Why You Need A Systems Approach
Do You Believe Your Health Directly Impacts Your Ability To Perform?
Most people are too busy trying to juggle their diaries to figure out how to become a better athlete.
Let's start with the idea no matter your profession from CEO to Engineer what you need to do is get better at it with the goal of doing it well consistently day in day out.
Life is a property of the whole, there's no part of you that separately lives.
When the whole is disassembled it loses its essential properties and so do all of its parts.
Therefore the essential function of any system derives from how its parts interact, not on how they act separately.
For example only a car as a whole can transport you, no part taken independently can do that.
In A Word The Parts Are All Interconnected.
So if you work to improve your cardiovascular fitness it improves not just your heart but the lungs, circulation and your ability to run further. Standard stuff.
In any system when one takes any part and improves its performance "the whole does not necessarily improve" in fact it frequently gets worse! When a system is operating as well as possible none of its parts may do.
Here’s A Better Way To Approach It.
When we feel pain or injury we tend to make compensations unconsciously, it’s natural to try to move our ourselves away from pain, this we might do with drugs like anti-inflammatories or using orthotics. The problem with this approach is we are simply masking the problem which leads to bigger problems down the road.
Injuries rarely happen in isolation and never without cause and it isn’t always a bio-mechanical one, pain is complex and multi-factorial and almost never black and white.
For example, just because you have a pain in your knee does not mean you have a knee problem. It could be mechanical such as your hip is the source or it could be you haven’t been sleeping well for the last week which led to poor decisions around movement, nutrition and recovery and now you have a knee pain.
It’s mainly up to each of us to build systems to support our busy lives. It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the load you are not prepared for.
We run so we don’t get hurt, what we need is a sustainable model that makes us less afraid of doing the wrong thing. You want to become a subconscious mover not a conscious one.
If You Want Your Body To Feel Better, Feel Your Body Move Better!
This is why we want to move away from “chasing pain” to a whole system approach. It starts with lifestyle change and moving away from the ‘fix it’ mentality.
I’ll talk more about how to do this next week.
Here Are A Few Things Worth Knowing This Week
Movement
The Effect Of Sports Massage For Performance Is massage part of your weekly or monthly recovery routine? Turns out its probably not doing what it says on the tin!
I’ve been a practicing sports and remedial therapist for over 20 years and dealt out a fair bit of elbow abuse on a few muscles, however I came to wonder why people’s conditions never really changed much so began to ask myself the question “would an active rather than passive model of treatment, focusing on reassurance and reactivation produce greater effects?”
I’ve found as I built people’s confidence and gave them a positive experience with movement they became less reliant on passive modalities. I still believe it has a place and still use my manual skills to help clients.
However, this study shows massage may leave the client ‘feeling’ better it doesn’t translate to better performance. Not saying you shouldn’t have it. But know it’s not necessarily fixing the problem, at least in the long term.
Mindset
I just listened to this podcast interview with Deepak Chopra. I have to say I’ve never really thought his material was my thing, but after having a conversation with a client who had the opportunity to hear him speak I thought I should explore.
This conversation is about the nature of reality and consciousness. They discuss why it’s so challenging to use language and sensory information to try to make sense of the true nature of what is.
How can we understand reality when what we see and hear and feel is not complete?
I’m going to listen to this again, I found it mind-bending in a good way and I think you will too so I encourage you to listen, even if it’s not your thing. In these times it’s a good opportunity to ask ourselves some questions and perhaps you’ll leave the conversation with a different perspective on the way you think about what is real.
He suggests the uncertain, the unpredictable, and the unknown is where we live. Pretending all the time that it’s predictable, known. But all that’s predictable and known is the past. Anything henceforth is unpredictable. And embracing the wisdom of uncertainty is actually the doorway to creativity.
Listen out for the four questions he recommends we ask ourselves.
Nutrition
An Interesting study here finds:
"Properly planned vegetarian diets are healthful and effective for weight and glycemic control, and provide metabolic and cardiovascular benefits, including reversing atherosclerosis and decreasing blood lipids and blood pressure.”
It’s well known cardio-metabolic disease, namely ischemic heart disease, stroke, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, represent substantial health risks and seemingly at an alarming rate.
Suboptimal nutrition is a leading contributor to chronic disease and premature death worldwide. The study says according to a recent analysis, certain dietary factors, including high intakes of sodium and processed meat products and low intakes of fruits and vegetables, were associated with 45.5% of cardio-metabolic deaths.
If building a sustainable long term healthy eating approach is important to you this study is worth a scan.
Recovery
Recovery doesn’t just include what you do after a training session, perhaps more importantly it’s how you manage all the other area’s of life too including your work.
Over the years I had many battles with type A senior level execs who want results but can’t acknowledge work load is a contributor in their ability to perform. Encouraging behaviour change is hard no matter who you are, at essence we are creatures of habit.
If you’re not adequately recovering in work time you almost certainly won’t get progress in your training. I found a good article here in Bloomberg talking about productivity and recovery.
The expert who is interviewed says "Since the Industrial Revolution, the dominant philosophy of work has centred around productivity as the only metric that’s important for success.
As work culture developed, we’ve internalised the idea any time that isn’t spent doing something is wasted time. Worse, we’ve been made to believe if we aren’t struggling and hustling, we don’t deserve our success."
What’s the hard truth workers need to remember? If you’re a high performer and recovery isn’t an intentional and strategic part of your time and workflow, you’re only damaging your output in the long run.
Culture
I had it in mind to post an article about Kipchogé for the first edition however I’m going to save it for the next edition, because I came across a story I felt was more poignant.
This is perhaps the most iconic sports photograph ever taken.
At the 1968 Olympics, U.S sprinter Tommie Smith stands defiantly, head bowed, his black gloved fist thrust into the air. Behind him fellow American John Carlos joining with his Black Power salute. It was an act of defiance aimed at the segregation and racism burning back in the U.S.
Not unlike today.
Smith won Gold, Carlos won Bronze.
The Silver was won by Australian Peter Norman, against all odds.
It was an act that scandalised the Olympics. Smith and Carlos were sent home and banned from the Olympics for life. They were treated as hero’s by the black community for sacrificing personal glory for the cause.
A lot of people didn’t realise Peter Norman had played a much bigger role. Although he was a staunch Anti-Racism advocate, no one expected him to take a stand in Mexico.
Smith and Carlos had already decided to make a stand on the podium. They were to wear black gloves. But Carlos had left his at the Olympic Village. It was Norman who suggested they should wear one each on alternate hand.
For his part Norman asked a member of the U.S rowing team for his “Olympic Project for Human Rights badge so he could show solidarity.
The fallout for Smith and Carlos was immediate. Norman was cast aside by Australia never to run in the Olympics again.
His 200m record of 20.06secs is still the fastest time for an Australian. It would have won him Gold in Sydney.
At the Sydney Olympics he wasn’t invited in any capacity.
When the U.S. Olympic delegation heard of this they arranged to fly him as part of their delegation. He was invited to the Birthday party of Michael Johnson 200 and 400m World and Olympic Champion.
Peter Norman died on Oct 9th 2006. At the funeral Smith and Carlos gave the eulogy. They both helped carry the coffin. For them, Norman was a hero — “A lone soldier” according to Carlos, for his small but determined stance against racism.
The three remained friends ever since their chance meeting on that podium in Mexico City 52 years ago.
