The unexpected formula to create the new Lamine Yamal

BarcelonaWhen Brian Fariñas was still a kid, his father would pick him up early from the Jaume I school in Benicarló to take him to Vila-real, where he was already beginning to stand out as a football player. That gamble has been repeated many times throughout history, where some families have nurtured the precocious talent of their sons and daughters. Everyone wants to have the new Lamine Yamal. Andre Agassi, who ended up hating tennis, Tiger Woods, who received military-style training when he wasn't even the height of a golf club, or the Williams sisters, who started training when they were three years old, are extreme examples of stubborn parents.

Specialists, however, contradict these behaviors and assert that to reach the elite level, there is no need to rush or specialize too early. Research conducted by Arne Güllich, Michael Barth, David Z. Hambrick, and Brooke N. Macnamara, which analyzed data from more than 34,000 people, suggests that the world's best athletes tend to follow a more diverse path, exploring different activities and learning experiences before focusing on a single discipline. As Lluís Medir recalls in an article published in Bàsquet 360°: Research, Analysis and Application, a journal co-edited by the University of Barcelona and the Catalan Basketball Federation, the junior and senior elite populations are nearly 90% different. In the case of athletes, 82% of international youth never reach the senior elite, while the vast majority of adults who reach the elite (72%) were not even part of the elite when they were young.

“Until recently, most studies on excellence assumed that the path to the elite involved starting early, training for many hours, and excelling from childhood. Although other research also recognized the importance of factors such as motivation, perseverance, family environment, or the quality of training, the general consensus was that young people who stand out and accumulate more specific practice have a better chance of continuing to excel in the future,” warns Medir, a senior coach and associate professor of Political Science at the University of Barcelona (UB).

“Taking as references figures such as Albert Einstein, Ludwig van Beethoven or Simone Biles, the study sets out to find out if the best children and the best adults are effectively the same people. That is to say, if the young talents who shine during their training stages are, to a large extent, the same people who will reach the absolute elite in adulthood. Far from confirming this widespread idea, the research seriously calls it into question”, he explains. The sample includes everything from Nobel Prize winners in physics or chemistry to Olympic champions in various disciplines.

“The most relevant result is the confirmation of the immense difference between junior and senior elite populations in various fields. For example, in athletics and chess, almost 90% of those who stand out when young are different people from those who reach the world adult elite. This result shows that the people who are in the youth elite are replaced in almost 9 out of 10 cases by people who, when young, did not particularly stand out in the discipline in which they have come to be the best in adulthood,” concludes Medir.

Michael Jordan, who practiced different sports during childhood and adolescence instead of specializing prematurely, is an example of late progression. In contrast, the Williams sisters started playing tennis when they were only three years old and became professionals at 14. “It is common to induce the precocity of the Williams sisters in our children, but data from the population as a whole tell us that, to reach the highest level, Jordan's recipe is a much safer bet,” recalls Medir.

The authors of the studies give up to three possible explanations to understand why the path to becoming elite at early ages may not be the same as the one that leads to the adult world elite. “First, the better fit for the athlete: while young people who stand out early do so based on early and accelerated specialization, the true world champions are characterized by a slower start, with fewer hours of specific practice and a much broader base of multidisciplinary practice. Second, the increase in learning: unlike young people focused on a single sport, people who make up the world elite usually have practiced two more disciplines for almost a decade. Finally, the third explanation is that of risk limitation: early specialization entails very high costs such as the loss of social time, academic stress, and a risk of imbalance between work and rest,” summarizes Medir.