I was really bad at sports in high school. This new study helps me understand why.

Vox:

I was a horrible lacrosse player in high school: bad at catching the ball, slow, and not very aggressive.

Yet I’d spend hours at a handball wall with my stick: throwing, catching, repeating. I played on winter leagues, and woke up early for 6 am pickup games. Freshman and sophomore years, I made it onto the junior varsity team — a miracle.

By 11th grade, it was time to try out for varsity lacrosse. This is when my history teacher — the varsity coach — pulled me aside and suggested I shouldn’t bother. I’d probably be cut, he said (adding that I was getting very good grades).

…

“One important thing — that’s easy to misunderstand— is that this is looking at variance across people, not within an individual,” Brooke Macnamara, the lead author of the new paper, tells me. “So if a person practices, they will get better. Almost across the board, practice should improve one’s performance.”

Read the whole story: Vox