatives improve while doing the same training.
In other words, improvement is, partially, a talent. Some people respond really well to training - their body is very good at handling, and adapting to, the stress of training. These are 'high-responders,' Jim Ryun having been one of them, obviously. Athletes who see relatively little improvement from training are called 'low-responders.'
I had a vague sort of knowledge of this phenomenon in the past but, since reading The Sports Gene, I have paid more attention to it. In particular, two of my high-school teammates stand out to me as being pretty far on opposite ends of the trainability spectrum.
One of them - let's call him Lenny - had a running age of three years entering the summer preceding the 2013 cross country season, his last one. Lenny was never one of the better runners on even the JV team but he came to practice regularly and enjoyed running a few miles with his friends. He didn't have an overly-competitive mindset; he just liked how running felt. His 5k PR was run during his sophomore year but he wanted to be sure to lower it in his senior season so he committed to building his best aerobic base ever. Lenny put in a full summer of mileage, making his way up to 40 miles per week, which was a lot for him. He even tried the occasional tempo run or strides. He was sure to make a big jump this season, I remember thinking.
Instead, it never truly came together for Lenny. He did set a PR in the 5k, but only a minor one. He was not markedly different from the runner he had been the past two seasons and was stuck in the middle of the pack of the JV team, despite having outworked every single other JV runner over the summer.
My other teammate, "Marcus", was also entering his senior year. He had joined cross country his sophomore year and ran over 24 minutes for 5k in each of the handful of races he ran in that season. He wasn't that interested in running and hardly ran at all until his junior year cross country season. His first race of junior year was finally sub-24 but still nothing attention-grabbing. But each race, he got faster, significantly faster. Over and over again. By the end of the season, he had made the Varsity squad, without a summer base and working no harder than the rest of Varsity. Even after this success though, Marcus did not run track and had a modest build-up to his senior year season. He even had to take time off early in the season due to injury. But he steadily progressed and when it came to Championship season, there Marcus was - the #1 runner on the team.
These anecdotes, of course, don't themselves prove anything. Scientific studies, like the HERITAGE one, can prove things. But I still think anecdotes can be useful too: they can illustrate what is proven in a study. Watching Lenny and Marcus in parallel last fall helped me further understand Epstein's work. My observations also sparked an idea:
What if trainability doesn't exist quite to the extent that the HERITAGE study indicated? The reason to question this is that the subjects in the study were all training in the same way. (Of course they were - they needed to keep training constant to get meaningful results!) But, as any coach will tell you, this is not what happens - or what should happen - in real life. Some do best off of high-mileage, long aerobic workouts, and just a little speed thrown in (e.g. Cam Levins). Others thrive on a plan that emphasizes quality. They can do all of their miles at a decent clip but break down when they try to push the volume (e.g. Bernard Lagat). Other still break through after making functional muscular strength a priority (e.g. Mo Farah).
So maybe the low-responders from the HERITAGE study and Lenny from my cross country team just weren't doing the right training. I'm not suggesting this fully explains the discrepancy in improvement that different runners experience on the same plan, but the importance of individualizing training is very real and should not be forgotten.
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