Health First : Working through the health, fitness and performance model

I have been sharing some thoughts with the team over on the forum lately about working through the health, fitness and performance model. Those three words were originally just a tagline for my website when I first put it up in 2003. But looking back, they were actually generated out of a deeper search for understanding and a philosophy of coaching, living and racing.

The model essentially works in this way: You first must create habits, lifestyle and environment that will provide health. Health can include all dynamics of wellness, such as, psychological or emotional, social, physical and spiritual factors. My basic belief is that without a basic and consistent amount of health, it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to develop exceptional fitness and performance.

When you are able to maintain a basic level of health, it becomes easier to be consistent with your scheduled workouts and therefore generate better levels fitness.

When you are healthy and have high levels of fitness, you are in a great position to look at performance factors. You can begin to manipulate the details to achieve high levels of performance.

It is not a linear process!

Some of my more task oriented folks want to believe that this model of coaching (and life really) is a linear progression. I envision task lists on refrigerators like this:

Great Performance Tasks
1. Emotional Health – check
2. Spiritual Health – check
3. Physical Health – check / no wait / yep, check again
4. Social Health – check (kids still know my name!)
5. Fitness – check
6. Performance – in 7 days!

That’s not quite the way it works. The better model or analogy is something like this:

Imagine you have 6 glasses sitting on the table. All the glasses are empty but you have a pitcher of water in your hand. You have the opportunity to poor that water into the glasses any way you see best, but the catch is you don’t have enough to fill all 6 glasses.

How do you poor the water?

At times we may evenly distribute the water, thinking balance is the key. (Read my thoughts on the idea of balance here). Or you may decide to fill up the first couple glasses and then skip ahead to performance and fill that glass (common situation). Or you may not put any into the performance glass and fill the first 4 glasses?

Essentially we make choices and prioritize. My thoughts on this analogy, working through the health, fitness and performance philosophy, are that filling your performance glass is fine. But at some point you are going to be required to give back some of that water to the other 4 or five glasses.

The process is not linear, starting with health and ending with high performance. The process is an ebb and flow, give and take process.

I think about this model often. I think about the sports I love and how it might apply to them. College football, specifically Nebraska football is by far and away my favorite sport to watch. It’s pretty easy to see these young men pouring lots of water into their performance glasses. But anyone who pays attention also realizes that this comes at a pretty high cost to their physical health, both acutely and later in life. One of my new favorites in the NFL is Ricky Williams. Why? Because he’s the rare NFL player that took a step back and looked at the situation. Many NFL fans and players were critical of his absence from football, I say good for him. If you are interested in this whole journey, I suggest following Ricky on Twitter, http://twitter.com/RickyWilliams he is a pretty introspective dude. And yes, it does hurt some to like a University of Texas Alum being a Husker.

The questions that I have been asking myself lately are:

1. How long can one keep the performance glasses filled?
2. How long might a person focus on health and / or fitness only?
3. What might the consequences be if we as runner’s and triathlete’s neglect health chronically?

I don’t have the answers to those questions. In fact, I’m actively seeking thoughts and comments. I do have some ideas, but I’m still working through them right now. As I get a little better picture of my own I’ll share them with you.

Here’s a last question that I’m asking, which is more like a line of questioning:

4. How do we quantify our health? For example, we know how to evaluate fitness and performance. Can we do similar assessments for our health? If we can “score” our health, are there things that we should look for as triathletes and runners that maybe the average population or physician isn’t looking at?

One thing I find myself noticing in response to this last line of questioning is the general lack of awareness, among our health professionals and health care system, regarding optimal health. I do see some change, but currently the focus does remain on fixing the symptoms of chronic diseases.

As a consumer of the health care system, I still find it difficult to express my desire to have a more optimal health and wellness, because I am “apparently” healthy. And by most definitions I am healthy:

1. I have a great wife and relationship with her
2. I am not overweight
3. I exercise daily
4. I eat well 80% of the time (thanks to my great wife)
5. I don’t have diabetes, heart disease, respiratory issues, disabilities, etc.
6. I don’t have high cholesterol, blood pressure, resting heart rate or triglycerides

But is that all there is to quantifying health? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments here, comment on facebook or email me at: gary at endurancebasecamp dot com

My Off Season Plan, thinking through this paradigm

Having thought about all of these things since my race at Rev3 Cedar Point, my off season plan looks like this:

A – Stress Reduction : church, yoga, relaxation response practice and prayer: so far I’ve been doing great with this. I forgot how much benefit I derived from quite periods with no tv, computer or phone. Even if only 5mins at a time. And yoga has been great again too.

B – Swimming : be consistent : this is the first little bit of water I’m putting in the performance glass this winter. After taking 7+ months off last year, when I already was weak in the swim, I realize that this year I could benefit by putting a little more time here. Starting November 1st the whole EBC team will be starting a 6 week swim focus program, lead by Dave and Nikki.

That’s pretty much it for October, November and December. Focused like a lazer on those two areas and continually educating myself on the 4 questions I asked above about health so I can provide more leadership in that area for the EBC team and you.

Image by: sburke2478 over on flickr