What we get wrong about athleticism

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6096850/2025/01/30/patrick-mahomes-nikoa-jokic-body-athletes-workout/

by Hooke • 1 year ago

44 118 1 year ago

cowmoo728• 1 year ago

it's also true for people in cgs (centimeters, grams, seconds) sports like running, cycling, and lifting. if you look at the best in the world (pogacar, ingebrigtsen, blummenfelt) they don't look like fitness models. they look surprisingly normal. carrying "extra" body fat is helpful for training recovery, hormone levels, mood, and sleep. if the sport requires getting lean to hit a weight target for a specific event, athletes can do that, but they shouldn't stay ultra lean during the majority of their training.

nradov8• 1 year ago

For Grand Tour cycling stage races, the GC contenders typically start the race carrying a few extra kg (although still very thin). This helps a bit to avoid getting sick or fatigued during the early stages and they know they'll gradually lose the extra weight as the race progresses.

quacked2• 1 year ago

"Dad bod" is a very silly term. Any "dad bod" talked about by the popular media is almost always accompanied by height and extensive musculature. Mahomes is in the low end of "athleticism" in the NFL, but is 99th percentile on all metrics in the general male population.

In other words: "if you are extremely tall and/or extremely strong, you don't need be shredded to still be athletic". Who would have thought?

tiahura2• 1 year ago

Mahomes and the Chiefs have been pretty open that they see a layer of fat on him as injury prevention padding.

jjtheblunt2• 1 year ago

How did you find Mahomes being in the 99th percentile evaluation? Are such things online somewhere?

quacked2• 1 year ago

It's just a guess. There are 40,000,000 men worldwide in the top 1% of any metric, and I am fairly certain it's safe to assume that Mahomes can throw, lift, sprint, run long-distance, and stands tall enough to place in that top 40M every time.

I suppose some argument could be made that he's probably more in the 90s for everything rather than 99, but he's a full-time professionally trained athlete in the most dominant NFL team currently active, so I don't think calling 99% absent any formal data is too crazy.

nradov8• 1 year ago

Watch any Chiefs game, then compare against 100 men that you know. How many of them have more strength, speed, and agility?

jghn2• 1 year ago

If you asked me to bet over/under on 99th percentile for nearly all elite, world class level athletes of "normal" sports (i.e. not cornhole championships or something) I'd always take the over.

edanm• 1 year ago

In other words: "if you are extremely tall and/or extremely strong, you don't need be shredded to still be athletic". Who would have thought?

It's more than that. Being shredded is actively anti-athletic.

This isn't exactly a secret - pretty much anyone casually into bodybuilding or strength training knows that you lower body fat to look stronger, but raise body fat to actually be stronger, at least to some extent.

ErikAugust2• 1 year ago

Conversely:

“Just because you look the part, doesn’t mean you can play, ask Manute Bol.” - Sage Francis

I'm not sure Manute is actually a great example but it's still a good line.

When I was playing sports back 25 years ago, I heard the expression "looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane" more than once.

NickC25• 1 year ago

Yeah seriously - Manute is still the leading career blocks-per-game record holder. Wasn't a great offensive player, but man, he was so goddamn tall and was impossible to shoot over. His son is a pretty decent player, too.

Bol was also a fantastic human being. Incredibly active politically and donated much of his money towards his poverty-stricken home country of Sudan. He was not perfect, but his charitable acts affected millions, and that should be commended.

0_____0• 1 year ago

I wonder how this relates to Hollywood, namely the well-known shift towards men having bodybuilder level physiques, even in roles where it doesn't really fit the character.

If you're in sport, you know that highly performant bodies don't look like that almost ever. They're too specialized to have the physique that prioritizes aesthetics. Road cyclists with their lanky frames, powerlifters have fat over their absurdly strong cores. High level marathoners look like they might blow over in a stiff wind.

The most interesting thing about the article to me was the mention of kinesthetic skill. This is a huge differentiating factor IME in mountain biking. Some people do not have the meta visualization to understand why what they did worked or didn't, why they cleared that rock, why their weight transfer caused the front to wash out. The feedback loop doesn't exist, and they can't progress.

m348e912• 1 year ago

I wonder how this relates to Hollywood, namely the well-known shift towards men having bodybuilder level physiques, even in roles where it doesn't really fit the character.

I agree. When I read "The Martian", I wasn't picturing Mark Watney as Jason Bourne.

yencabulator3• 1 year ago

Dunno this might even be realistic, astronauts have to be "in shape" not as in strong or muscular but baseline healthy:

https://www.justjared.com/photo-gallery/4473115/matt-damon-s...

phillipcarter• 1 year ago

Moreover, it's not just bodybuilder physiques, but specifically the kind that is created via heavy use of anabolic steroids. Their bodies are literally unattainable without drugs.

nine_k3• 1 year ago

Peacock's impressive tail does not make it a much better flyer, or fighter, or whatever. The huge feathers only demonstrate that the bird can still function adequately even with this useless and expensive ornamentation.

The same way, a "highly athletic" / bodybuilder body demonstrates that a man can spend resources on building all these impressive-looking muscles and can strictly ration carbs. (I don't even try to mention what women have to do to look "like a model".)

So it's the same demonstrative behavior, only the results are harder to buy directly than a supercar or a yacht. It's about as practical: not completely useless, but the point is not in the utility but in the hard-to-achieve aesthetics.

Much like a real able flyer looks much less impressive than a peacock (look at a goose or a crow), a real high-achieving athlete looks much less impressive than an athlete for show. But looks sometimes play a critical role, e.g. for an actor, or during dating, so it's not irrational behavior.

d0mine2• 1 year ago

Unless you use steroids or won the genetic lottery, you won’t look much different in clothes compared to someone who never lifts weights.

There are proven short-term, medium-term, and long-term benefits of resistance training for men and women, both young and old.

lukas09919• 1 year ago

I largely agree with you, but in general more muscle => stronger so bodybuilder muscles are not strictly ornamentation. In fact it’s not uncommon for bodybuilders to become powerlifters and vice versa.

Also, an underappreciated role of muscle mass is as a giant store of emergency amino acids.

tsss• 1 year ago

Arguably, women have to do much less to "look like a model" since that only requires not eating too many calories (facial proportions and such can not be changed anyway, require no effort), 15-minute daily skin-care routine and waxing every now and then. A bodybuilder has to alternate between bulking and fasting, pay attention to nutrition and spend many hours a week doing hard exercise to build muscle. A hollywood actor like Chris Hemsworth will not drink for two days before a topless scene to achieve that muscle definition. An emergency doctor has to be on set because it's so dangerous. And don't tell me about cosmetics or hair care... a typical football star will go to the barber three times a week minimum and they aren't even in close-up shots.

rasz• 1 year ago

They do it even if it directly clashes with the project. Like for example Sonic 2 James Marsden playing a nerd while being more buff than beefcake Shemar Moore.

the_af5• 1 year ago

the well-known shift towards men having bodybuilder level physiques

What's puzzling is that bodybuilder physiques aren't even attractive to most people. I don't mean physically fit and showing some muscle, I mean the extremes of Arnold and even more "built" guys. When you talk to normal people, they don't find it attractive. The people who universally find the bodybuilder physique attractive are other bodybuilders! It's a very "niche" look.

And it's well-known it's not a physique that correlates with actual physical strength or agility. It's just for show. Actual physical fitness doesn't look like that, and even bodybuilders admit this.

lukas09919• 1 year ago

And it's well-known it's not a physique that correlates with actual physical strength

100% disagree. The last I checked, muscle size is the strongest correlating physical characteristic with force production. Also, have you not seen videos of Ronnie Coleman lifting weights?

bitexploder• 1 year ago

It often isn’t for other people. Kinda like when I drive a certain car I like or wear certain clothes that I like. I am signaling to some degree, but more than anything it’s because /I/ like it. Same reason I lift, stay lean, etc. it’s for me. Often the group it does signal to is maybe not immediately obvious as well.

nradov8• 1 year ago

Bodybuilders are optimizing for the judging criteria in a competitive sport, not for conventional attractiveness. If you step back and look at the sport objectively it seems a bit silly, but then you could say the same about most sports.

nonameiguess• 1 year ago

Most bodybuilders aren't in the open category of the untested federations. It doesn't help that they look like overcooked rotisserie chickens with the fake tans, starvation-level leanness, and dehydration to make minute differences actually visible to judges on stage. Outside of the few weeks right around competition, though, most of them look a lot more normal and I'd say well within the range of what would popularly be found attractive.

Now, anyone actually on stage and the true mass monsters? Sure, nobody finds that attractive, but Hollywood actors don't look like that, either. Alan Ritchson and Joe Manganiello and what not are plenty attractive.

prisenco• 1 year ago

| even in roles where it doesn't really fit the character.

I recently watched A Small Light with Bel Powley playing Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who hid Anne Frank.

It was solid miniseries, I recommend it. Not extraordinary, lots of tv melodrama but still worth it. Otto Frank doesn't get nearly enough attention for his prescience in trying to keep his family safe.

That said, the actor who plays Jan Gies, her husband, while playing the role very well, at some point takes his shirt off and reveals an absolutely incredibly bulked physique. A social worker in Nazi occupied 1940's Netherlands where people were treating ration cards like gold bullion and eating tulip soup because nothing else was left looked like he was consuming 4500 calories a day and possibly on a steroid stack that didn't exist yet.

He might as well have whipped out an iPhone, it took me out that much. I understand every actor is waiting for a call from Marvel these days, but I wish actors didn't feel so pressured to be ripped for every role. If I was the director I would have at least never put him in a shirtless scene and kept him in oversized suits.

tiahura2• 1 year ago

Interesting article.

There was a neat play in the last superbowl where Mahomes made a pass after being twisted 360 by the defender. It was almost a mirror image of a video of Mahomes doing an exercise utilizing the same movement with his trainer Stroupe.

6stringmerc• 1 year ago

As a disabled individual with hemophilia, genetics have been a mixed bag. Due to my well-noted fondness for PEDs - one of my last posts years ago was about how cocaine and cypionate saved my life from an undiagnosed neurocysticercosis infection - I made understanding "functional strength" a lifetime mission. I actually have a baseball card for Patrick Mahomes...Senior. You know, a MLB pitcher...wonder where the kid got the arm?

Anyway, I'm currently a resident at a sober living facility after spending time in jail on a ridiculous Terroristic Threat charge and I'm really grateful to have done my time in solitary confinement. Wall push ups and basic stretches to make the best of a low-fiber, high sodium, soy protein diet among the worst in Texas jails. Athleticism is relative to lifestyle. A lot of people are born with everything they need and then they throw it away with bad diet or, as I learned in jail, meth and hey-ron.

In the United States, we get almost everything wrong about the science of the body. It's a for-profit platform here. A lot of the best practices are inexpensive - cypionate, when done right, simply means proper physical exertion and protein intake and then it works magic (went from 300 to 600) but only if you give it a reasonable starting point.

fldskfjdslkfj• 1 year ago

It's basically just min/maxing of attributes to fit the specific role. A throwing QB probably doesn't need to be the fastest man alive but a few pounds of extra fat will help protect against injuries.

Now does that actually make patrick mahomes more athletic than some random person that can run faster and lift more? I would say no, but he's definitely a better QB.

yt-sdb• 1 year ago

I appreciate the point being made---that we're too reductive in how we view a healthy human body---but calling Patrick Mahomes "one of the greatest athletes on planet earth" is laughable. He's more healthy than many adults, but he's no means an outlier amongst _athletes_. Compare that claim to this header [1] by Cristiano Ronaldo. He jumped 2.6 meters, at pace, perfectly timed, to score a goal, in his mid-30s.

And more generally, I would take almost no health advice from American footballers, many (most?) of whom will go into old age with ailments and injuries due how they treated their bodies.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMZ1O6uFdAE

lukas09919• 1 year ago

He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth.

American football requires a different skill tree than world football. So of course if you only judge by the standards of world football he is not great. But why would you do that?

And athleticism as different from health. In fact, beyond a threshold I believe it is detrimental to it.

exceptione7• 1 year ago

? You can assume that parent knows who Cristiano Ronaldo is.

jjtheblunt2• 1 year ago

He benefits from superlative play calling and a superlative supporting cast (pacheco etc) with no way to clearly establish how much that benefits his stats. Contrast him with same size Caleb Williams and it gets interesting, for example.

fear912• 1 year ago

Calling American football “one of the most competetive sports on Earth” feels like a stretch. It’s big in US, but not that popular anywhere else.

acatnamedjoe2• 1 year ago

He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position in the most competitive league in one of the most competitive sports on Earth

Isn't it exactly the point of the article though that this doesn't necessarily mean elite across-the-board athleticism?

Your statement would also have described Tom Brady for most of his career, and I don't think anyone would seriously claim he was a 99%ile athlete (certainly not for sprinting, agility, etc.)

jghn2• 1 year ago

He’s the most successful player in the most competitive position ...

That is likely to wind up true when it's all said & done but Tom Brady still holds that title.

exar0815• 1 year ago

Another amazing feat of age is Noriaki Kasai, 51 Years old, still active in competitive ski jumping. Oldest Person to ever win a world cup competition. In 2014. And still (sometimes more, sometimes less) capable of performing.

https://youtu.be/dEkk7coK6Bs?si=2d37ssmtJtzv3Mp-

recursivedoubts6• 1 year ago

There are different types of athleticism. Quarterback in the NFL is the most difficult and important position on the field. Without taking anything away from him, like most humans, Ronoldo wouldn't last a single NFL game.

fear912• 1 year ago

And Mahomes wouldn’t last a 3 minute round with a boxer.

AnimalMuppet• 1 year ago

True. But equally, Mahomes wouldn't last a single top-level soccer game. The running is much more continuous, and far longer than NFL players run in a game. NFL players have tuned their bodies for a different activity profile, one that fits the NFL but doesn't fit professional soccer.

exceptione7• 1 year ago

I would rather associate athleticism with very fine motion control than raw power.

Otherwise we would look at kick boxing.

jppope2• 1 year ago

American Football is debatably the competitive sports league with the greatest athletes in the world and he is a top athlete in that league by results. How can you substantiate a claim that he is not one of the greatest athletes on the planet if not by results and the competition?

Also your comment about Ronaldo is basically that he can jump high and run fast which makes him one of the greatest athletes? I think he's an amazing athlete but not because of his vertical jump. There were 30+ kids at my high school with a higher vertical jump than him.

The article's point is that there is more to athleticism than run fast, jump high. They are right.

naveen99• 1 year ago

There are only 100k professional athletes in the world. That’s 1 in 100k rounding to 10 billion people. So a professional athlete is already 4.2 standard deviations above average. Top 1% is only 2.5 standard deviations above average.

There are closer to a million professional actors… so actors in general are around 4 sd above average.

red_trumpet• 1 year ago

Mahomes isn’t the only one. Superstar athletes in all kinds of physically demanding sports are combining unconventional body types with otherworldly athleticism: Luka Dončić’s pudgy midsection. Josh Allen’s round barrel chest. Nikola Jokić’s lack of muscle definition.

Didn't they actually mean "combining conventional body types with otherworldly athleticism"? I mean, I'm pretty sure what the examples given are way more present in society than what is often expected...

danso• 1 year ago

“Unconventional” compared to the average athlete

ban-evader2• 1 year ago

I competed in bodybuilding throughout my early twenties, but never felt athletic. Nowadays I do calisthenics and cardio (rowing, running, cycling) and frankly look a lot more athletic as well.

I think crossfit and decathlon pros are the peak of athleticism.

StevigeHoning• 1 year ago

Serious question; what's a decathlon pro?

ban-evader2• 1 year ago

Someone who competes in decathlon for a living, I suppose.

hgomersall• 1 year ago

Someone who does decathlon professionally? They certainly look closer to the ideal aesthetic than most track and field athletes.

hackyhacky• 1 year ago

It's like a regular Decathlon but with a bigger screen.

infamousclyde2• 1 year ago

My wife is an Olympian in a track event and we have also discussed this at length. CrossFit’s trademark of “the fittest on earth” for the champion of their international competition (… the name escapes me…) always elicits an eye rolls from her. If you asked her, she would say Decathletes are the crème de la crème.

andyferris• 1 year ago

Is this paywalled?

derr1• 1 year ago

Yes

ProjectArcturis2• 1 year ago

Remember Fedor Emilianenko? He was probably the best MMA fighter in the world around 2010, and he looked like this:

https://images.app.goo.gl/JZoqXvSbcnCSahkKA

ErikAugust2• 1 year ago

Look at Daniel Cormier too. Incredible athlete.

carabiner• 1 year ago

Elite rock climbers look like this: https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/06/07/ap_1815766716269...

ProjectArcturis2• 1 year ago

Huh! I thought they'd be skinnier.

onlyrealcuzzo• 1 year ago

Remember Nikola Jokic?

The current best basketball player in the world who looks like this: https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/645d93...

gpjanik3• 1 year ago

Oh yeah, there are 4 slightly chubby guys in "elite" sports out of 10 000, therefore we got athleticism wrong.

Also, sorry to say it so directly, but none of these guys would have a remote possibility to (athletically speaking - not talking ability) play in third tier soccer in Italy or Spain, or any actually physically difficult sport (e.g. climbing). It's a rule in these sports that people look at minimum super fit, at maximum godlike, and the few exceptions that exist show extremely visible downsides (and it's clear they'd be better off being athletic).

For context, a picture of a soccer player considered unfit (constantly rated at something around ~70/100 physically in various rankings/video games/etc)

https://64.media.tumblr.com/9a64e77011b24cf2aff656356587de97...

lukas09919• 1 year ago

I cannot possibly comprehend how someone could think that NFL football and NBA basketball are ‘not physically difficult’ sports.

gpjanik3• 1 year ago

Ugh, NFL players need to run on average about half of what a third tier soccer players do. At the extreme, a goalkeeper runs about the same as most running NFL player. For sprinting, the peak speed is similar, but soccer players run 2-3km of sprints during the game (1-1.5km for NFL). I'm not bringing NBA into this because it's just not a running sport altogether.

For explosiveness, top speeds of NFL and top 5 leagues in Europe are comparable, but more consistent for soccer players. They of course have to run with a ball next to their legs, rather than in hand, which makes it technically harder. For jumping, tall soccer players are closer to NBA players than to NFL (Tomori, Ronaldo, Lewandowski, etc, jump around 80cm).

In terms of agility, NFL and top 5 leagues is similar, about 3 seconds to 30km/h, but of course the best performing players in soccer are better.

So, with some similar parameters, soccer players do what NFL players do, but 3 times as long. That's the difference between "I can do this with a bit of a belly" and "I need to look like a god to even survive this game without getting a heart attack".

Edit: my point above wasn't that it's not physically difficult altogether, it was that these are not _elite_ sports in terms of physical requirement. Swimming, climbing, sprinting, soccer (mainly by the virtue of how professionalized it is), bicycle racing, that's physically super difficult. Basketball is super technical and relatively chill in physical requirements compared to these sports, and NFL is generally challenging but not nearly as much as the "top" sports, unless you specifically cherry-pick comparison to favor heavy, fast people. I chose rather versatile metrics that focus on input, e.g. how much you need to train to become fit enough.

yencabulator3• 1 year ago

NFL has a lot less running than soccer, grandparent thinks all athleticism looks like soccer.

Imagine making a weightlifter run for an hour.

recursivedoubts6• 1 year ago

and it is for this reason that I love baseball: my dude bartolo can be playing at a a world class level looking like a rec-league softball guy smuggling a beer out to the mound in his waistband:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfvCKA9RdH4

lukas09919• 1 year ago

That man is a treasure

csa• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/MMaH2

llm_nerd• 1 year ago

The average QB excels by using their brain, Mahomes being a prime example. He has the basic physical skills, but it's his decision making and fine motor skills that led to his excellence. This is the case of most QBs. The position does not demand physical excellence, and if he was totally ripped it would offer little advantage while coming with downsides.

Linebackers, in contrast, usually look like bodybuilders. They are the cliche athlete, having to use speed and strength to excel. Linesmen on both sides of the ball are usually heavy guys -- "fat" -- yet with massive strength. DBs are again low body fat and "ripped" by any common measure. The cliche "athlete".

So athletes cover the gamut, and it depends on what you do. A dart player is an athlete but clearly a dart player doesn't have the same physical requirements as a gymnast.

As an aside, it is amazing how low people's expectations of the human form have dropped. If someone posts a picture of a man with low body fat and any inkling of a form, many comments will be about steroids. Steroids are a shortcut, but even a small amount of effort and almost anyone can be top 1%. The bar is incredibly low, and it's bizarre when someone has a bit of biceps or isn't overweight and people need to comfort themselves by telling everyone that they're augmenting.

zeroCalories• 1 year ago

I hate articles like this because they state obvious things like "there isn't one optimal physique", then fat / lazy people take that as an oppritunity to denigrate their betters.

austin-cheney3• 1 year ago

The article is a pointless counter-critique of online stupidity. Athleticism can be easily calculated with numbers:

* Lowness of resting pulse rate

* VO2max level

* Speed to run 100m, 800m, 1600m, marathon, 100 miles, 1000 miles

* same with biking, swimming, and mountain climbing

* squat weight limit, deadlift weight limit

* total consecutive reps of sit-ups, 20lbs bicep curl, 40lbs

What’s interesting is the distance between male and female athletic performance, across the board, grows inversely to the duration of continuous effort. For a while the fastest 100 miler in the world, by a significant margin, was female around age 40.

nradov8• 1 year ago

That seems like a pretty limited way to measure athleticism. No throwing? No jumping? No pull ups?

And at the elite levels of running, men have a pretty consistent speed advantage over women at all distances.

austin-cheney3• 1 year ago

Stop guessing at performance. This is the very ignorance the article is railing against.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon

I am seeing a lot of women world record holders. How can that be if males are consistently faster than female runners at all distances?

What we get wrong about athleticism

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