Gas & Brakes
A two pillar model for elite athleticism in sport
Hi Everyone! 👋🏻
Happy Tuesday, and welcome back to another edition of The Gunn Show. Hope you all had a fantastic week as always.
Today is an exciting day for yours truly, as it is finally time to jump-start the 2025 MLB season. With the Super Bowl in the rear-view, pitchers, catchers, and the rest of us are heading to Spring Training sites across Florida and Arizona to begin preparations for what promises to be another thrilling baseball season. I for one can’t wait.
Now, it’s been a week since we spoke as last Tuesday I published an in-depth commentary on the nature of athleticism in sports, with a specific focus on why I think we often miss the mark in assessing it. I’d encourage you to go give it a read in case you missed it, as I find it to be an especially relevant topic at current point in time given that two of the primary inspirations for the piece - Luka Dončić and Patrick Mahomes - have dominated the sports news landscape over the past week in the lead-ins to the NBA Trade Deadline and Super Bowl. It was a fun piece to write and I greatly enjoyed the discussions it stimulated with many of you over the past few days.
One line of conversation I found particularly interesting in the aftermath revolved around the idea that while athleticism is in fact highly relative to the skill at hand (as the piece argued), surely there must at least be some rough guidelines for what it means to be athletic in the first place. Different sports vary wildly in their athletic demands, after all, and as such there is likely a ‘hierarchy’ in which certain sports require more athleticism than others. As an example, consider the Olympic sport of curling - while it requires precision, strategy, and some highly specific technical skill, most would agree that it demands less raw athleticism than sports like football, basketball, or baseball.
Naturally, this debate got me thinking about how we might generalize the concept of athleticism to account for the variety of sporting demands. So for today’s piece, I’d like to attempt to lay out a framework that conceptualizes athleticism at the highest level of sport through the lens of two key principles:
Speed & Control.
Or, as we'll call it today - the dichotomy between gas and brakes.
Let’s get to it.
- CG
Need for Speed
Let’s start with a simple, yet hidden truth: every sport is its own version of a race.
Now, perhaps not as we understand a ‘race’ in the traditional sense - like two sprinters running a 100 meter dash, or cars jostling for position around a track in a NASCAR heat.
But when we zoom out and consider that at its most fundamental level a race is simply a competition to achieve an objective against time and space, we see that all sports quickly fall into context. Regardless of the sport, each has it’s own racing elements at play - whether against seconds ticking down on a clock, against defenders closing in, or against objects bound by the laws of physics moving through the field of play.
And as such, the natural extension is that we can borrow from the actual sport of racing to help us understand the key components of athleticism across the broader ecosystem of sports.
In the world of racing, there are three distinct forms of varying complexity that provide a convenient trifecta through which to illustrate the spectrum of athletic demands:
Drag Racing - A pure expression of straight-line speed, pitting two cars against each other in a quarter-mile sprint to see who can be the fastest from point A to point B.
Stock Car Racing (eg: NASCAR) - A style of racing in which drivers navigate long oval tracks that introduce gradual turns and the need for strategic positioning.
Formula Racing (eg: F1) - What we might describe as the ‘pinnacle of racing sophistication’, in which drivers of open-wheeled cars maneuver around courses of varying conditions and tight, hairpin turns.
In this racing ‘hierarchy’, each step up the stack represents a stark increase in demands for both the driver and the car. Where drag racing strips variability down to its most basic level - no turns to contend with, no other cars vying for the same spot on the track - stock and formula racing introduce added layers of complexity in different ways. The tracks begin to bend and twist; drivers must now jockey with one another for positioning on the road. And split-second decisions about when to accelerate or brake now become matters of not just victory but also survival.
While each version of racing differs in its own ways, there is a distinctive underlying principle that each certainly shares: speed. Whether on the Hot Rod, NASCAR, or F1 circuits, speed is a necessity. The ticket to the dance. And as such, the faster the car the better.
And yet, there is a catch - because when it comes to the style of racing, there is an inseparable, inverse link between variability and the resultant weight of speed. At low levels of variability, as in drag racing, speed is virtually the only thing that matters. When changes in direction are an after-thought, how fast you can go 0 to 60 is the name of the game. But as that variability climbs in stock car competitions and ultimately crescendos in formula racing, speed starts to cede way in importance to another variable:
Control.
All Gas, But Please - Some Brakes Too
While the phrase “All gas, No brakes” might be an applicable - and even winning - strategy in a low-variability racing environment like drag racing, it is in an increasingly bad operating principle in settings like NASCAR and especially F1. Too much speed without the requisite amount of control is a recipe for disaster as the turns start to show up in the front windshield.
Watch an F1 race for even a few minutes and you’ll see this principle at play. These races aren’t an exercise in smashing the accelerator to the floorboard so much as they are a trial and error experiment of finding the right amount of give and take. So much so that if you pay attention for long enough you’ll notice something striking:
The most crucial moments of an F1 race rarely happen on the straightaways - they tend to happen in the corners instead.
Why? Because at its core, the sport of F1 is not merely a test of how fast one can go on the parts of the track that allow for it. The sharp and winding routes of an F1 track introduce a new variable to the racing equation, meaning its drivers must strike a delicate balance between speed and precision; between creating speed and harnessing it; between pushing the gas and touching brakes.
So while cars are frequently assessed by how they perform in the straight and narrows, it follows that the corners are often the domain of the driver. It is in the turns of an F1 track - where the margins are the tightest and thousandths of a second mark the difference between gaining an edge or losing it - that the most elite of racers separate themselves from the pack.
It thus stands as no surprise that F1 drivers are considered among the most skilled athletes in all motorsports - because while anyone can push the gas to the floor, mastering the delicate physics of acceleration and deceleration is an entirely different challenge.
To succeed at the highest levels of formula racing requires being an elite user of both the gas and the brakes.
And it’s no different when we think about the concept of athleticism across the broader ecosystem of sport.
The Two Pillars of Athleticism
In The Theory of Athletic Relativity from last week, I penned over 3000 words to explain why I believe the pursuit of a single, universal definition of athleticism is a fool’s errand. Rather than painting athletic ability with a broad brush, I’m of the opinion that we need take a nuanced perspective when it comes to the topic, a sentiment captured in the following excerpt from the piece:
[When] it comes to athleticism, getting the right definition in place matters. We need one that allows for nuance and variability rather than one that forces us into overly simplistic categorizations, else we run the risk of misdiagnosing what makes the world’s athletes so special.
Athletic relativity is the necessary antidote, as it helps us avoid getting lost in an endless pursuit for universal athletic truths. Because in the end, athleticism isn’t about meeting some arbitrary standard - it’s about possessing the right combination of tools required to excel at the task at hand.
And yet, while I’m a firm believer that relativity carries more weight than specificity when it comes to describing athleticism, I’m not naive enough to miss the fact that there are likely some core, underlying principles that make elite athletes so.
To understand why this might be true, consider a useful analogy between athletic skills and tools in a workshop - while every tool is only useful in the context of the problem it is meant to solve, some certainly carry more general-purpose power than others. Take a hammer for instance, which proves useful in many cases where a wire stripper does not - with one in hand a wide array of pushing, pulling, and breaking options open up that would not be possible with a more specialized tool.
And so too in sports. In the realm of athletics, there are in fact some skills that serve the general function purpose of a hammer; fundamental capabilities that prove valuable across nearly every sporting context even though the specific ways they manifest themselves may differ dramatically depending on the sport or position at play.
So in lieu of providing a specified definition of athleticism, I find it more instructive to think about the general purpose pillars upon which it relies. The same two principles we see at play in the sport of F1 racing:
Speed, and control.
Just as F1 racing requires mastery of both the ability accelerate at will and stop on a dime, athletic excellence in any domain depends on the fundamental blend of generating force and controlling it. Whether we are talking about an NBA shooting guard or NFL running back, success at the highest levels of athletics is an exercise in paradoxes - of striking a balance between the two opposing yet complementary forces of gas and brakes.
And yet while both are important, it stands out how much of our athleticism centric conversations orient around speed while leaving the concept of control to the wayside. Just as we do in racing, we have an over affinity for speed that is accompanied by an under appreciation for control.
Returning to the concept of ‘proxies’ from last week, we see that many of our tests designed to capture and reflect high level athleticism focus almost exclusively on the ability for an athlete to move fast. We ooh and aah over football players with the fastest 40 times, basketball players with the highest vertical jumps, and baseball players with the highest bat speeds. All while at the same time frequently ignoring how these same players perform in proxies that place a higher emphasis on control, such as a 20 yard shuttle drill.
Now to be sure, a certain threshold of speed is a necessity at the highest levels of sport. Frequently, it is the ticket to the dance such that you have to move fast enough just to get in the door. You may not have to be a full on Ferrari, but a Mazda engine isn’t likely to get the job done.
But we’ve seen that gas with no brakes is a losing strategy on the race-track, and the same is true in a plethora of other sports. Whether on a breakaway dunk attempt in basketball, a sprint to the net in tennis, or a play at the outfield wall in baseball, sports inevitably throw moments at you in which brakes are required - and you’d better be able to use them (or else risk becoming the subject of an enduring blooper reel).
It follows that elite level sports are more akin to F1 than they are drag racing. And the more complex the sport, the higher the premium that gets placed on control.
So when it comes to elite movement, and thus elite athleticism, at the upper echelons of sport, it’s not enough to just have speed. You need to make sure you have brakes built into the car as well.
Braking Systems
To drive this point home - that elite athletes aren’t just built on speed alone - let’s consider some examples from the US professional sports landscape that highlight the world’s best athletes through the lens of braking systems.
NBA
Let’s start with basketball, where the ability to decelerate quickly is just as crucial as explosive speed. Watch some of the game’s elite scorers and you’ll notice that their success tends to stem not only from their ability to blow past defenders, but also how they can stop on a dime at will.
Take Luka Doncic, for example. While he may not possess what we would consider ‘traditional’ forms of NBA athleticism, his braking system is a different story. When he visited P3's biomechanics facility in Santa Barbara as a 17-year-old, something remarkable stood out - his deceleration ability rated in the 90th percentile among NBA players tested at the facility.
"Most athletes in the NBA are Ferrari engines, whereas this requires just some really advanced braking systems," explains P3 director of biomechanics Eric Leidersdorf. "His ability to orient his hip in a way that he can decelerate and then change direction very subtly, but do so very, very rapidly is really impressive combined with the fact that he's big.”
This elite deceleration ability puts Doncic in rare company - his closest biomechanical comparison was James Harden in his Houston prime. It's no coincidence that both players mastered the step-back three, a move that demands precise control over stopping and directional changes. Watch either player and you'll see how they can have a defender draped all over them one moment, and then suddenly find themselves with multiple feet of space to get off a clean look.
Doncic is a master of momentum, having perfected the art of throttling from the gas to the brakes. And slowly, the rest of the league is following suit.
NFL
Elite braking systems aren’t just found in the NBA - they are a hallmark of the gridiron, too.
For every straight-line burner like Chiefs WR Xavier Worthy, there are countless other players across the league who make a name for themselves as a function of their ability to slam on the brakes. Offensive stars like Justin Jefferson or Christian McCaffrey dominate through precise route-running and sharp cuts that leave defenders grasping at air. On defense, players like Aaron Donald and Micah Parsons blend power with the ability to put a foot in the ground and change direction on their pursuits of the quarterback.
These elite athletes demonstrate that while raw speed is important, the ability to modulate it is equally crucial. The NFL Combine’s 3-cone drill and 20 yard shuttle run are perfect examples of tests that measure this braking ability, though they are often overshadowed by the 40 yard dash. In fact, a 2020 research study found that the shuttle run correlated with areas such as offensive guard and center grades, pressure per pass rush from defensive lineman, and more interceptions per pass coverage snap count for safeties.
So go routes are fun and all, but look beyond the home run shots and you’ll see the best football players are walking examples of the value of control-based athleticism.
MLB
But what about America’s pasttime? While we may have to search a little harder on the diamond, look in the right spots and you can’t help but see the same premium on brakes at play.
Take outfielders, for instance, who must rapidly slow down to catch a fly ball as the warning track appears under foot. Or consider runners in need of stopping in place after a tight turn around a base. Even pitchers rely heavily on deceleration techniques, needing to stop forward momentum toward the plate on every pitch for strike throwing accuracy and injury prevention.
And yet, I’d argue that nowhere in baseball is the value of control more evident than in the batter’s box. Because in an uncertain skill where you are simply making your best guess as to what’s coming - and thus frequently likely to be wrong - having the ability to adapt your swing on the fly becomes the separation point between good and great. Elite hitters don’t just have elite speed - they have elite braking systems too. They possess the ability to start with their foot on the gas to get their best swing off on 98 to 100, but can hit the brakes like hell when the moment calls for it. So every time you see a check swing where a batter manages to extend the at-bat by another pitch, or a “B Swing” where the hitter buys a millisecond of time from fastball to off-speed - know you are watching an exercise in braking systems.
AND, Not OR
So to close, if we are to put forth a foundational theory for what constitutes high level athleticism at the elite level of sports, let it be the following:
The Two Pillar Model of Athleticism: Move fast, stop on a dime.
One alone is not enough. It can’t be all gas and no brakes else you wish to lose control and fly off the track. But to be sure, some level of speed is a necessity - you can’t be all brakes and no gas unless you want to max out as a D3 athlete like the writer of this publication.
Instead, two ingredients are necessary to get the recipe right. Speed and control, in varying degrees to taste. You need enough speed to redeem your ticket to the dance, and enough control to make sure you stay on the floor. Because at the highest levels of sport athletes aren’t performing an exercise in drag racing alone; they are formula racing cars searching for the right blend between two contrasting yet complimentary skills.
So give me the gas, certainly. But make sure you put some brakes in the car too.
