Are athletes born or made: I’ve spent my life trying to solve this riddle. As a child of the Athletic Director at the University of Miami, I was exposed to the nation’s most elite athletes from a young age. I observed them practice, compete, and lose over and over again. When I became a collegiate athlete myself, I watched how my teammates were dominated by their competition, despite training just as much as they. Throughout my career as a track and field coach at Biola University, I noticed that there were some athletes that effortlessly outran, outjumped, and overpowered their peers. Now that I’m in the twilight of my life, having been surrounded by athletes for decades, I can die peacefully having derived an answer to this infernal dilemma. Don’t waste your time pursuing athletic greatness: stop working hard at a futile endeavor while you still have life to live.

Let me tell you the story of Leon, a collegiate hammer thrower. By nature, Leon was a scrawny guy with scrawny calves and narrow shoulders. As a sophomore in high school, he couldn’t have weighed more than a sack of rice. His pasty pale skin, coupled with his peach freckles, gave the impression of a vitamin deficiency. Despite what the Lord had given him, Leon had a desire to overcome his nature, his weak nature. At the precocious age of fifteen he started to gorge himself, testing how much food he could scarf at any given time. He enterprised finding Youtube tutorials on powerlifting, attending the gym alone, often without a friend. He scheduled his entire summer training program ahead of time, coordinating his powerlifting days so that soreness would not affect his throwing performance. By the beginning of the track and field season the following year, Leon looked like a different person: his shoulders towering, his calves ripped.

Leon had a goal during the summer of his junior year of being offered a collegiate scholarship for hammer throw. To accomplish this goal, Leon prescribed for himself just-manageable goals, incrementally increasing his strength and throwing distance over a prolonged period of time. By the beginning of his senior year, Leon was offered one conditional scholarship from Florida International University, which is where I met him.

Leon’s “growth mindset” enabled him to achieve his goal of playing collegiate track and field. Leon didn’t believe that his natural scrawniness limited him in any meaningful way. He refused to believe that success or failure was predetermined by his genetics. Leon accomplished his goal because his growth mindset freed him of his natural limitations.

So how could it be that merely two years later, during his sophomore year, Leon quit the track and field team? Leon lost his scholarship and starting position to Sergey, an international student. Sergey resembled a creature forged from the side of a mountain. He possessed the strength of an earthquake. His underbelly often protruded from his jersey like a ravine separating the world.

Sergey had natural force. He didn’t have to try to gain weight; he didn’t organize his training regimen. The growth mindset wasn’t necessary for Sergey. God gave him the frame of an orc, and he used it to dominate Leon and everyone else who stood in his way. No matter how much Leon ate, trained, or practiced, Leon could not overcome Sergey’s natural, God-given might. Leon’s genetics limited Leon’s ability to compete with Sergey. Since only one scholarship was permitted for hammer throw, Leon lost his scholarship. – along with it, his faith in the growth mindset.

There are five takeaways from Leon’s story. Let us learn from Leon’s mistakes:

1. When it comes to competition, all that matters is the dub.

All that matters is the dub. Coach didn’t care whether it was Leon or Sergey that delivered the W. All that mattered to coach was that his hammer thrower threw further than the competition. Leon and Sergey were a means to an end, and Sergey was the more productive of the two. The hammer does not sympathize with the underdog; the hammer does not care that its thrower had to overcome natural deficiencies to compete with the best of the best. No extra meters are awarded to the athlete with the most disciplined training regimen. It does not matter that Leon tried harder than Sergey, or practiced more than him: Sergey replaced Leon because Sergey was a more productive hammer thrower.

2. Growth mindset is a means to an end.

Discipline, organization, effort, grit: these are tools an athlete can use to gain a competitive advantage. Leon used a growth mindset to gain weight and become a stronger hammer thrower. Sergey, on the other hand, did not need to discipline himself because God gave him natural mass and strength. Growth mindset is not necessary to become a great athlete. Athletes should use it if it tends to increase the chances of winning the ‘chip. Growth mindset and discipline should be used in furtherance of a goal. But, just like any other tool, they can be at times useful, and at other times harmful. Whereas one athlete needs discipline to gain a competitive edge, another may disparage it because he needs to convince himself that he is naturally talented. To compete at the highest level, some athletes need to believe that others cannot improve. Whether an athlete has a growth mindset or not does not necessarily affect the team’s bottom line: win.

3. Growth mindset engenders jealousy when it doesn’t pay off.

Throughout my life I’ve noticed that people become jealous when they compare themselves to one another. In competition, circumstances force you to compare yourself to others. Leon had to compare his strength to that of Sergey, and there was a very easy measure of comparison: the distance of the hammer thrown. Sergey outclassed Leon in every objective category despite putting less effort, and this probably made Leon jealous. Leon was probably jealous that Sergey did not have to dedicate so much of his life towards training. Perhaps Leon felt indignant that his efforts were futile. In either case, Leon’s fantasy of overcoming his weak nature came crashing down on him. Leon probably resented Sergey because Sergey forced Leon to confront Leon’s wrathful attitude towards himself, nature, and God. Sergey proved just how worthless feelings are when confronted by a force of nature. No amount of persistence, wrath, or willpower can stop a tornado from swallowing you whole.

4. Growth mindset can disparage the gifts that God gave you.

God made everyone perfect as they are. Leon was perfect as a scrawny sack of rice. He had no God-given reason to re-invent himself. The purpose of our lives is to discover what talents God intended for us to have, and perfect those talents to our utmost ability. It is obvious that God never intended for Leon to become a hammer thrower. If that was God’s intention, God would have given Leon a larger frame, like Sergey. To become a collegiate hammer thrower, Leon had to turn his back on God’s plan for him. Rather than following the grace of God, Leon fueled his ambition with resentment, wrath, and revenge towards himself and his nature. Leon resented his scrawny nature, so he worked hard and disciplined himself to become someone else. But blinded by his rage, he could not see that his desire to become someone else disparages God. Leon wanted to re-invent himself, but Leon was perfect exactly the way God created him. In the end, Leon got exactly what he deserved because it was never God’s plan for Leon to re-invent himself.

5. Growth mindset has the effect of deceiving others.

The main takeaway I want you guys to remember is that the purpose of hard work and growth mindset is to imitate God-given natural talent. Leon trained like a monster his junior year to compensate for his lack of natural strength. He supplemented his natural strength just as an amputee supplements his amputated arm with a prosthetic. Unlike the amputee, however, Leon’s prosthetic leaves no trace of its artificiality. Leon appeared as if he always had God-given strength. A third party comparing Sergey and Leon could never tell Leon supplemented his strength, whereas Sergey was strong naturally. There’s nothing about Leon’s appearance that suggests he once weighed as much as a sack of rice. As a result of his training, Leon sets himself forth as a man with God-given strength, when in reality he acquired his strength. Leon misrepresents himself because no one can tell the difference between God-given and acquired strength.

It is wrong to misrepresent yourself to the world because you should not feel compelled to hide who you truly are. The fact that Leon believes there’s something wrong with being scrawny points to a deeper issue, one that prosthesis cannot fix. There’s no amount of discipline that could wipe away Leon’s guilty conscience for being born weak. Leon can pretend that he wasn’t born the way he was, but pretending to be strong doesn’t attack the root issue. Imitation only delays the inevitable, until a force of nature like Sergey forces Leon to reckon with his insecurities. You shouldn’t willfully misrepresent yourself because someone someday will discover the man hiding behind the mask.

---

The pursuit of athletic greatness is a waste of time if God didn’t intend for you to be great. Leon, a former teammate of mine, developed an ambition to become great at hammer throw. He posed just-manageable strength goals and believed in his ability to re-invent himself.  

Leon’s ambition, however, ultimately harmed him. His growth mindset could not prepare him for Sergey, a force of nature with mountain-like strength. When willpower and discipline could not rival Sergey’s natural strength, Leon became resentful and jealous towards Sergey. He didn’t think it was fair that Sergey had the perfect frame for hammer throw, whereas Leon had to slave for his power.

Another way growth mindset harmed Leon is that it enabled him to re-invent himself. Leon shouldn’t want to be anything else other than the man God intended him to be. The growth mindset offered Leon a way of undermining God’s plan, as if Leon, God’s creation, was not always already perfect.

Finally, the growth mindset has the effect of deceiving others because there’s no way of knowing where an athlete obtains his strength from. The growth mindset acts as a prosthesis, and erases any trace of its artificiality. Innate talent and artificial talent appear the same to an outsider.

So what should Leon have done instead? Perhaps Leon would have been better suited pursuing intellectual endeavors, or ones that did not involve physical strength. Where Leon lacked in physical strength, it appears he compensated for in mental strength. His ability to stick to a workout regimen suggests innate executive functioning skills. He seemed to have a knack for organization and holding a goal in mind for a long period of time: two signs of mental toughness. It would not surprise me to learn that Leon was supposed to have been a teacher, a scientist, — a writer.