Natural Talent

People throw around the term "natural talent" all the time and it often refers to an athlete with extraordinary ability. But does that athlete actually have natural talent? Are people born with certain athletic abilities that give them an advantage over the average person? Traits such as a person's height can play a part but I now believe that what most people refer to as talent is actually the result of hard work. If you want to excel at something you have to practice.

Take any professional athlete and you can trace their success back to 1000's and 1000's of repetitions of whatever they do. Throwing a football, hitting a tennis ball, shooting a puck; it's all the same. This is a comforting thought because I definitely don't have "natural talent". When I started at SRKF, my flexibility was terrible, my balance was worse, and I couldn't do a set of 10 situps. Fast forward 16 months and all of those things have vastly improved. Was it natural talent at work? Nope. It was practice.

 So what does this mean? It means that it doesn't matter if I'm short or old or anything else. If I work hard enough, I will get better and better. The only limitations I have are the ones that I set for myself.

Cory Smid