The Nature Nurture Myth

You must have heard of the nature nurture myth?

Federer = Nature and Nadal = Nurture

Does it exist or is it just a myth?

The myth is thinking its one or the other. I'd be fairly confident that genetics plays a huge role, and nurture decides whether the potential is realised.

Federer and Nadal are both born into sporting families, suggesting they were both encouraged into sporting activity from the start, building hand/eye co-ordination in the critical early years when brain development is rapid.

Watching them play suggests the difference might reflect genetic differences - but that's untestable - but I'd say with what we know it's very likely that Nadal is more drilled whereas Federer might have been encouraged to play as he felt. That does correspond to what little we know of who moulded their early lives. Therefore their different styles would most likely be a result of nurture, but with both depending on nature to create the potential.

In my opinion, trying to discern or overt differences between Nadal and Federer is largely academic in the context of this discussion...when you compare them to people at large. Both were born to play tennis...or probably a few other sports using similar traits.

Both are clearly blessed with talent, determination and a will to practice.
This drilled stuff about Nadal is oft-purported but Federer is also drilled through the years...you can't play at this level without being so. Also, the thing bout Toni driving the naive Rafael on blindly forgets the fact that Rafael showed better ability in playing with his left hand, and preferred to play that way, so it was a natural switch - not some tactic devised by Toni. Look at Nadal's FH in practice and argue that isnt a natural shot to him. But on top of all this is Rafael's determination to want to be the best - like Federer. Those of us with children know that you cannot force them into hours and hours, month after month, year after year of practising something they either don't like, or are no good at. The will power to do this, to want to do this, has to come from within...and yes it can be nurtured/channelled too but you can't fundamentally create it. So for me for all these top 5 players it's genetics (talent), nurturing (environment) and unyielding practice - practice they are self-driven to do. Don't for one moment think Federer doesn't practice as often as Nadal, he's had to put the hours in too. However, what they practice at will vary and be related to their own strengths. For example Nadal practices ccFHs for hours, Federer does so with serves. Federer focuses more on winning point technique, Nadal more on ralley sustenance then a winner...different approaches but both putting the hours in nonetheless to ensure success they're both inwardly and similarly driven to achieve.

I agree, talking about drilling can give the misleading impression of huge differences; I think it's more at the margin and in emphasis.

Partly myth and partly true, but more myth. Nadal has a lot of raw talent for me.

Probem with all these debates is that nobody defines terms.

Who wants to define "talent"? When does it manifest?

Talent as in innate ability. Nurture as in the enviroment it exists in.

It can be very difficult to discern what is the most influential. For example I can remember reading something about Nadal when he was a small child. (I can't give a link as I can't remember where... ) His father is one of 4 or 5 brothers and he was the first to have a child. Rafa. It was a novelty for all the brothers to have a small child to play with so he got lots of attention. One of the games they played involved the brothers standing in a circle with Rafa in the middle as they threw a ball to each other with Rafa trying to get it. Apparently they were amazed that Rafa didn't cry or get frustrated by being teased in this way but loved it and was extra determined to get the ball. Ha ha! I can imagine this. Maybe that's why I can remember the story.

Was this because he had innate ability at ball skills and mental toughness? Was it because his father and uncles by playing with him in this way nurtured ball skills and mental toughness? Or was it because he had reasonable ball skills and mental toughness so that when his father and uncles played ball with him they had fun and were encouraged to repeat the game. This increased his ability. Then his increased ability would encourage his fathers and uncles even more. A sort of loop were innate ability can affect environment and then environment affect ability... and on and on.

So talent is literally a fixed quantity at the moment of birth? Or even at conception?

Has this ever been proven?

I wonder if there are studies of twins separated at birth that show talent can be equally realised under different "nurturings"? Defining talent is hard enough, to prove how much comes from DNA vs environment is nigh on impossible. But I don't believe world class ability can solely come from the latter, whereas I do believe it can come from the former...

bogbrush

Well that wasn't what I was trying to say. Of course nothing has been proven it is way too complicated. You only have to look at identical twins who share the exact same genes and are brought up in the same family (so the environment is similar but of course it can never be identical) and yet end up with different abilities.

If you have identical twins psychologists are always desperate to experiment on them for this reason. Maybe Federer should train one of his twins for 10,000 hours in tennis and the other for 10,000 hours in maths and see what happens?

Im just trying to narrow down to what talent really means.

Seems to me that to have any lye talent must be DNA whereas everything else is nurture. In that case it's meaningless to differentiate between any player or to guess what share anyone gets their performance from. It's just a false analysis.