BFO - Some Folk Have More Athletic Genes Than Others

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35242442/ns/health-fitness/?ns=health-fitness
"They initially identified, using a novel approach, a set of 29 genes that seemed to predict a person's ability to improve their VO2 max. Then, they examined the individual DNA sequence of those genes, looking for differences in the genetic code. They found a total of 11 DNA differences, or markers, which appeared to be predictive of a person's ability to get fitter.  But these markers don't tell the whole story. Remember, heredity is only thought to account for 50 percent of a person's capacity to improve their fitness. Of this 50 percent, the newly identified genes can only explain about 23 percent of the variation in an individual's ability to be trained to improve VO2 max.  "With this we can identify, with a reasonable degree of precision, who is a low responder [to exercise], an average responder, or a high responder," Bouchard said. "We can begin to rank order people for their ability to be trained before they are trained.""

While it is a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) that genetics dictates athleticism in large measure, I think this is a hint of the future of fitness.  If you could identify an athlete's athletic potential - for say strength, sprint speed, VO2 max, agility, coordination, etc - you could then evaluate in an entirely new way how various training modalities affected their development towards their maximum potential.  Imagine when we can identify exactly what programming would get one athlete or another to their 90% point with the least training and the least time.  Imagine what it would be like to know how fast you are getting to that 90% point as an athlete - and then could choose how much time to invest to get that last 10%, or not to chase it.