Have you ever watched a professional sporting event and wondered how some people can be so athletic? Then you begin to wonder if you could ever be at that level and realize that it is an unrealistic objective.
But sometimes, you come across very average people and find out they are much quicker, stronger, and faster than the average person. Personally, I know of some people who barely play any sports but are able to jump 40 inches off the ground and dunk effortlessly.
So, is athleticism natural/genetics or can it be developed?
The definition of athleticism is generally based on how high one can jump, how fast one can run, and how strong one is compared to the rest of the population. To see what can and can’t be done by regular people, we can look at regular individuals who have had an attempt at one of the best vertical jump programs (such as this) in the market as an example: Vert Shock.
The Vert Shock program is a program of intense training for the purpose of increasing your vertical jump. This program claims that it can improve a regular person’s vertical jumping ability by 10 inches or more, which is quite significant. There are many sources online where individuals have tested this program. Generally, individuals have only been able to add somewhere between 5-10 inches onto their regular vertical leap. However, this is quite impressive and also supports the belief that athleticism can actually be developed by regular people.
Of course, people need to be realistic, though. Professional athletes invest most of their free time into training and developing their bodies to go through athletic movements on a constant basis. On the other hand, someone who works full-time in an office may only go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week (and that’s being generous for the majority of people). For those of us who choose to do this as a hobby, we cannot expect such programs to give us significant results without putting in a considerable amount of effort.
Upon review, it seems like athleticism is something that is both natural and developed over time. Of course there are people on the extreme sides of the spectrum – people who are very naturally unathletic versus people who are naturally extremely athletic. But for the average person who partakes in sports on a leisurely basis, it looks like a combination of both natural and developed athleticism is what can determine how athletic each of us can be.