Intuition versus Data đđ
Friends or foes in performance improvement?
âYou canât improve what you donât measureâ - a popular quote for consultans, coaches and bakers alike. What follows is an exploration into why instinct-driven versus data-driven performance improvement methods easily unite to build the perfect sandwich of performance goodness.
The method sandwich runs parallel to an athletes ability levels: Beginners, advanced athletes and professionals are driven by intuition, then data, then intuition again:
The Baseline
...is non-negotiable.
Good quality sleep, nutrition and a somewhat robust emotional constitution and a Plato-nian knowledge of thyself, are prerequisites for any training theory argument.
What constitutes âgoodâ in those categories opens an onslaught of fields of study, so for the ease of this article we will only assume the following self evident truths:
They are irrefutably intertwined. One improves and/or destabilizes the other and for the sake of ourselves and those around us we should strive for the best quality of sleep, nutrition and self knowledge we can muster.
Proprioception. What is it and whatâs it got to do with performance improvement?
Proprioception is the sensory information your muscles, tendons and ligaments are sending to your brain. Your mind-muscle connection. Standing on a beach in bare feet with your eyes closed, arms stretched out, head tilted back, sea-air filling your lungs, the sun on your skin, the tingling sensation in your ears as a seagull sounds out to its mate, without you losing all sense of bearing...thatâs itâs job.
When you squat, your feet tell your brain where they are in time and space and which muscle to activate to not fall over. Itâs our system to âmake it make senseâ.
Proprioception is often falsely interchanged with motor skills. Motor skills and performance are in direct linear relation to one another (improve your motor skill = improve your performance), whereas proprioception and performance are not.
Motor skills improvement shows relatively easy on data results, such as improved levels of perceived exhaustion, because of better technique.
Interestingly enough, motor skill deficits are clearly linked to psychological trauma or impaired genetics, but proprioception is sometimes even improved under those conditions.
The hypervigilance of a PTSD survivor is one such example. Whilst research papers are inconclusive, because the overlap is simply too large, proprioception is fast getting a rep for being the scientific explanation of the ever elusive 6th sense. Our instinct.
So: unless youâre in a brain scanner during your workout, the closest thing to decent representation in data of your proprioceptive ability is at the far end of the data funnel: For example proneness to fatigue injury, performance ability under heightened cortisol or adrenaline (i.e. competition mode), etc...
Simply put, if your deadlift weight increases the data will reflect it. If you learn to get a better sense of why your push-ups feel more flowy than usual or which mental pain cave you can afford to go into during an extraordinarily hard workout...there is no app for that (yet).
Proprioception and instinct are more than how you *feel* on any given day about your training routine. There are days you might feel like youâve been hit by lightning simply because you stood up too fast, yet still have this guttural feeling that today might be a good workout day.
Why is this relevant to the sports performance sandwich of goodness? Letâs see:
The advantage of being a beginner
Much like youth is wasted on the young, the joy of first year training progress is wasted on the beginner. Struck down by lacking a clear purpose, struggles of scheduling, and surrounded by an indecipherable amount of training information, beginners who (crucially) stick with it, often fail to recognize the most significant training progression of all: Turning a whim into a habit.
First letâs define a beginner: It takes the mind roughly 3 months to create a new habit, and another 6-9 months for our lives routines to adapt it into all its repetitive yet unpredictable circumstances (holidays, travel, sickness, changes at work or in family). The brain will have built new neural pathways in the same 3 months and now needs to test run them through all that daily life throws at us. Quite a lengthy process, but once set, hard to ignore.
Dr. Mike Israetel, popular YouTuber and Sport Sciences professor at Lehman College NY, states that in the beginning stages of any kind of regular training, people see both the most rapid improvements and equally make the most objectively measurable mistakes.
How does such a blatant contradiction come to be?
Well, because in that first year of training, mistakes are actually what help build those neuroreceptors. We need that first year of continuous trial and error in order to teach all our senses how to deal with this new challenge. Making âmistakesâ is the closest thing we have to tangible, perpetual dialogue with our bodies. The word âmistakeâ is absolutely substitutable with the word âlearningâ.
As a beginner, the only data you should be obsessed with is your numbers of consistency. Just show up. Your sixth sense will do the rest.
Advanced training and itâs love affair with data
After a year or so of having successfully programmed a new sporting habit, and sharpened our mind-body connection instincts, we should be good to go, right? A sharp learning curve in the beginning may eventually decelerate, but we should still progress, right?
Well...kind of.
The negative psychological effect of loss of momentum can spiral backwards quickly, and you run the risk of finding yourself back home on the couch, Pringles tube in hand. Sure, you can willpower your way through the loss of endorphins, but willpower is a limited resource, which anyone whoâs ever tried to taste only a single Pringles chip will confirm.
Data driven training, focusing on numbers, reps, hours, amps, whatever your sport supplies, is now your anchor. With those ever increasing data challenges and points you can happily monkey-swing your way to your next level of athleticism.
The far ends of the statistics
Courtney de Waulter is amongst the top 5 ultra runners in the world. Amongst both women and men. She is the first person ever to win the hattrick of the ultra world (Western States 100, Hardrock 100 and the UTMB) all in the same year. Rachel Entrekin recently became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 ultramarathon, and did so simply by ânot taking everything so seriouslyâ - as she told Rich Roll on his podcast.
Both cases in which woman hold number 1 titles across both sexes. Ultra endurance sports, not just running, but also biking, sailing, swimming, shooting are generally dominated by women on the high performance end of the scale. Not just due to the nature of the sport, but female athletes tend to prefer instinctual training over rigid data obsession.
Caveats about data
You know how real estate is all about location - location - location? Well, data is all about context - context - context.
A simple thought exercise: if I were to make a factually correct yet stand alone statement: âMary goes running twice a month, for 45 minutes, at a 7.8 minute paceâ and were to ask you: is that good or bad?
-> I sure hope you would reply with the only correct answer: âI donât know. I need more information about Maryâ.
Data value is also quite frail in the context of volume. It takes a considerably large volume of data to obtain reliable readings. Individual data points are prone to technical failure and human imperfection.
As non-professional athletes we obtain most of our data via training watches, which, granted, have improved dramatically in terms of GPS or heart rate accuracy, but they are far from perfect and so are we. All it takes to mess up a full dayâs worth of training data is forgetting to charge the watch in time, run into a GPS blind spot while hiking, or pressing the wrong lap button during training. Thus, to get a somewhat accurate interpretation of the data you generate as an amateur athlete, volume trumps quality. Itâs better to look for patterns and trends, rather than PBâs or the perfect sleep score.
This is what sports scientists and (well educated) coaches are for. Much like your lawyer knows how to read, and explain back to you, legal mumbo-jumbo, so it is the job of your coach to read and explain back to you the mess that is the data you are creating.
Caveats about intuitive training
Intuitive training is sometimes mistaken for prioritizing the joy factor in training. Now, while the innately tenacious personalities will experience overcoming hardship as joy, someone more hedonistically inclined will simply stop working out once the hard stuff comes around. They will plateau, initially making peace with the maintenance of status quo, only to eventually give up training altogether because inevitably, they will hit bore-out. You cannot escape your shortcomings with the argument that training difficulties make your sport ânot funâ anymore and retreat into old patterns. Like most things in life, intuitive training is only effective if you dare to look deeper into your mindâs musings and your bodyâs doings.
Intuitive training does not only ask the question: what do I feel like doing today? but rather, what does my mind, body and soul tell me I need today?
Much like when we care for someone we love, we should know that giving them what they need, is often not what they want. Though the capacity to push oneâs comfort zone can certainly be developed (emotional maturity helps also), an athlete with the intrinsic temperament of a war horse has a much better chance at success with intuitive training, than those of us whoâd rather prance around a petting zoo.
Be who you are - on purpose.
In order to get the best out of both data driven or instinct driven training, you need to first know WHO YOU ARE and WHERE YOU ARE in your journey:
If youâre highly conscientious, analytical or maybe a little neurotic in your planning, data is what will sustain you quickly during mid-level performance plateaus.
If youâre quite open, creative, maybe a little disagreeable, intuition will be your favorable guide, maybe letting you stumble into more mistakes, but still accelerating you through the slump.
For either training principle to work, you first must want to do hard things, because
you can do hard things.
Either way, the more you know, the better youâll do.
Godspeed my friends.
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