The Mental Game

Discover recently ran article entitled "The Brain: Why Athletes Are Geniuses". The title is hype, but does draw attention to the fact that a lot of athletics involves unusual neurological abilities:

Even a sport as seemingly straightforward as pistol shooting is surprisingly complex. A marksman just points his weapon and fires, and yet each shot calls for many rapid decisions, such as how much to bend the elbow and how tightly to contract the shoulder muscles. Since the shooter doesn’t have perfect control over his body, a slight wobble in one part of the arm may require many quick adjustments in other parts. Each time he raises his gun, he has to make a new calculation of what movements are required for an accurate shot, combining previous experience with whatever variations he is experiencing at the moment.

Many of them take easy classes in college.
But they do excel at one form of knowledge.