3 ms·

It all boils down to money. Yeah, even in the 90s athletes were getting paid a lot of money, but since then, thanks to TV deals, union negotiations, etc., the m

by dfxm12 3y ago

It all boils down to money. Yeah, even in the 90s athletes were getting paid a lot of money, but since then, thanks to TV deals, union negotiations, etc., the money is exploding. If you take away Michael Jordan's outlier 2 year $30MM/yr contract, even today's journeymen players are making huge amounts of money relative to the top stars we grew up watching. The stars', and even top draft picks' contracts are in the stratosphere. Thanks to this, a cottage industry around improving performance and longevity has popped up as pro teams wanted to protect their investments. From there, you get people selling these techniques and lessons learned on all levels of sport, for athletes who want to invest in themselves, for parents who want to invest in their kids, for high schools and colleges wanting to get the notoriety through sport, etc. On a side note, whoever is talking about US players losing a step is just trying to be a provocateur.

borroka 3y ago
It's not just about money, there are cultural changes that you can see from a distance, but when you are not in the middle of it. For example, I used to play soccer when it was thought that doing weights made one slow or "tied up." When using any form of data was inapplicable because "soccer is different." When using a psychologist was considered weird, queer or a waste of time. And me lifting weights (I watched volleyball players and baseball players coming to the same gym I was going to doing weights all the time), using the little data available to help me better understand the game (I am a scientist after all), and being interested in the psychology of performance was seen as the quirky guy who partly you tolerate, and partly you make fun of. I was right, but I was there too soon. Now everyone lifts weights, everyone uses data to inform decisions, and most professional players use the services of a psychologist or are interested in the psychological aspects of performance. One thing that has changed in a major way is that what was done by the 0.001% of athletes, with the Internet, social media, and the ubiquity of cell phones, has become visible, and even the most stubborn, conservative, and skeptical people have seen how the top-of-the-food-chain trained and operated. It became impossible to deny it, to say "but for us/in our sport, it is different". It was not.

by dfxm12 3y ago

borroka 3y ago

It's not just about money, there are cultural changes that you can see from a distance, but when you are not in the middle of it. For example, I used to play soccer when it was thought that doing weights made one slow or "tied up." When using any form of data was inapplicable because "soccer is different." When using a psychologist was considered weird, queer or a waste of time. And me lifting weights (I watched volleyball players and baseball players coming to the same gym I was going to doing weights all the time), using the little data available to help me better understand the game (I am a scientist after all), and being interested in the psychology of performance was seen as the quirky guy who partly you tolerate, and partly you make fun of. I was right, but I was there too soon. Now everyone lifts weights, everyone uses data to inform decisions, and most professional players use the services of a psychologist or are interested in the psychological aspects of performance. One thing that has changed in a major way is that what was done by the 0.001% of athletes, with the Internet, social media, and the ubiquity of cell phones, has become visible, and even the most stubborn, conservative, and skeptical people have seen how the top-of-the-food-chain trained and operated. It became impossible to deny it, to say "but for us/in our sport, it is different". It was not.