Some Lessons from Life for Health and Performance

Some Helpful Concepts to Consider in your Health and Performance

Regular readers will know I am a collector of heuristics, friends will tell you I am a collector of phrases and quotes. We need not discuss how these things stick nor why parts of my medical curriculum did not see the same fate (the krebs cycle anyone?). That said, I was recently reflecting on how helpful some of these lessons were in the health and performance realms, particularly as heuristics for decision making.

The first few come as a result of one of my better decisions, which externally was criticised quite heavily. When given the choice of subjects in high school, to the shock (and criticism) of many of my teachers one of my two choices what “shop” (wood work and metal work to learn how to use tools and make things). We need not labour the decision making but the criticism probably makes sense given the path I’ve ended up walking, which was evident even at the age of 13 when I was making the decision. It was in this time (more than 2 decades ago) I picked up a few helpful tips for “shop” which have served me well in the health and performance space.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Beyond the obvious, when prescribing or taking substances (such as medication) or when performing surgery this rule of thumb has been very helpful.

Using this may mean you require more data before engaging any an intervention - something particularly pertinent in spaces such as health and performance where the animal research often does not translate into results in human trials.
*Quick side note; significance and reversibility count in decision making! James Clear, an author I love recently mentioned he thinks about decisions as “Hats, Haircuts & Tattoos” more here if the analogy doesn’t immediately make sense.

Performance

Appropriate planning is key in the performance space. Which means being over prepared before execution is usually advantageous, unless the decisions are easily reversible and low consequence (where speed may be more valuable rather than accuracy).

Health

This could speak to the frequency of monitoring, or its utility as I discussed in part here when talking about feedback and it’s power. Meaning that whilst you are intervening you are ensuring to track, or for that matter ensuring you need to intervene to start. This dovetails well into the next phrase.

You Can Always Cut a Bit More Off..

Related, but slightly different to the previous lesson is the classic “you can always cut a bit more off, you can never cut a bit more on.” Another similar concept which may resonate more for some readers is the toothpaste analogy; you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.

This speaks to making changes bit by bit, rather than all at once. Specifically, adding in stimuli slowly and adapting before adding more, rather than shocking the system all at once. I’d argue this has even more pertinence in those with higher loads (ie elite athletes) or those with lower load tolerance (aging individuals). In either case, significant perturbations can have significant impacts and the risk likely outweighs the benefits. This holds for things like changes to exercise or training, adding stimuli (like heat) or even perhaps dietary changes.

There’s certainly a level of psychological applicability to this phrase when it comes to habit change, which is to say, the momentum of early success can be hugely motivating and helpful in further habit change, so starting small may be the best way to form a habit before evolving it.

Worst Case Scenario

This concept has come directly form the physical preparation literature. In short, preparing elite athletes needs quantification, and until this concept athletes would often be prepared to the standard of the “normal” demands of a match. This meant both reduced performance and increased injury risk on days that were in excess of this (you know, in the finals or extra time).
So, of course this concept is pertinent to physical performance, but how does it pertain to health?

This fundamentally comes down to be able to tolerate the biggest perturbations and/or decrements in ability. What does this look like? Ultimately it looks like high capacity in all organ systems (including bone and muscle) so that they can tolerate challenges like heat or cold and/or deal with decrements in their function (which are to a degree expected and unavoidable).

This involves inducing a level of stress now to ensure your body adapts to be more resilient (via what is called “hormesis”). Two classic examples here are heat and exercise. Appropriate preventative healthcare certainly has a role here too, including health screening to ensure you are not compromising your physiology and organ systems.

Antifragility

A concept popularised by Nassim Nicolas Taleb in his book of the same name and subsequently adopted by the physical performance world this is a concept I have probably touched on multiple times already but is worth adding here.

Most understand the terms fragile and robust, but antifragile is a step further down the continuum. It’s not that something that is antifragile withstands stress, it is that it becomes more robust as a result of stress. The classic example being a tree with it’s roots; windy conditions mean the tree creates a more significant root network and is thus antifragile. One well publicised story which exemplifies what some may call antifragility is of Michael Phelps’ coach breaking his goggles to ensure goggle malfunctions in competition weren’t a problem for him.

It is with this in mind, that one can approach health and performance in such a way that suboptimal conditions become an asset, it’s not that you tolerate the suboptimal conditions but that they create an advantage for you. Interestingly there’s a vocal group on social media (shocking I know) who are anti-optimisation when it comes to the health and longevity field, because it creates a level of fragility.

Probably the best example of an opportunity to use a situation to create a level of antifragility is travel. It will almost certainly provide an opportunity to train differently with different conditions, with new equipment, different constraints or in a new climate. Sport specific examples include dietary antifragility whilst traveling, rather than the fragility of a narrow diet at home.

Hopefully these heuristics give you some pause for thought or a new way of looking at the health and performance space or your endeavours therein. If there are any of your favourites that I have missed please respond to this email or comment in the substack app.

References

1. Carton-Llorente A, Lozano D, Gilart Iglesias V, Jorquera DM, Manchado C. Worst-case scenario analysis of physical demands in elite men handball players by playing position through big data analytics. Biol Sport. 2023 Oct;40(4):1219-1227. doi: 10.5114/biolsport.2023.126665. Epub 2023 Sep 27. PMID: 37867747; PMCID: PMC10588589.