A recent twitter conversation worth repeating on the role of genetics in performance

Recent Twitter conversation that is worth repeating:

@DrAndreoSpina: “Genetics” are the most underestimated, AND overestimated factors in training.

The code for proteins…NOT performance

Question: “but isn’t performance the sum of those proteins?”

@DrAndreoSpina: That’s a common misconception in science. That is an assumed tenant based on dogmatic principles w little 2 no proof

Question: So what makes up performance

@DrAndreoSpina: In actuality, DNA codes for amino acid sequence and the polypeptide. A “protein” is formed only after folding…

@DrAndreoSpina: which is governed by an unknown “force” unrelated to the DNA. U can have bricks &wood…that doesn’t make a house.

@DrAndreoSpina: u have 2 consider the role of habitual potentiation, training history/type, psychological & environmental influence, etc.

It is an unfortunate fact of the scientific method that dogmatic views can be confidently held, propagated, and utilized in its community under the guise that it “sounds” scientific….or it “piggy backs” on something else which, is in fact well researched. In the case above, we are constantly bombarded with people promoting the role of genetics via DNA coding on our physical being. While it is true that the DNA code holds much of the information needed to create proteins, tissue, organs….and life….it is not accurate to assume that the structure that the proteins take on, nor the structure that they ultimately form are somehow directed by the ‘raw materials.’ As I mentioned above, bricks do not spontaneously form houses…nor do proteins have, inherent to them, an ultimate plan.

Taking this even further, it is even more of a stretch to assume that the resultant tissues are ‘taught’ how to perform in a certain fashion. If this ‘knowledge’ was inherent to them…then why have a nervous system???

“Genes explain the development of proteins…but not the development of embryos” — Rupert Sheldrake, developmental biologist at Cambridge