The Unspeakable Truth About Black Genetics for Sports

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:22 The study

01:48 Limitations

02:58 Clines

03:28 Other studies

03:53 Conclusion

04:23 Outro

Transcript:

It’s commonly believed that Black African individuals are genetically gifted for sports and muscularity. To see if this is true, a group of researchers walked right into this political minefield. This video can be seen as my own attempt at YouTube Harakiri. The study is still in preprint, but it comes from a reputable lab, so I don’t expect major changes after peer review.

The researchers took a group of untrained individuals and performed genetic testing on them to classify them as either African or European in terms of their ancestry. Then they subjected them to a 9 week supervised training program to see who made the better gains.

Even before they had touched a weight, though, there were already striking differences between the groups. The African group had on average 8.5 kilos more fat free mass. That’s 19 pounds in freedom units. The African group also had 9 to 23% bigger limb muscle thickness at a similar body fat percentage as measured by bio electrical impedance analysis, which is not super reliable, but as a group average it’s fine. The African group was also stronger, more powerful, and they had better endurance, although the performance metrics varied a lot more than the body composition metrics.

Despite the striking differences at baseline, there were essentially no differences between the groups in their gains, not in relative terms and also not in absolute terms. Median differences in the gains in muscle size and strength were approximately zero. This discrepancy between how muscular someone naturally is before they start lifting weights, and how fast they can gain muscle when they start lifting weights is also seen in other research.

It’s very counterintuitive, but there doesn’t seem to be a super consistent relationship between how muscular someone is before they start training and how easily they will gain muscle with training. So even if you’re very small before you start lifting, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a hard gainer.

However, there were multiple notable limitations. For one, the African group had a lower protein intake of 0.9g/kg compared to 1.3g/kg in the European group. Also, recruitment was limited to individuals who self-identified as non-Hispanic Black with a capital B or White with a capital W. However, self-id matched genetic testing of ancestry in all cases except 2 White persons who were actually African in terms of their ancestry. Interestingly, the researchers also had to exclude one individual after genetic testing showed that he wasn’t actually biologically male.

And last but certainly not least, Africa and Europe are massive places. So 40 students from the Bronx are a limited representation. There is massive genetic variants in both of these continents, especially Africa. Researchers generally, therefore see race as a social construct. That doesn’t mean it’s just complete wishy washy, but it means that it’s a gross oversimplification of a lot of traits fit together that we visually identify largely by phenotype, not genotype. So we look at somebody and we infer what their genetics might be.

Modern researchers therefore generally talk more about clines rather than races. Clines are gradients in certain traits. So in a certain area, people might have a certain skin color, or certain nose shape, or any other trait that is biologically determined to a certain degree. As you expand, say, westward, or any other direction, due to differences in the climate and the environment, the trait shifts due to differences in evolutionary adaptations, rather than being a fixed black versus white. Exercise science in this field is still in its infancy, likely due to the social stigma and the difficulty of getting funding for this type of research.

We have only 2 other studies in this field, both of which compared Europeans or Caucasians with South Asians. Both studies found some trends for the European group to make better gains in strength and performance compared to the Asians, but there were no significant differences in muscle growth or muscle protein synthesis.

If we zoom out beyond exercise science, research is very clear that clines, even when informally grouped together as a races, explain far less genetic variance than there is within these populations to begin with. There are average genetic differences across clines, but these differences are small compared to the genetic diversity within each group. So all on Earth are more different than our differences. Wait, what? And you, my dear viewer, are surely the most special snowflake of them all.

And if you want a customized training and nutrition program based on your specifics, check out the link in the description for a two week free trial to my training and nutrition app. Also, if you’re interested in evidence based fitness information, seeking the truth no matter how politically incorrect or uncomfortable it may be, check out my Online PT Course in the description. See you next time.