Layers upon layers of complexity

Why optimal performance is probably not optimal.

While I love the simplicity of the Fitness-Fatigue model, there are no sports that can be trained with this simple model alone. Whether it be basketball, tennis, or rugby, it’s impossible to abstract the problem into a single “training stimulus” and “performance metric.” Even for very specialized competitions, say a deadlift competition, the simple single-input to single-output training model can’t capture elite training. It’s not enough to simply do the deadlift every day and then take a deload week before the competition.

Why not? As part of my campaign to get Nassim Nicholas Taleb to blurb my book, let’s belabor the deadlift for a second. 

In the deadlift, a barbell starts on the ground, loaded with some weights. It is your job to pick it up and demonstrate control holding the bar around waist level. The person who picks up the heaviest weight wins. That’s it! It’s the simplest thing you can imagine: “Pick up this heavy thing.” 

Here’s Hafthor Julius Bjornsson, the Mountain from Game of Thrones, deadlifting 501 kilograms. 

Easy peasy.

OK, so none of us are going to do anything that crazy, but stick with me on this. What do you need to do to get a stronger deadlift? You need to build muscle. You need to be able to tell these muscles to work in synchrony to move the barbell. Already, these two things are different adaptations. To train muscles to fire together when needed, you have to lift heavy weights. But lifting heavy weights accrues high levels of fatigue. Your central nervous system itself gets fatigued and, for heavy deadlifts, might need two weeks to recover. But to build muscle, it’s better to lift lighter weights for more repetitions. You need to do both, and the fitness-fatigue model doesn’t capture this.

Even for the most basic exercise, there are a multiplicity of systems that require adaptation and a multiplicity of ways to train those systems. And if I were to unpack things more, we could think about how to add muscles to different systems. The deadlift requires strong hamstrings, glutes, and lats, so maybe each muscle group should be additionally, individually trained. And maybe each system will require different attention depending on an individual’s weak points. The simple fitness-fatigue model only considers one system. In reality, we have to train multiple interconnected fitness-fatigue systems at once.

This sort of complexity is not unique to the deadlift. Suppose you are training to run a 5K. You’ll need strong legs, you’ll need to train your speed, and you’ll need endurance. These are different physiological systems, and exercise stresses each in different ways. Endurance is the slowest to adapt and is stimulated by long sessions at a low heart rate. Strength is trained by weights. VO2 max is trained by intervals. Planning to improve all of these systems is critical to improving your race time.

And as you get into more complicated sports, how do you conceptualize them? Think of all the interacting parts that have to be stitched together to be competitive. Imagine trying to break down everything that goes into training for tennis or soccer. Popular sports have so many intricate aspects to stitch together.  How do you structure training to improve the performance of an athlete?

Periodization is planning out a training program into chunks to account for varied recovery and adaption components. The plans can be short-term focused (recovering from a match), longer-term focused (training in the offseason), and very long-term focused (moving from the amateur to pro level in a sport). Whereas it seemed like a single fitness-fatigue model might lend itself to “optimal” training, optimal periodization looks much more daunting. Fortunately, even competitive athletes don’t need to be optimal. They just need to be better than everyone else.

Next week, I’ll try to describe the different views of what makes for good periodization. I will also describe where we got to these principles and what role science played. And from all of this, I will explain why I think all of this informs much more than sports.