With the NFL Championship game this Sunday, all eyes turn to Whitehouse native and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Over the course of the last couple weeks, CBS19 has spoken to everyone from Mahomes’ father, Pat Mahomes Senior, his trainer at APEC, Bobby Stroupe, and fans across the region. Mahomes’ environment clearly helped forge him into a future NFL MVP.
Dr. Ushimbra Buford, a psychiatrist at UT Health Science Center at Tyler says there are crucial mental aspects of becoming an elite athlete.
Buford says the phrase “nature vs nurture” – which references conflicting theories on whether the natural instincts with which people are born or the environment in which they are brought up has more of an impact on their development, is now somewhat outdated.
“When I first started in medicine, we used to say things like nature and nurture and saw them as two different things. In the past several years with the advent and understanding of epigenetics, we understand now that the nurture aspect influences the nature, the environment influences your genetics,” Buford said.
Buford says a person’s development in all aspects, including athleticism, is heavily influenced by their environment, down to changes their body makes at a biological level.
“From a genetic standpoint, that person may have a certain kind of capacity for the muscle fibers that they will produce that they were born with. But then they get into an environment where the expectation and the understanding and like the daily living is different from what their body is genetically set. Over time, their composition would change to reflect the activities they were involved in, and the potential reality exists that over time their genetics would change to reflect the new physical reality,” Buford said.
This means growing up in an environment, such as in Mahomes’ case, where his father is a professional baseball player and he was immediately around athletics, can be incredibly beneficial. However, Buford says in athletics and in life, it always comes down to a choice to strive for greatness.
“Every quarterback is saying ‘we're going to the Super Bowl this year,’ but how many of them believe that?" Buford said. "How many of them really, truly feel that this is my going to be my reality? You almost have to be delusional like that to achieve greatness in a sense. You have to see and believe something before other people can or will."
This mentality is something everyone can implement in their daily lives. Buford says the sky is the limit when a person’s head is in the right place.
“We all have the ability to be incredible," Buford said. "You know, we really limit ourselves and I don't know if this is a societal thing, or it's just not receiving the right messages early enough in life. But don't ever think for a minute that anyone cannot become what they want to be. Only person stopping you is you.”