Being an elite athlete requires mastery of mind, body and, occasionally, some unorthodox skills. As part of the December 2024 Total Athlete issue, SI explores how today’s complete competitors are expanding what’s possible with new fitness frontiers, cutting edge technology, mental training and more—from the behemoths of the NFL’s offensive line, to a versatile WNBA veteran, to a special group of athletes who forgo the fundamentals and go against the grain.
Caitlin Clark
In this signature year for women’s basketball, the sport’s leading light, fittingly, comes armed with a signature shot. There is no four-point play in hoops, of course. But if there were, Caitlin Clark would have averaged even more than the 19.2 points per game she put up playing for the Fever in her breakthrough rookie WNBA season.
Her “logo threes”—jumpers launched from the edge of the center insignia on the court, 25 to 35 feet from the hoop—play a central role in her game, her excellence and, by extension, her popularity. Plus, she concedes, “They’re really fun.”
The origin story of Clark’s logo three is itself a validation of the WNBA. Sure, growing up as a basketball junkie in Iowa, she had seen, say, Steph Curry or Damian Lillard take a dribble or two past half court and let it fly. But the real galvanizing force behind her love for the game was her first WNBA experience. Clark and her father once made the three-plus-hour drive from Des Moines to Minneapolis to watch Maya Moore and the Lynx. When they returned home, an inspired young Caitlin demanded the family tear up some grass and pour more concrete around the perimeter of the driveway hoop—a “goal” in Iowa-ese—so she could extend her range.
As a transcendent star at Iowa, Clark became known for planting her feet on the beak of the Hawkeye logo and letting it fly. She took her show on the road as well and nailed three-pointers from the neck of the Nittany Lion on Penn State’s court, Michigan’s midcourt M, and more. When she broke the NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring record in February, she scored eight straight points in two minutes, including a logo three to seal the mark. And she’s since added to her repertoire inside the dozen WNBA arenas.
The logo three is just that: a shot. Not a heave or a hurl. Despite the distance, Clark says that the actual mechanics are not that different from that of a midrange jumper or another conventional shot. Similar release point. Similar stroke.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m closer than I am,” she says. “I don’t feel that far back, especially in a game. I kinda just lose sight of where I actually am. Which is probably a good thing.”
The difference is in the lower body—and it’s not just because her foot is on the outer edge of a team’s logo. That’s where she generates the power and force needed for the long range. “It’s gotta be in your legs,” she says. “I loved soccer. I think that’s where I got my leg strength from.”
Unlike a free throw (15 feet from the basket) or a baseline three (22' 1 ¾" in the WNBA), the distance of a logo three is not a constant. Mileage can vary from court to court, based on the placement of a team’s name and symbol. So, especially on the road, Clark surveys her surroundings. “Before the games start, I always wanna see how big the logo is,” she says. “Some [arenas] have bigger logos at center court, some have smaller ones. So if it’s pretty big, I can usually get there.”
Attempting a logo three, she says, is seldom the first option. “If a teammate’s open, you deliver it. If not, you’re going to let it fly.” And, for Clark, it’s seldom a catch and shoot. She’ll create the space for herself. “I like shooting off the dribble better,” she says. “Which I’m pretty sure if you asked 10 people, I would probably be the only one to say that.”
And the logo three isn’t just a shot; it’s a state of mind. Clark uses it almost as a reward. “I only shoot from back there in games if I’ve made a couple [shots from closer range],” she says. “Then you get a free pass to launch a long three.” (Is that a free pass in the eyes of her coach? Or in keeping with her own basketball ethics code? “Both.”)
While old-schoolers might shake their heads and say “bad shot selection,” Clark made 78 of 227 attempts from 25 to 29 feet away this season, or 34.3%—which was better than the WNBA average for all threes. And damn if they don’t feel good. “I mean, throwing a good pass, a good transition pass for a cool layup is great,” she says. “But, yeah, [nailing a logo three] is definitely up there.”
And she’s not the only one whose pleasure centers are tickled by the logo three. “The crowd just goes crazy when that happens. You gotta play to the crowd. That’s what people love. So I gotta give ’em what they want!” —Jon Wertheim
Scottie Scheffler
Some may call the motion the Scheffler Shuffle, but I humbly submit a different idea: the Dance of a Champion.
Scottie Scheffler’s oft-discussed and replayed footwork is hardly conventional, but it does make his swing recognizable. The key to his success is his ability to produce consistent shots in any condition—it’s the hallmark of an efficient (and winning) golf swing. Case in point: In 2024, Scheffler won the Masters, the Players Championship, an Olympic gold medal and the FedEx Cup. The shuffle is clearly working.
Let’s get technical for a moment. There are essentially three vectors of force in a golf swing: vertical (up and down), lateral (side to side) and rotational. Every Tour player uses a mix of these in their swings, and it adds up to their signature style.
At the top of Scheffler’s backswing, both of his feet are flat on the ground. He initiates his downswing by sliding his pelvis toward the target, utilizing lateral movement early. He then incorporates vertical action, with his trailing foot coming off the ground early in the downswing. Scheffler uses very little rotation, nor does he use much of a pushing motion with his back foot, which is distinctly different from Rory McIlroy and most other power hitters. Scheffler’s back foot actually slides behind his hips and his lead foot, and it’s almost off the ground at the moment in his downswing when his club shaft is parallel to the ground.
Scheffler’s feet are barely touching the ground at impact, as he uses the ground to produce vertical force with his front foot. This technique allows him to generate tremendous clubhead speed.
A golf swing is a sequence of stops and starts involving different body segments. Scheffler’s lead ankle stops the rotation of his lower body, essentially ending his swing. He must have very flexible joints to rotate his lead foot externally and toward his heel with such force, all while avoiding injury. Scheffler’s finish is unorthodox, and while it may not resemble other Tour players’ finishes, it’s balanced for him.
Every golfer should resist the temptation to imitate someone else’s swing—that swing is already taken. If you want to play golf like Scottie Scheffler, work with a coach to identify what truly matters in your golf swing. Efficiently delivering the clubface squarely to the ball is essential. Contacting the ball on the sweet spot to compress it and control distance and trajectory are also key. How each golfer achieves these goals is highly individual.
Scheffler leans into his natural movements to build a swing that is powerful and repeatable in all conditions, especially under high pressure. It’s the foundation for excellent on-demand performance. After all, golf isn’t a beauty contest: it’s about the numbers on the scorecard. —Claude Brousseau, director of player development at Wailea Golf Academy in Maui
Luis Arraez
Attend a game at any MLB ballpark or tune into any broadcast, and the numbers are inescapable. The sport is obsessed with measuring how fast a ball is pitched, hit or thrown; how quickly a runner moves from home to first; or how swiftly a hitter can swing their bat through the strike zone. Anything that can be measured on a baseball diamond gets tracked, and players are trained to maximize their outputs in all of these areas, because, of course, faster equals better.
There are, however, outliers. And no one stands out more than Luis Arraez.
The Padres’ leadoff man just secured his third consecutive batting title after hitting .314. And while “batting champion” might not carry as much cachet as it did 20 years ago, it remains a notable accomplishment—one Arraez has achieved thanks to his throwback style.
Arraez is unlike the modern MLB hitter in nearly every way. During a time when strikeouts have never been tolerated more, he has posted the lowest strikeout rate in each of the past three seasons. Beginning this year, Statcast started publicly releasing hitters’ swing speeds. Of 214 qualified hitters, Arraez’s average bat speed (63.2 mph) was the slowest. He also ranked at or near the bottom in walk rate and hard-hit rate, and had the third-fewest home runs (four) of all qualified hitters—not quite typical characteristics of a first baseman.
Arraez knows he’s different from his peers, and for him, it all starts with accepting his limitations.
“Everybody’s different,” Arraez says. “There’s a lot of people with a lot of power or that make a lot of contact. If I had [both], I’m perfect—maybe a bit like [Shohei] Ohtani, [Aaron] Judge. But I’m different.”
This season, Arraez put together a streak of 141 consecutive plate appearances without striking out, which stands as the fifth-longest run in league history, 29 shy of Tony Gwynn’s record. Over his 20-year career, Gwynn won eight batting titles and was the last player to take a serious run at .400, hitting .394 during the strike-halted 1994 campaign. Omitting the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Arraez’s .354 mark in ’23 is the closest anybody has come to .400 in the past decade.
So how is it that Arraez—a 27-year-old with the slowest bat speed in the game, a player who makes weak contact and rarely walks or homers—is a three-time All-Star? The answer lies in his ability to maximize every bit of his contact’s potential. Or, to put it another way, the 5' 10", 175-pound Arraez doesn’t hit the ball hard, but he hits it in the right spot more consistently than anybody else. That can mean both an area on the field and, more importantly, an area on his bat. Even the fastest swings can produce poor contact if the hitter is off-balance or mistimes the ball.
Arraez makes contact with the sweet spot of the bat’s barrel—about four to nine inches from the head of the bat—more often than any other hitter, leading the league in a stat known as “squared-up rate.” As a result, he’s able to squeeze out the highest possible exit velocity he’s capable of considering the speed of his swing and, to a lesser degree, the pace of the pitch. During the 2024 season, Arraez squared up 415 pitches, 74 more than the next highest total. And, like any great contact hitter, he sprays the ball to all fields—no hitter had more opposite-field base hits this year than Arraez’s 63.
Arraez might remain permanently affixed at the bottom of the Statcast ratings, but that’s fine by him. In the time it took to find his name on the exit velocity leaderboard, he just guided another ground ball through the hole for a base hit. —Nick Selbe
Conor Bedard
When Tim Turk first watched Connor Bedard shoot a puck nearly four years ago, he knew he’d just seen something special. The Ontario-based shooting and skills coach had no idea who the teenager out of Western Canada was when he agreed to do an evaluation.
Turk has worked with NHL players for 29 of his 35-year coaching career. But there was something about this kid, particularly with his wrist shot, that was like nothing he’d ever seen before. “It looked like a cowboy drawing his gun out of his holster in a gunfight,” Turk says.
Shortly after the session, Bedard became a household name at the Turks’ residence, just as it already was elsewhere in the hockey world. Bedard was the first to be granted exceptional status in the Western Hockey League to play at 15 years old, scoring 12 goals in 15 games his first season. During the 2022–23 WHL season, he had 71 goals in 57 games. That same year he rewrote the Canadian record book at the world junior championship, racking up 23 points, including nine goals, in seven games. The top pick of the 2023 NHL draft notched 61 points (22 goals, 39 assists) in 68 games in his first year with the Blackhawks, winning the Calder Trophy as the league’s rookie of the year at age 18.
But what is it exactly that makes the second-year center’s wrist shot so lethal? Let’s start with his stick. Most players use one that comes up just below their chin when they’re on skates. Bedard’s is closer to his nose. Awkward? Maybe for some, but for Bedard, the added length is a way to give him more torque and enhance his toe drag, pulling the puck around in all sorts of directions to give him a wider range of release points.
Next is his Billy the Kid–like brandishing. When loading up to shoot, players typically drag the puck inward at about a 45-degree angle from their toes before releasing it. Bedard’s pull, Turk says, is more like a 180-degree angle, bringing it back laterally toward his spine and in a much more compacted space.
“When it gets in close like that, it creates all these different types of deceptions and views that goalies see or recognize because the hands are so tight or in front of the body,” Turk says.
Then there’s the actual release of the puck. The story goes that when Bedard was 13, he broke his right wrist. As a right-handed player, he got around that by learning to shoot with just his left. Now when he executes a wrist shot, Bedard’s right hand acts as a fulcrum on the shaft, but the top hand brings the power, catapulting the stick with a strength many don’t naturally have. And the way Bedard angles that left wrist in toward his hip is also unusual.
“The puck has already been released prior to his hand going down, so his control in that wrist action is super unique,” Turk says.
In a game, all of this multitasking adds up to a rather deceiving and chaotic motion, a buildup that’s as unsettling as a jazz drummer improvising a solo. But don’t mistake that chaos for a lack of control—Bedard, 19, is still smooth in his execution, seemingly able to change the angle and pick his spot mid-shot.
Through his first 36 games as a rookie in Chicago, Bedard had a point on 37.9% of the team’s goals and scored 17.2% of them himself, best for ninth in the league at that time. That clip might have continued had he not missed 14 games with a broken jaw. He led all first-year players in points and assists.
Predictably, youngsters want to shoot like Bedard, but Turk advises against it as very few will be able to emulate Bedard’s unpredictable, whippy wrist shot.
“It’s just too hard to mimic him,” Turk says. —Kristen Nelson
Alex Pereira
At first smack anyway, the UFC is the epitome of a modern, au courant sports property, all bright lights, social media engagement and crypto logos in the Octagon. Yet, the sport itself—mixed martial arts—is decidedly a throwback, a contest anchored in basic geometry, physics and fundamentals.
Take Newton’s second law of motion, F=ma, force equals the mass of an object multiplied by its acceleration. Or in fighter terms, “the bigger the lever, the bigger the blow.” What does that look like in fistic practice? A foot has more mass than a fist. So, it stands to reason that a kick carries more force than a punch, especially when it’s delivered with perfect technique and ideal precision. It’s put into vivid, devastating (and painful) effect via the whipping leg kicks of Alex Pereira, the UFC’s current light heavyweight champ.
While Pereira, 37, is known for his kicks, it’s not necessarily knockout head kicks that first put opponents to sleep and then make for YouTube catnip. Rather, starting early in a fight, Pereira will torque his lead foot (his right), pivot his body and snap off brutal kicks to the backside of his opponent’s lead leg. To the back of thighs. To the back of knees. To calves. “It’s the muscle and tissue and the nerves,” Pereira explains, through a translator. “The parts of the person, they are going to feel more.”
In a traditional leg kick, a fighter will pivot on his standing leg while his other hip turns over as the leg kicks through, with the power coming from the knee joint and quad muscle. But Pereira’s kick breaks all of the rules—there is minimal pivot and turnover of the hip and his kicking leg extends much sooner. “People in kicking tutorials will tell you that what he is doing is straight up wrong,” says posture and movement training specialist Theo Tanchak.
A week before he defended his title in Salt Lake City at UFC 307 against Khalil Rountree, Pereira broke down his kicking biomechanics. First, he stresses that, while the foot gets the credit, it’s really just the contact point. An ideal leg kick involves transferring your entire body weight into the kick. “That’s where the force comes from,” he says. And Pereira does not, pointedly, connect with his shin. “That’s how you break a bone,” he says flatly. Rather it’s the top of the foot that does the damage. As he kicks, he often rocks back, so his body is out of range from the opponent’s punch.
Pereira didn’t begin fighting until his 20s, when, he says, he took up kickboxing during his struggle with alcoholism. But unbeknownst to him, he had built a kicking foundation long before that. He dropped out of middle school in São Paulo to become a bricklayer’s assistant. All the time on his feet fortified his quads. “Heavy labor,” he says, “builds strength.”
When he began training as a kickboxer, the motion came naturally. In 2015, he lost a bout in Dubai to Dutch fighter Jason Wilnis. “He was kicking me so hard it changed everything,” Pereira says. The pain to his legs prevented him from kicking back and the damage impeded his mobility. The concern that another kick was on the way changed his risk tolerance. “Getting kicked in the legs messes with your legs—and your head,” he notes.
After the Wilnis fight, Pereira was “inspired to change my game” and implement more kicks to the back of his opponents’ legs. (In 2019, he won his rematch against Wilnis and won the fight with a sensational flying knee.) Meanwhile, after having studied jiujitsu, Pereira began building his record and reputation in mixed martial arts, climbing the ranks of local promotions and then the UFC.
As he became a contender, he also established himself as a fearsome leg kicker. He has won his share of UFC fights with kicks. Those are easy to count. Less apparent: the fights he has won because he softened up his opponents with those snapping kicks, the equivalent of accumulated body blows that weaken boxers’ defenses or morale in equal measure. In the time it takes to hoist a hand, adrenaline has worn off, and the opponent—who merely smarted from those leg kicks—is suddenly incapacitated, unable to leave the Octagon under his own power.
Pereira’s kicks might be sadistic. But he, himself, is not. In these moments, empathy overcomes him. “We are all trying to be better than the other guy, right?” he says. “But at the end of the day, the guy has a family. So you get concerned. I want to win. But I want the other guy to go home, get better and fight again.” —J.W.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Inside the Techniques and Tactics of Elite Athletes Who Go Against the Grain.