Nurture or nature? This is one of the sport world’s oldest debates. Are champions built through endless hours of practice, or are they born with something extraordinary already imprinted in their DNA? If you ask John Brown, the father of Amon-Ra St. Brown, the answer is that it’s mostly genetics. Brown, a former bodybuilder who helped raise three athletic sons, had first stirred the debate on race and athletic superiority last year and now just doubled down on it.

Last June, Brown received backlash after he advised his sons to be mindful about who they start their families with. He suggested that having children with Black women can help increase the chance of producing great athletes. He used an analogy about “breeding,” saying that once you “step on it,” you can’t keep “cutting it” without weakening it. These remarks made waves online, and he was asked to make his stance clear in another episode of the St. Brown podcast, and he might have stirred the pot even more.

“Most of the people, if I’m not mistaken, 56%, I think I read, are Black African Americans in [the] NFL and in basketball [NBA]; I think it’s even higher, like up to 70% are Black,” John Brown said on the St. Brown podcast back. “…So I’m just saying, it seems to me, you have a greater chance if you have some Black blood somewhere that runs in your veins.”

As for the infamous comment of not “cutting it twice,” [John] Brown said he used the phrase out of humor. Describing it as “wordplay,” he highlighted how people push back against “cutting” c—– to prevent it from becoming weaker.

Yet, he maintained that his actual point was about the representation of the African-American community in professional sports. However, he clarified that he never claimed people from other ethnicities can’t succeed as athletes. To illustrate this, he identified former basketball player Yao Ming as an outlier who didn’t fit the trend and yet made it big. In his view, talent can come from any background, including White, Asian, and Hispanic, if someone trains hard enough. Using stats to support his case, he still believes that having an African-American heritage may increase the chances of succeeding in those sports.

Modern research, though, makes this athletic greatness topic far more complicated. Scientists often use genome-wide association studies to compare the DNA of elite athletes with that of the general population. One commonly studied gene is ACTN3, which helps produce proteins that are linked to the fast-twitch muscle fibers used in sprinting or power. Now, while many top athletes carry this, some of them lack the variant completely.

So genetics may influence potential, but the environment, the training, and opportunity also play a huge role. It’s something even John Brown also knows, because why else would he have gone for tough love while training his sons if he believed just genes were enough?

John Brown’s unconventional plan to raise three elite football players

John Brown raised his sons, Amon and Equanimeous, to become top athletes. Their third brother, Osiris St. Brown, also played college football at Stanford University. And he started getting them ready to become the players they are today pretty young. In fact, unusually young. The boys were in elementary school and hadn’t even lost all of their baby teeth yet.

Almost every weekday afternoon, their garage door would slide open, and inside was a small gym scenario. Brown would take his three young sons through weightlifting sessions. He admitted that other people thought he was crazy.

“Some guy in the 1920s said lifting weights early stunts your growth, and everyone believed him.” The boys were just 5, 6, and 8 years old when he brought PVC pipes from hardware stores and taught them lifting techniques before allowing them to touch the real weights.

Five afternoons a week, the brothers would move through almost a drill of things. One lifting, two spotting as music blasted in the background. Sure, it was unconventional and intense, but for John Brown, that’s exactly what he wanted. Earlier this year, talking about his athletic playbook for raising his sons, he said, “I don’t care about backlash or any comments because in life you are going to be the hammer or the nail, I’m the hammer.”