The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made

by A. Mark Williams, Tim Wigmore, Matthew Syed (Foreword)

"Insightful, thoughtful, and altogether wonderful." DANIEL COYLE, New York Times bestselling author of THE TALENT CODE

"This book is a must read." EDDIE JONES, Head Coach, England Rugby

THE SECRETS OF SUPERHUMAN PERFORMANCE

Never have the best sportspeople seemed so far removed from the rest of us, their prowess so unfathomable. So how are these extraordinary athletes made?

THE BEST reveals how the most incredible sportspeople in the world get to the top and stay there. It is a unique look at the path to sporting greatness; a story of origins, serendipity, practice, genetics and the psychology of excellence, as well as of sports science and cutting edge technology.

Packed with gripping personal stories and exclusive interviews with top athletes including Siya Kolisi, Marcus Rashford, Pete Sampras, Steph Curry, Jamie Carragher, Ian Poulter, Helen Glover, Ada Hegerberg, Elena Delle Donne, Joey Votto and Mike Hussey, it explains how the best athletes develop the extraordinary skills that allow them to perform remarkable feats under extreme pressure.

Get inside the minds of champions and understand first-hand what makes them perform during high-octane competition, what they think about in the heat of the moment and what drives them to do what they do.

By combining examples from numerous original interviews with top athletes and leading sports science research, THE BEST deconstructs superhuman performance and answers the question on every sports fan's mind: "How did they do that?"

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Science

256 pages, Hardcover

Published August 20, 2020

About the author

Mark Williams is a world-leading sports scientist with a focus on expertise and skill acquisition in sport and other professional domains. He is currently a Professor at the University of Utah, having previously worked as an academic in the UK (Liverpool, London) and in Australia (Sydney).
He is one of the most published scientists globally in areas associated with talent identification and development, the psychology of excellence and how to develop optimal learning environments for skill development.
He has published almost 500 articles in numerous fields including sports science, psychology, neuroscience, medicine and education. He has written 17 academic books and delivered more than 200 keynote and invited lectures in over 30 countries. In addition to his impact as an academic and educator, he has worked extensively in high-performance sport as an applied sports scientist and as a coach educator. He has delivered courses and services for numerous national governing bodies across the globe, including UEFA, IOC, FIFA, The FA, as well as a multitude of professional sports teams in the Premier League, Premiership Rugby, National Basketball Association, National Football League, Major League Baseball, and several Olympic sports including GB Hockey and Sailing and the US Ski Team. He has also advised various armed forces and government agencies on educational policy.
He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, as well as the European College of Sports Science and the National Academy of Kinesiology in the US, and is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Science, where he has been accredited to work as a skill acquisition specialist in high-performance sport. He is Editor-in-Chief of three of the top journals in his field globally, including the Journal of Sports Sciences.
He has wide experience of working on radio and television, having been involved in documentaries for several broadcasters including the BBC, CNN, Sky and the History Channel and his work has been reported by many newspapers including The Times (London and New York), Daily Telegraph and Daily Express. He has undertaken radio work for BBC radio 2, 4, 5, and the Voice of America as well as several other channels globally.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy read that expertly distills what it takes to become a top athlete. The author does a great job of condensing a ton of information into a concise, high-level overview.

[Nathan Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tremendous job of distilling the data and research of what is behind and driving elite athletic performances. I am working on finding ways to incorporate the knowledge from parts 1 and 3 into actionable items to help inform parents and those directing youth sports programs to better understand the importance of allowing more play, experimentation, more player led experiences while limiting many of the factors that are leading to early dropout of participation.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another really good sports book which gives a whole bunch of insights and analysis on what it takes to create the ultimate athlete. The book talks about sport from a psychological level and from a preparation perspective, the importance of timing the importance of intelligence and even goes into things like eye movement which I'm super interested in.

Here are the best bits from the book:

I've been a professional runner since I was eight yes old, Jacob said after his double triumph in Berlin. I've been training, dedicated and following a good structure the same as my brothers from an early age. It was a little crazy to get this medal, this is huge. But winning a second title in two days is the result of having done this my whole life. From an early age Jacob trained with his brothers matching their intervals times from the age of 16 or 17 in running.

One school in the UK has produced an Olympic athlete in every Summer Games since 1956. Normally a lot more than one: 26 pupils from Millfield school competed in the Summer Olympics between 2008 and 2016. In 2019 former Millfield pupil Tyrone Mings debuted for the England National Football team.

Most pupils at Millfield are borders which follows for particular flexibility and training. Schedule starts as early as seven in the morning and finish as late as 9 at night. This enables athletes to experiment with sessions that suit them best as well as to get them accustomed to training at unfamiliar times. The day before our interview Lucy Matthews 17-year-old aspiring Olympian in hurdles had an upper body gym session at 7:30 in the morning, a personal gym session during a break. And then another gym session with the athletic squad after school finished at 4:00 o'clock.

In the winter Lawson played rugby league, football, hockey and some rugby union. In the summer he played tennis golf and squash along with cricket. On weekends Lawson would play cricket from 8:00 in the morning and then tennis in the evening. A local Tennis Club had floodlights, extending the hours when it was possible for him to play sport. I'd get backat 10:00 PM in the evening sometimes.

Professional clubs are picking from a biased sample Levitt said. The kid there might be 13 but physically 15, can hit a 40 yard crossfield pass because physically they can, they can cover more ground and they can make more high intensity sprints. That 13 year old can do things that an 11 year old can't do simply because the younger player may not have the strength stamina power or speed yet. So who gets picked up by the scout who's watching the match? The best learner and the best player technically could be the little one but just because physically they can't do it yet they're the one that misses out.

In 2010 Southampton adopted the “khamis-roche” Method to determine children maturity levels. This method takes into account height weight and maturity to estimate a child stage of development. The method is not foolproof but its margins for error are small, it can predict a child height from the age of 4 to 17 with an average error of only 2.2 centimeters in boys and 1.8 centimeters in girls.

In a further sign of new zealand's enlightened thinking they have recently introduced a competition for players under 85 kilograms to try to keep small players in the game.

The weekly training time on the water on rowing machines or in the gym doubled to 30 hours. The salient difference was not the amount of training but what came in between the recovery, the downtime was key.

They started examining 328 of the best 16 year old boys in the world from Brazil, England, France, garner, Mexico, Portugal and Sweden found that despite the cultural differences between the countries all these athletes had started playing football at about the age of five. Aged 5 to 11 they were involved in almost 10 hours of football related activities either practicing casual play or formal matches per week rising to nearly 15 hours at ages 11 to 16.

In one study scientists followed the development of over 500 players through the Academy system over a 12 year period. At the age of 17 to 18 only 10% of players remained in the system and almost 70% of these were recruited at or after the age of 12.

Talent recycling is the idea that athletes who are “nearlies” in one sport, particularly sports with high participation numbers, may have the potential to reach elite status in another sport especially those with lower global participation.

About 1 in 6 men aged 20-40 in American 7 foot or taller area playing professional basketball in the USA.

Best batters, land and McLeod found even adjust their eye movements depending on where the ball is pitched. When the ball was pitched closer to them they smoothed out the ways in which their eyes moved to make their movements less jerky.

“When you become a senior player in some ways you take your own performance for granted and you're actually more worried about what other people are doing. At times you'd be sitting at the back in defense and thinking about whether the people in front of you are in the right position, whether one of the strikers is dropping back on the holding midfield player, or where your fullback is positioned. So you're actually organizing a lot of people and if you do that will it saves you a lot of work” Sunny: this is what I've been getting Samar and roman to do a lot more through the concept of X-boxing. Also I've spoken to him about the importance of accountability and trying to drive high performance in your teammates which ultimately makes your own job easier also.

My brain works like a processor. It stores data information. Turning my head helps me do it. And that's not only important, it's fundamental to master space time. I think: my teammate is man marked so I turn my head to look for another solution. Behind me and opponent says to himself: I'm going to take the ball from him, he's turning his back he does not see me. Except that I saw him.

Grunting can even hinder the best players in the world. In a Wimbledon match against Monica seles in 1992 Martina Navratilova complained to the umpire that grunting prevented her from hearing the ball. Navratilova once called grunting “cheating, pure and simple”.

Over his international career Carter scored 1598 points, it's over 300 more than anyone else in Mens Test rugby union history including 1453 points from kicks. This phenomenal record was underpinned by a kicking method that held up under pressure. Whenever Carter was kicking and whatever the stakes he would look into the ground stand behind the posts and try to find a spot to aim for. I just used to focus on that. I take three steps to my right and then I just tell myself to relax, breathe and control my heartbeat and then I find that spot again between the posts. By doing so Carter ensured that his focus always remained on kicking the ball to that specific spot. Sunny: summer and Roman you can do exactly this when you take penalties.

Across the myriad of sports elite players literally use their eyes differently when performing static tasks under the fiercest pressure. While less elite players tend to flip their eyes from point to point, elite players are more adapt at honing in on a specific point and maintaining laser like focus.

It's not always fun to go training every day. Sometimes your motivation is **** to be honest. But there's something deep inside you that needs to sparkle. ada hegerberg.

His family told him about using everything around him to get to where he need to be and try not to complain. A defining day in kolisi’s Early life was his first trial for the underage provincial team in rugby. When he was twelve. Kolisi did not have any rugby shorts so he played in boxer shorts instead.

The study found that a positive reaction to failure was critical in explaining the athlete’s differing trajectories. Super champions were adept at using failure and disappointment like being dropped, being moved away from their favorite position or losing big matches, to learn and drive themselves forward.

Not making that selection especially after all that work. Several others just said **** it but I was never going to let them beat me. I just did double everything. These stories reveal a fundamental psychological trait. High achievers and elite athletes seem to have a positive proactive coping and learned from it and had an approach to challenges even before they had started on the rocky road.

Just as a part of what separates the best athletes from the rest is their response to adversity so elite athletes also tend to respond best to injury.

40% of former footballers declare bankruptcy within five years of retirement and a remarkable 33% get divorced within a year of their careers ending.

Leadership is knowing what needs to be done, what needs to happen to achieve it and how to influence others to cooperate in the process.

He spoke to teammates with simplicity and directness. There's not a lot of time for niceties and basketball. Everything has to be short everything has to be explicit. That's not a lot of time to worry about someone's feelings or whether they get the message in a way that's not offensive. So there's a lot of swearing sometimes, a lot of terse talk. But if both parties understand that we need to talk this way, directly and frankly, to complete the mission and to win the game, it's easy to get beyond the tone and the tenor and maybe the directness of the message. Sunny: this is exactly like the brutiful conversations concept that I've created.

The chemistry is important obviously. I guess the more openness you have in your relationships the better. It's easier to sit down and discuss things when things are not maybe going as well as a result.

I'm talking a two or three hour dinner, you naturally connect on a different level than just on the court or in the locker room. It seems like a pretty obvious way to build team chemistry but the tricky part is getting everyone to buy in and actually wanting to go so the male.

When players started their run up less than one second after the referee blew the whistle when taking a penalty the success rate was 58%. Players who took longer than a second scored 80% of the time. Extreme pressure can lead players to get it over and done with mentality.

Rather than being consolidated in any specific region of the brain skill learning is thought to be encased through larger distributed and dynamic neural networks. The quality and quantity of sleep can have a profound effect on the brain, so a player suffering from poor sleep can have weakened physical and mental capabilities and their performance on the pitch can suffer as a result.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book that highlights the science that helps make extraordinary athletes, extraordinary. It covers the path these great athletes take to get to the top and how they stay there.

It’s a very easy to digest, and potentially actionable, book, tackling a wide range of sports – archery, basketball, cricket, football, golf, hockey, and rugby, and featuring many, key athletes – Stef Curry, Harry Kane, Venus and Serena Williams, and Pete Sampras, to name a few.

The thing I like most about “The Best” was the way it distilled an amazing amount of science, and supporting statistics, into one, simple story, presented in three sections:

1. Context – what are the requisites for making a champion?
2. Mindset - what goes on in the mind of extraordinary athletes?
3. Training – what can an elite athlete do to succeed?

Many of the facts that the authors presented I didn’t know before reading the book; but they all made great sense in the way they were presented. These included the importance of elite athletes having older siblings. The youngest members of a family often become the best athletes in that family, because their brothers and sisters introduce them into sports, drive them to compete with older and more skilled athletes, and pass their learning on through both example and shared experience.

While I knew that Paris produced a large share of top footballers, I didn’t know that much of this was due to the Street play in Ile de France.

Further, I didn’t understand that “grunting” helps tennis players perform better because it helps their breathing. The sound also confuses opponents who can no longer judge how hard a ball is hit from the sound it makes coming off a racket.

One of the things I found missing from the book was the typical barriers that get in the way of success. This starts with the financial perspective of participation in sports and the amount of family time required to support athletes. It takes an increasingly large amount of money to raise an athlete and with both parents working, there is less time to support kids' extra-curricular activities.

I hope I’m not being too picky, but the "The Best" could have also included some photos, which I always appreciate in a book that has historical references.

All that said, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in what makes elite athletes great. I’ve already recommended it to a few of my sports loving friends.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a gift for my husband, and I started reading it before him. Slow start for me and I almost dropped it after a few chapters, so I only read it sporadically. It became more interesting for me after Part Two. The Epilogue may have been better for me to read ahead of the rest of the book.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been a great magazine article.

[Cristobal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating data based look at what makes an elite athlete. Many insight that show how much not only talent but the luck of the lottery draw on when and where you are born plays a big part.

[D L · Rating 4 out of 5]

For what could have been a subject tied to statistics this book is such an easy-going read on the factors which help to produce elite sports stars. It is split into sections such as how the location of a person upbringing can affect their career and if they have any siblings to how mental awareness sometimes can be more important then natural skill and how even the best in their sport are constantly training and accepting constructive criticism to be the best.
There are some interesting stories and interviews with football players Jamie Carragher and Andrés Iniesta, whose constant awareness and anticipation of the game helped them achieve their careers to snooker player Stephen Hendry who applied different techniques and challenges to improve his game.
An excellent addition to the library of any sports fan.
This book was provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

[Zak Schmoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book. By profiling athletes from all kinds of sports, the authors are able to find some common threads in the upbringing, development, and training of these athletes that appear to be correlated with success. They do acknowledge that this is an inexact science, but as a general rule, there are friends that can help predict success.

While there are many things about my environment but I'm not in a great position to control, I think there are some interesting concepts about game preparation and psychology that might be useful for me. Specifically, the authors are very positive about the benefits of the quiet eye. I want to read more about that now.

[Sara Hazlehurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book - presents a nice balance between cutting-edge science and interviews from top athletes. I learnt a lot from the book and it certainly makes you appreciate the sacrifices made by the best athletes to reach the top of their sport. A super read for anyone interested in expertise and skill development in sport and in life generally.

[Joel Cressman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book probably was the best total review of the science of elite athletes in a readable book. The authors toe a nice line of presenting formal research and engaging the reader through storytelling. Informative and complete explanation of how elite athletes are made.

[Jason Orthman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book that is well researched and covers everything you need to know in terms of how elite athletes are developed. 10% of the population has the capability to become a professional athlete yet the pathway is arduous. There are a number of initiatives that can improve those odds.

[Jay Hennessey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book to anyone working in sports performance. While many readers will likely be familiar with some of the material, there were some great examples from a diversity of sports. As I read the book, I saw so many applications for professional sports teams - from scouting, to coaching, to mental performance and the entire performance domain. Here are a few top of mind areas that I found most intriguing:
- Role of having an older sibling (in the same sport) towards becoming a world class athlete
- What successful parenting looks like - raising world class athletes
- The role of your community
- The benefits of informal “street play”
- The idea of “recycling talent”
- The “quiet eye”
- The breaking down of “choking”
- The leader athlete
- Use of Deception
Finally, the last 3 chapters on training smarter and the science of success were fantastic.

If you are in the field of Sports Performance, I highly recommend this book.

[Dil Nawaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you know that our thoughts can shape our lives in amazing ways? This book delves into the fascinating world of athletes’ mindsets, the environments they thrive in, and the influence of parents, coaches, and other factors.

Champions often emerge from supportive networks that nurture talent from the very start. eographic “hotbeds” provide fertile ground for developing world-class athletes. The moment you start training can be as crucial as how you train.

Unstructured play and creativity can give athletes a crucial edge. The relentless pursuit of marginal gains separates good performers from the truly great. Talent alone isn’t enough: mindset and adaptability often tip the balance.

True excellence is a journey shaped by nature, nurture, and the choices we make along the way. If you are in any sports or want to read something about athletic mindset you should try this book.

[Emily Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book does a good job at bringing together a lot of foundational concepts in athlete development and uses strong examples to support the evidence. A very good resource to get a basic understanding of the concepts, and then can use the references section to dive deeper on specific topics of interest.

[Dave B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off great with some great info regarding academies, but lost way half way through book, in the end i sped read. I recommend the book if you are in any way connected to junior level sport, if not, you would probably give it a miss.

[Neil Hodgkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Treads a very fine line between incredible detail whilst maintaining a flow that is easy to read. I particularly enjoyed Part Two “Inside the minds of champions”, though there was enough throughout to keep me interested and engaged.

[Skyler Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing is strong and, at the start, the content is the right mix of research/science and examples. By the end, however, it felt more like a collection of stories and anecdotes, alright poignant and entertaining ones. Overall, a good read for those interested in sport psych.

[Mairtinb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting without being too heavy

[Ruairi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent summary of a very broad range of research, and nice use of stories to illustrate its arguments.

Not as good as The Sports Gene (but then what is?) but still well worth reading.

[SAI VEER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top Class book with so much of information. As the title suggests, Simply The Best.

[Paola · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
Entertaining, but felt a little disjointed.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read with a lot of well researched points. At times I got lost with the constant cricket references but that could be due to my lack of knowledge in that sport.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever.

[Derry Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Interesting. Would recommend. I’m not sure if it increased or decreased my admiration for some sporting icons. It certainly demystified a lot of the aura around some superstars. It doesn’t take from their achievements, it just lifts the veil.

[Mihir Choughule · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent enough book, without going into too much detail. I found the examples to be quite superficial and would’ve liked the authors to go into more depth on some of them. However, I enjoyed reading about some of the phenomena explained in the book, such as why younger siblings tend to be better athletes.