As previously mentioned, the brain is a truly marvelous organ. When healthy, it is capable of learning damn near anything. Struggling math students can become proficient in calculus (ask me how I know that). With that said, damn near anything also includes some pretty goddamn useless things as well.
First, we need to define what I mean by useless. Generally speaking, useless in this context is going to mean non-transferrable. That is to say, a set of skills that does not carry over well to another line of work, sport, activity, or any other arena in life. Playing thousands of hours of Call of Duty has limited transferability, but learning to draw might make one a better tattoo artist.
When many people are asked “What is the least transferable skill you’ve ever became good at?”, many will inevitably turn to something they learned at an old job. To be fair, this isn’t a wild stretch of the imagination. After all, we spend inordinate amount of our time at work (and that is not necessarily a bad thing). Others might point to a bullshit elective that they took in college, such as Underwater Basket Weaving or Feminist Dance Therapy.
I joined the track team my freshman year of high school, mostly because I was told that they had access to the weight room. At the time, I was a weakling bench warmer who wanted to earn more playing time in the upcoming football season. I floundered a lot at the beginning of the track-and-field schedule, not truly finding my niche. But one day I tried discus in practice, and something just…clicked.
I spent the rest of my high school springs honing the craft of throwing the discus. My sophomore year, the conference instituted a JV league, which I utterly dominated; I went undefeated in meets against sub-varsity opponents. My junior year, the conference instituted a rule requiring athletes to qualify for the conference championship meet. I qualified my first throw of the season. Fast forward to my senior year, and I was regularly scoring points for my team. I had become a force to be reckoned with, at least in my small-pond conference. While not a college prospect at the event by any means, I had become objectively good at throwing the metal disc.
Here’s the catch though; discus is an objectively useless skill to learn. The other throwing events in the sport both offer at least a tangential benefit that discus does not. The javelin throwers would, albeit half-jokingly, say that they could survive on a deserted island. The thinking was that their javelin-throwing skills could be used to hunt wild game, and our part-time javelin coach would even feed this delusion notion.
“But Dan, what about shotput?” Shotput is nearly as useless as discus, except for one major exception. While the shotput motion isn’t used in nearly any other sport (or facet in life, really), it does at least confer a major strength upgrade. Make no mistake; in order to be a good shotput thrower, one must be strong AF; zero exceptions.
Discus, on the other hand, doesn’t have must deadlift a pickup truck as a hard requirement. Don’t get me wrong; strength helps, and with all other things being equal; the stronger thrower will win. However, all other things being equal is never actually the case. Technique plays a major role. I’ve been able to out-throw guys who were brick shit-houses in the discus cage; I drilled the fundamentals when they hadn’t.
Combine the lack of a hard strength requirement with the absence of the discus throwing motion in nearly any other sport (or even choreographed dance, for that matter) and you have a recipe for something with little-to-no transferability. Discus doesn’t make one better at hitting a golf ball (a valued skill for CEO’s), nor does it confer any entertaining party tricks. Hell, it doesn’t even look good on a college application for fucks sake!
Mamas, don’t let your boys grow up to be discus throwers…
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