There is a new approach in town to Performance Optimization or optimal performance. It’s called Performance Lifestyle.
First, what is Performance Optimization?
Well if you were to search the term, one of the first responses you would pull up would be a document from the US department of defense that defines human performance optimization ~as the relatively precise, controlled and combined application of certain substances and devices over the short and long-term to achieve optimization in a person or unit’s performance overall.”
That definition seems fairly limited to me when you consider how much low hanging fruit there is in each of our lifestyle’s to help us perform better in life, in business, in sport or creative pursuits.
Consider how you think, eat, train, recuperate, plan, focus and more. It goes without saying that these core essentials of lifestyle alone could stand a level-up in each of our lives as persons, parents, professionals who may also be into the military, sports, creative pursuits on top of “life” itself.
Which is not say that devices and substances (hopefully we’re talking food and supplements here) don’t play a role and a significant one at that.
Matter of fact, one device we’re paying attention to is Whoop, a performance optimization system. What we like so much about this is that it addresses with a device, as we do with training and now with the addition of a device such as Whoop what really yields an increase in performance more than anything else, and that is recuperation—understanding our need for sleep, rest, recovery, relaxation and meditation, and rejuvenation.
First, there is a new term for this on the scene in the last 10 years or so, and it’s called Regeneration – its renewal through the internal processes of a body or system. Something which embodies this action can be described as regenerative.
Long before you start talking about what most people think of in terms of regeneration in humans or other animal life—the regrowth of lost tissues or organs in response to injury as we see when human’s heal a cut or a star fish regenerates a lost arm or leg or tentacle (not sure what you call them at the time of this writing) you have to have the life force energy within to be able to do that.
Life l?f/—The life force energy that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
What is THAT energy?
To cut to the chase, it’s the energy that devices like Whoop are now beginning to measure, by measuring strain and recovery so you can better determine your sleep requirements for the day ahead that you expect to have or want to have. Now we’re getting to the heart of performance optimization. Everything else is topical; integral, but not dealing with the source of performance that all other tactics depend on.
In life, knowing that energy is everything and everything depends on this vital energy is essential. The thing is, the energy we’re talking about most of us have taken for granted for far too long because you can’t see it or touch it. Measuring it is subjective and if you want a more objective measurement it requires specialized gear like Whoop.
Nonetheless, you experience this, your primary source of energy, every minute of every day, and while you know when it’s depleted you often won’t know how depleted until you hit the wall—an athletic term to describe depleted energy.
Why is simple, we all fall for the stimulant delusion pretty regularly and that is the rising energy from stimulants of any kind, thinking that we can sustain that output when we can’t. It’s your battery power, your body is the battery, and it’s easy to misinterpret how much power you have unless you are informed and skilled.
Today, we are spending that battery power more than we’re recuperating it, and it’s causing too many of us to downward-spiral in a life situation that continues to get worse because we are lacking sufficient energy levels and the health and performance that’s depends on it is degenerating. It’s because we’re living with an underlying personal energy deficit or “debt” that compromises human function and therefore your lifestyle which reinforces the vicious cycle.
According to Statista, people wake up tired on average 3-4 days per week. They were measuring people who sleep a total of 6-8 hours a day.
You will find more statistics at Statista
Now if you are on planet earth with even a modicum of motivation, generally, 6-8 hours of sleep alone (usually meaning the total time in bed) is not enough to recuperate from your energy spend especially in these superbusy post modern days of our lives where people seem divorced from an understanding of what’s driving the whole show.
If you think that energy is merely the result of what you eat and drink or how you think (psychology) and that you go to sleep merely because it’s dark, everyone else is doing it and your tired (but don’t know why), chances are you are living in a chronic state of energy debt (think drag) because you don’t value sleep enough or understand the profound impact it’s having on your life or the lack thereof.
Here at Performance Lifestyle Inc, getting you out of that debt is priority number one.
This is the core of living in balance, the key health and peace of mind and of course, performance, which never sustains unless you have balance, health and to a certain extent peace of mind (or freedom from monkey mind).
So performance optimization needs to start with optimizing energy.
And that’s just one of the things I like about Whoop because it measures strain and helps us gauge how much recovery we need. This is something those who are not sports athletes and have no athletic experience from the past, don’t even think about on a daily basis until they hit the wall and run out of energy thinking the problem is something different.
But we need to be thinking about strain and recover. You don’t have to be a sports athlete to understand that strain and recovery, the balance between spending energy and recuperating that energy is the key to performance optimization. No intention or plan or program for performance enhancement will sustain for long if you are spending more vital energy than you are recuperating.
Performance Lifestyle Advisor Ian Jeffreys, one of the most renowned strength and conditioning coaches in the world, states it this way in his book, a Coaches Guide to Enhancing recovering in Athletes, a Multi-Dimensional Approach to Developing a Performance Lifestyle.
The Performance Lifestyle provides coaches and athletes (anyone who wants to improve their performance) with a structure around which to build individualized and multidimensional recovery strategies that both optimize energy and maximize performance levels. They will also build skills to optimize performance both within and outside the athletic arena.
The multidimensional approach will be the preferred system of recovery in the future, and the Performance Lifestyle provides coaches and their clients with the tools to initiate this in their programs starting today.
He goes on to say…
Athletes only will only achieve optimal performance if the balance exists between training and recovery regardless of how sophisticated the training system is.
Now if that’s true for athletes, can you imagine how true that is for people who may not be into sports or even fitness enthusiasts, but are working 300+ days a year, running businesses, families and with other pursuits?
Performance Optimization is for everyone with a body and a goal (a real one).
The combination of wearable technology, lifestyle training and coaching to move the dial and improve the numbers is the new way to live for more energy, better health and the performance we all depend on. Goodbye to diets and one-fit-for-all workout programs divorced from the unresolved realities of your life that distract and hold you back.
By first understanding energy—how it is created and maintained, managed and sustained for performance— you’ll begin the rise of a new lifestyle, with all the essential skills that support you across the board, and in the achievement of your goals.
This is performance optimization.
