Welcome to Faith Family Fitness on 100.7 The word. My name is Jason Lupo. I'm your host today. And today we're going to be talking about a wide variety of topics, a little bit of biology. But we're really going to dive deep into this idea of talent.

And in the midst of that we're going to talk about early bloomers and late bloomers. We're going to talk about how kids develop normal development, things like that. But we want to tackle this topic of talent. And so what kind of, I want you guys to keep in mind when you're listening here is I want you to keep in mind this I started teaching biology two weeks ago. And when I started teaching biology, at great American outposts, Julie Park runs that she's been on our show. And they needed a biology teacher. And as I started reviewing the material, and we were talking about miosis, which is basically cell division. And we're talking about genetics and DNA. And the way that your chromosomes can appear in each the man and the woman as 8 million over 8 million different ways. 

And so when you take the odds of the exact genetics of one human being one baby, one kid, one adult, their odds are one and 64 trillion. That that is the DNA sequence that they have. So each of us are one and 64 trillion. That is how many potential babies how many potential kids, one couple can have genetically. And so we are special. God has made us extremely special. And we see this all throughout the Bible, we're told about it in and before we take our quick little break and come back. I want to read Psalm 139 139 13. For you formed my inward parts you covered me in my mother's womb, I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well.

And so I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about talent today as we talk about all these different topics. I want everybody to keep in mind, everybody listening, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but we're chosen one and 64 trillion. Give you an idea of the odds of winning that massive Powerball the other day was one and 365 million. So huge odds that God chose us to have the genetics that we have. We're going to take a brief timeout and we're going to come back and talk about talent.

Welcome back to Faith Family fitness. Today's topic of conversation is talent. What is talent? And we also talked a little bit about biology and about odds, right, God chose us God chose us and our genetic sequence the way that he wanted us made for His purpose. And we talked about one and 63,000,000,000,001 and 64 trillion actually, that's the amount of different ways that two parents can produce a baby.

Be in genetics, they have one in 64 trillion odds of having a genetic sequencing that we have. And so I want to keep that in mind as we talk about this idea of talent. And I want you guys to have an open mind about this word talent.

Because talent, dictionary definition, natural aptitude or skill.
And so we look at the definition, natural aptitude or skill.
And we have to think about the many different ways that we use this word talent.
Because oftentimes, when we look at youth athletics, which I'm heavily involved in, we look at one kid and we say, oh, that kid is talented.

But truly, at the end of the day, we're looking at a singular point in time. One point in time, that moment, right? At this moment, that kid is talented. And sure, we might be talking about natural gifts. But there's that common saying that Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And so somebody might not have the natural aptitude. But they're playing just as well. Are they talented?

Well, surely, we're going to say that that kid is talented, we're going to say that that athlete is talented, they may not have the natural gifts, though. But we don't see that from the court, we don't see the hard work that goes in beforehand, that that athlete has put in. And so truly, at the end of the day, the dictionary definition should be the perception at a singular point of time of somebody's skill, because that is how we use the word talent.

And I want us to kind of get off of the word talent, because I don't think that it's a useful word in a lot of respects.

Because our idea of talent can change.

Look at the NFL right now crazy year in football, and the athletes that we thought
were super talented, three, three or four years ago. Where are they today? Are we going to say the same thing if we didn't know the past record.

And I don't want to point out or bash any players. But we use the word talent,
sometimes to, you know, the dismay, the just complete, utter catastrophe of our kids and athletes that we work with.

Because sometimes we use the word talent to describe somebody's in abilities to ever reach the next level. And the truth of the matter is, we know that hard work, can get that athlete really far. And we have to look at, especially with youth. And I know we talk a lot about youth sports on this program. But we have to talk about youth, because youth development, the speed pubertal timing, all right, when an athlete starts puberty is completely different. And we're seeing a wide array right now, especially in today's culture in today's society, of when boys and girls begin puberty, and then how fast they move through the stages of puberty. And that is highly dictated as to the performance that we see on the court. And just because one athlete is growing faster, or has started puberty earlier, does not make them more talented. However, that is the word that we choose to use quite often. So we have athletes in three segments. We have the early bloomers, the late bloomers, and what we would consider the normal developers and you see this just walk in any fourth fifth grade classroom. You see the kid that super tall.

You know you might even see kids with facial hair in middle school.
When everybody else just looks smaller.
We see the difference in youth all the time when it comes to pubertal timing,
but it does not have or make any difference in future athletic ability.

There's a giant longitudinal study a long time ago the Medford growth study, very popular study, and what we know coming out of that when it applies to talent and what it implies to athlete development, youth development, pubertal development, we know that current performance has no impact or dictates later performance. And we know that those late bloomers can catch those early bloomers.

And what we tend to see a lot in sports, is we tend to see that the Late Bloomers are very dominant, or the early bloomers are very dominant on the field, they tend to be bigger, faster and stronger, because they've started puberty or earlier than the rest of their peers. And so they're gonna appear bigger, they're faster, they can use their power and their strength a lot of times. And what sometimes they end up lacking is that skill development. Because we also, when we use the word talent,
we make kids believe that there's really no more learning to be had, Oh, you're so talented, you're the best in the state right now.

But at the end of the day, you rarely see an eight year old that won a national title as an eight year old, go on and win an Olympic medal. Go on. And when NCAA nationals go on to win or make the world team, we just don't see it.
And maybe the problem becomes the fact that we've implanted on these kids minds, they are so much better, that those kids maybe don't believe that they have to continue to learn. Because what we end up seeing is they use their they use their size, over their technique. And you look at the late bloomers. And these athletes that have to work harder because they don't have the the size and the growth and the maturation. And they have to develop more technically proficient skills to keep up with those early bloomers.

So the big thing with the Late Bloomers is we have to keep them motivated in sport.
And that can be extremely tough. Because when you have a kid that's smaller, that hasn't begun puberty, competing against these kids, that have already started puberty, and we're really talking about 12 to 14 range, that's when we see the biggest difference. It's hard to keep kids in sport, that are behind developmentally.
But we know from a ton of research, that it doesn't matter that they start puberty later in life, they're going to eventually get to the size that they're going to be, they're eventually going to have the skill or the strength in the size. And if we keep them motivated in the sport, because they've developed more technically proficient, they can have extremely successful athletic careers, once they finally start puberty, but we tend to see a drop off, we already know from you know, go back, I think it was episode three, when we talked about youth sports, we already know that we see a drastic drop off in sport participation around the age of 12 to 13.

And we have all these reasons that have been presented as to why but we really haven't looked at and there hasn't been a whole lot of research, comparing the drop off to this pubertal timing. And we really need that research. And this is something I'm extremely passionate about because I've seen it through coaching for so long. But I guarantee I bet money on it, that if we were to match the kids that fall off with the kids, in that in those studies, we'd find that a lot of the kids that drop out of sport may be late bloomers. And so that becomes a coaching situation for us. That becomes a situation for athletic directors, athletic coordinators to figure out how do we keep these kids motivated because we know that once they gain the size that comes in the maturation, that they will catch up to them.

And so going back to this word talent, it's interesting, because it truly is a point in time. And that becomes even more true when we're talking about youth.
I almost think that we should stop using the word talent. Because it truly doesn't describe what we want it to describe.

Kind of like that famous line from the movie, you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

But that's what talent is. That's what talent is become, we throw out this word talent
to describe a singular moment in time. Because if you look at the athlete, that you might say, the 12 year old that you look at and go, Well, he doesn't look that talented.
Who knows, that could be the next Olympic champion. Because truly, at the end of the day, we can't predict what that athlete is going to become. What the genetics are going to allow that athlete to do post puberty.

And so it's important for our kids, that we encourage them. It's important, especially if you have kids, that are late bloomers that are behind.
If you go back in the Bible, remember that David, David was the runt, David was that late bloomer,

David was the smallest of their brothers.
And so size pubertal timing, all of that does not go into how we see and identify kids as being talented. So instead of using this word talent, we have to motivate kids to continue to push and continue to work hard, because remember, those early bloomers may decide that they don't need technical proficiency, because they can just muscle their way through, they can muscle their way through the water, they can muscle their way on the court, they can muscle their way on the ice. So we have to encourage them to continue to become more technically proficient, we have to encourage our late bloomers to stay in the sport, because we know they're going to catch up.
And our normal developers, that's what we end up seeing, we end up seeing a lot of the normal developers in collegiate sport and beyond.

And we tend to see a lot of those early bloomers drop out a sport too. Because when everybody else catches up, and they're no longer the best of the best, there's a psychosocial impact that's made in the mind of that athlete. Because at eight, 910 years old, they were the best player on the court. And now everybody else has caught up to him.

And so we also have a psychological impact there as well. And so when we look at pubertal time, and we look at the rate at which kids develop,
it makes a huge impact on sports, and athletics.

And it's up to us, it's up to coaches, it's up to parents. It's up to athletic directors, program directors, to start identifying the fact that these kids are different in the way that they develop.

And to change the language that we use, when we're coaching those kids,
to keep them engaged in sport to keep them learning and to keep encouraging them.
Because it's not about today, it's not about tomorrow. It's about the lifelong activity that these kids are going to have.

And so don't make it about today. Don't make it about that singular point in time that we identify as that kid is talented.

We have to change it. We have to change the way that we see youth athletics in order to make a difference in what we see in the sports world, in order from a from a high performance perspective, to increase the pipeline to widen the pipeline at every level, because if we can keep kids engaged, the pipeline, going from amateur sport all the way to an Olympic level athlete or professional sport. If we can widen that pipeline, we widen the amount of players the amount of athletes that we have, going to the next level and having a shot. So we truly have the best of the best athletes.
represented at any given day.

This is Faith Family Fitness on 100.7 The word we are going to take a brief timeout and then we're going to come back and wrap up this show. 

Welcome back to Faith Family Fitness on 100.7 word. Today's topic was about talent. But we started out with a conversation about just how special we are one and 64 trillion special. That's how special we are. That's how special God made us.
That's the different ways genetically, that two people can end up with a child,
a different child, one in 64 trillion. And so we are special, we are unique. We are wonderfully made.

We are wonderfully made by God.
And that's an important thing to remember when we talk about talents when we talk about the gifts that God has given us.

Because at the end of the day, God made us special. And we have to remember that when we talk about the hard conversations about the differences in athletic performance, the differences in pubertal timing which we talked about.
We have to remember that for the sake of our kids, we need our kids to remember that.

And so I urge you if you missed any part of this show, go back online. We are we are at every podcast provider, Spotify, Apple podcasts, you can go back you can listen to the show, you can listen to our past shows we have some really good information, especially for youth, sports and parents. We talk a lot about sports as a vehicle for positive youth development, which you will find in one of our past episodes. We are here for you guys. We are here to answer your questions. So if a question has been brought up in your mind from this show, from any of our shows, email us questions at Faith family fit.org You can also go to our website, Faith family fit.org And I urge you to also if you are in Colorado Springs listening and your children do not have a place to play sports or be accepted. We welcome them to Full Armor sports teams.com go to full armor that is the traditional spelling AR M O U our sports teams.com. Find a variety of sports that we offer that we can get your kids engaged with teammates, and loving coaches.

So we have people in your kids corners, to encourage them to continue and to encourage them to develop the way that God intends. Because we are all fearfully and wonderfully made and chosen, made in the image of God. And that's an important thing to remember.

So thank you for joining us. We are here every Saturday at 9am This is faith, family Fitness on 100.7 Though word this has been faith family fitness with Coach Jason Lupo of former sports teams of Colorado Springs. join him at the same time next week for faith family Fitness on the word 100.7.