What do the top 5 elite guys have that the others dont have?

1. Talent / Skill

2. Age

3. Support

Winning mindset

Genetics/talent/mindset.

At the highest level of any sport, you could argue that they all put in the same amount of effort in training and hours. So if they are equally fit, ride the same amount then it comes down to pure gift.

Look at RC and JS where RC had a mental gift, and JS had a technical gift regarding what he could do with his bike. They both became champions on different bikes under Aldons arms, and now other riders train with Aldon and can’t even make the podium.

So riders doing roughly the same thing as other champions but can’t perform boils down to talent in my yes.

In other sports like skiing where it’s not as much variables as in motocross, the skiers train together but yet some of them outperform the others a massive amount and there it’s genetics. How much air volume your lungs have etc. 

just skill level & it factor  , privateer or factory guy all these guys are talented , reason why their competing in the pro scene but as a OG used to tell me when we was training MMA & boxing , there’s levels to this shit & for each elite athlete, there’s always a counterpart thts a level notch above 

A desire and will to win, anything less, is a loss.

It

Points. 

A killer inner ear tuned to movement across the x y z axis

They just have IT and no one else knows what IT is.

There’s a lot of factors that contribute to success. Not all successful people have them all - some have one in such abundance that it compensates for lack of others. Ron Lechien, for example, had so much talent that he didn’t need the dedication and focus that others needed. Some have so much dedication and focus that they will train, practice, and do whatever they need to do to win. RC didn’t quite have the raw talent of JS but he had dedication and focus (not saying he didn’t also have talent). Add in mental toughness since whether or not you have these other qualities, you need plenty of mental toughness to win championships. Webb seems to be a guy with an abundance of mental toughness. The top guys have some combination of all of these qualities - and a bit of luck. 

A combination of things, but the biggest is basically tunnel vision. 

I think the biggest contributor is their ability to process information coming at them faster, they slow the race down in their heads. That’s what separates a great hitter in baseball to an average hitter, the ball comes at them slower. 

One is their ability to shut everything in their lives out except their goal. The top guys work tirelessly to get his bikes and bodies better. They are willing to suffer. 

 They leave distractions at home. You never saw James girl friend, now wife, RCs wife, or RV wife at the races, they were there to work. RC was asked why he didn’t bring his wife and kids to races, he answered do you bring your wife and kids to work? 

 

Balance, spatial awareness and elite fitness. 

I think its a combination of the program around the rider (training, coaches, mechanics, factory bike, ect) and natural talent.    

I think you are onto something here. I really believe that is what happened with JS at the end. One too many falls and concussions slowed his prcessing speed. So he no longer saw the track as the FMOTP but as "just" a top ten guy. 

I think that is the "talent" part. 

As I was told by a peer college cross country coach in regards to not being able to recruit talented runners to form a competitive team .... "You can't win a horse race with a donkey."  In my 20+ years of coaching I have seen so many teammates do the exact same training and have vastly different responses to said training. Some improve slightly during the year and others improve greatly. 

They race to win and nothing else.

Another contributing factor. Usually the  last ten minutes of moto their lap times are the same or faster as the early laps.  Elite level fitness.  

1. Money

2. Factory parts

3. Aldon Baker (Performance Enhancing Drugs)

1. The Man Above

The ability to see things slower, and the talent to take advantage.

This without a doubt^^^^^

I read this book years ago, it’s worth reading. Here is a summary for those with short attention spans..

The Book in Three Sentences

Talent is a result of thousand of hours of purposeful practice, not inate talent.

Expert knowledge comes from experience.

If you want to be world-class, you have to embrace failure.

The Five Big Ideas

“If we believe that attaining excellence hinges on talent, we are likely to give up if we show insufficient early promise”.

“Speed in sport is not based on innate reaction speed, but derived from highly specific practice”.

“[Talent] cannot be taught in a classroom; it is not something you are born with; it must be lived and learned. To put it another way, it emerges through practice”.

“Child prodigies do not have unusual genes; they have unusual upbringings”.

“Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again”.

Bounce Book Summary

“If we believe that attaining excellence hinges on talent, we are likely to give up if we show insufficient early promise”.

The iceberg illusion: “When we witness extraordinary feats of memory (or of sporting or artistic prowess) we are witnessing the end product of a process measured in years. What is invisible to us – the submerged evidence, as it were – is the countless hours of practice that have gone into the making of the virtuoso performance: the relentless drills, the mastery of technique and form, the solitary concentration that have, literally, altered the anatomical and neurological structures of the master performer. What we do not see is what we might call the hidden logic of success”.

“Speed in sport is not based on innate reaction speed, but derived from highly specific practice”.

“It is also worth noting that the development of motor expertise (skilled movement) is inseparable from the development of perceptual expertise (chunking patterns)”.

“The essential problem regarding the attainment of excellence is that expert knowledge simply cannot be taught in the classroom over the course of a rainy afternoon, or indeed a thousand rainy afternoons”.

“Good decision-making is about compressing the informational load by decoding the meaning of patterns derived from experience”.

“[Talent] cannot be taught in a classroom; it is not something you are born with; it must be lived and learned. To put it another way, it emerges through practice”.

“[Complexity] describes those tasks characterized by combinatorial explosion; tasks where success is determined, first and foremost, by superiority in software (pattern recognition and sophisticated motor programmes) rather than hardware (simple speed or strength)”.

“Child prodigies do not have unusual genes; they have unusual upbringings”.

“‘When most people practise, they focus on the things they can do effortlessly’, Ericsson has said. ‘Expert practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well – or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become’.”

“Every second of every minute of every hour, the goal [of purposeful practice] is to extend one’s mind and body, to push oneself beyond the outer limits of one’s capacities, to engage so deeply in the task that one leaves the training session, literally, a changed person”.

“Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again”.

“Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance”.

“Futsal is a perfect example of how well-designed training can accelerate learning; how the knowledge that mediates any complex skill can be expanded and deepened at breathtaking speed with the right kind of practice”.

“But scratch beneath the surface, and you will find that all the successful systems have one thing in common: they institutionalize the principles of purposeful practice”.

“Sometimes learning can be accelerated by something as simple as training with superior players”.

“The ten-thousand-hour rule, then, is inadequate as a predictor of excellence. What is required is ten thousand hours of purposeful practice”.

“Purposeful practice may not be easy, but it is breathtakingly effective”.

“But careful study has shown that creative innovation follows a very precise pattern: like excellence itself, it emerges from the rigours of purposeful practice. It is the consequence of experts absorbing themselves for so long in their chosen field that they become, as it were, pregnant with creative energy. To put it another way, eureka moments are not lightning bolts from the blue, but tidal waves that erupt following deep immersion in an area of expertise”.

“In a study of sixty-six poets by N. Wishbow of Carnegie Mellon University, more than 80 per cent needed ten years or more of sustained preparation before they started writing their most creative pieces”.

“Feedback is, in effect, the rocket fuel that propels the acquisition of knowledge, and without it no amount of practice is going to get you there”.

“In order to become the greatest basketball player of all time, you have to embrace failure”.

“Excellence is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again”.

“Intelligence-based praise orientates its receivers towards the fixed mindset; it suggests to them that intelligence is of primary importance rather than the effort through which intelligence can be transformed; and it teaches them to pursue easy challenges at the expense of real learning”.

“The thing that often separates the best from the rest is a capacity to believe things that are not true but which are incredibly effective”.

“One of the most remarkable findings of modern psychology is the extraordinary capacity of human beings to mould the evidence to fit their beliefs rather than the other way around; it is our capacity to believe in spite of the evidence and sometimes in spite of our other deeply held beliefs”.

“Irrational beliefs can boost performance, provided they are held with sufficient conviction”.

“Choking, then, is a kind of neural glitch that occurs when the brain switches to a system of explicit monitoring”.

Larger bank account balances...? (:

One other thing is confidence. When you 100% believe in what you’re doing and actually KNOW that you are a winner (not the same as all of them saying that they believe that they can win)., the preparation becomes some what less important.

Some examples are Ron Lechein and Jason Lawrence in MX/SX. We also heard about Chad Reed being out partying the night before a SX race and still won. 

All top athletes have different mind sets regarding preparation, and beliving in it can have a larger impact than the actual preparation it self.

Here in Sweden we had a high jumper named Patrik Sjöberg that set a world record in 1987 minutes after eating a hotdog and taking a smoke. He was so confident that he could make it no matter what. While others probably would have taking a sip of water and had a very different approach to it. 

So part for the obvious things i stated in my first answer this is another thing. 

And we all remember the story Decoster told about Danny Chandler at trophy des nations when he was gonna ride without a chest protector and Roger said that you will get killed by the stones out there. No im not, I’m gonna win said Danny and so he did. 

So we have a couple of different things that comes to mind when we talk about the absolute elite athletes and it’s not the same for all of them. 

 

At the top level every body is fit and has good bikes. To me it seems like outside of those two the biggest factor is cultivating that killer mindset from when theyre young, good decision making, and luck. What happens during those pivotal last couple amateur years and first couple pro years is huge and it takes a bit of luck too. Lots of guys get a few big injuries during this period and it sets them back and they never catch back up. 

Luck def has a big impact, but guys can help make their own luck. In mx when deegan did the cartwheel or hit that down rider and front flipped if he had gotten seriously injured it would have took him out of the season, no championship, and now hes behind going in to next year. Get another unlucky get off next year and before you know it youre well behind the rest of the guys. Deegan helped make his own luck by doing things in life that taught him how to crash without getting hurt. Still takes some real luck to escape some of those injuries on top of it. 

As far as the killer instinct that is something that you cant cheat on and has to be forged in the fire (usually) of being poor and watching your parents struggle and spend their last dollar on racing, plus in many cases getting your ass beat in amateurs by the guy with better equipment. Think RV to Alessi, Webb to AC…etc. Everybody knows the lawrences story of packing up all their shit and moving to europe and putting the survival of the whole family on their backs. You cant fake that. Deegan is a different story who seems to buck the trend who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but when you look closer hes been under enormous pressure since he was a kid. His dad tried to make it in sx and didnt, so he became famous in freestyle, but haiden from the day he was born knew he had to live up to the expectations of being brian deegans kid and on top of it hes had a camera in his face every second of every day. So not only does he have the pressure of living up to his family name and being the one who makes it in sx with every advantage in the world but he also has all of these people on social media watching his every move and also expecting him to win. The pressure that dungey and rv talked about of being terrified to lose because theyre expected to win deegan has had that same pressure since being a kid. He knows hes had everything at his disposal to win so if he doesnt he looks like a massive failure. 

Then finally making good decisions is another part of that pie. Be too cautious and you will never win, but throw caution to the wind and youll end up on a stretcher. A guy like forkner has all the speed in the world, he also has bad luck, but on top of it he doesnt always make the best decisions which compounds the issues. When his contact fell out he should have backed it down, but hes always in such a rush to get back to where hes supposed to be that he wads it. Good decisions is not creating enemies on the track for no reason like jason anderson who will come back to bite you later. This one is probably the one thats hardest to teach because it comes down to temperment. Imagine what js7’s career would have looked like if he had made 5% better decisions. Jett is basically at the top of the chart with decision making. Outside of a few bone headed mistakes he usually only rides just as fast as he needs to ride to win and doesnt do many crazy things. This should help him have a long career.

Big difference between training, confidence and natural ability with drive to win at all costs.

1/4 second each turn can = winning.🥇 

Huge part of it is the parents. Since these guys were 5 years old, the parents sacrificed everything to go racing. Lots of divorces, second mortgages, selling everything and living in a fun hauler. Big James said if they had to decide on paying rent or going racing, they were going racing. Huge sacrifices to get these guys where they are. All the amateur nationals, working on bikes every night, practice every day. Parents had to give up everything to get there.

Along with the attitude that winning is the only thing acceptable, which creates confidence. 

There is no replacement for hard work. 

There is no replacement for genetic gifts, all else being equal.

It takes both to be truly great. Having the opportunity early in life is a huge factor as well but all else being equal, the above two determine someone’s ceiling. This is true for all sports

Ability to process information faster, making everything slower. 

Well said! I’ll add to that the vision - eye sight to see clearly at a high speed that many can’t. 

Super hot wives/girlfriends . Porsche GT3 RS.  Ferrari FF.  Mansion with well stocked garage (s). Many varieties of exotic bicycles. Skinny, tanned friends with many tattoos. Pool table in bedroom. Rolls Royce Phantom, with umbrella. Hats that go over ears. Tablecloths. Personal chef. Psychologist in basement. Luxury 80 foot RV, with gym and Peruvian driver/fitness coach. Little dogs.