Author of ‘The Sports Gene’ to deliver Presidential Keynote at 23rd Annual Meeting of AMSSM

David Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Sports Gene, will deliver the Presidential Keynote at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans next week. In his keynote, Epstein will address the following:

• How "nature versus nurture" in sports is a false dichotomy.
• Why Major League Baseball players need both the right physical "hardware" and "software" to be able to hit 100-mph fastballs.
• Where the 10,000-hours rule comes from and what the data from that famous study says.
• How the body types of athletes have changed faster than the gene pool of humanity has changed, and how that provides new information to help people find the right sport.
• Why the push for increased youth sport specialization is bad both for the health of youth athletes and their athletic development.

Epstein is currently an investigative reporter at the nonprofit newsroom, ProPublica. Prior to that, he was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where he focused on sports science and medicine. Epstein is perhaps best known for co-authoring the story that exposed the steroid use of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. He has a Master's degree in environmental science and was All-East as an 800-meter runner at Columbia University.