Efficient human enhancement

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

How many reps or miles does it take to achieve your fitness goals? The answer- not one more than is absolutely necessary. Anything more would be a waste of your effort, right?

How do you know where to draw the line? For starters, clear and specific goals will determine the approach. The question to ask is; how much, and by when? It needs to be measurable. At the end, there can be no uncertainty, was the goal attained or not? Once you have a clear and specific goal, the means towards the end will reveal itself.

Now, with the sheer mass of information available, how do you decide exactly what it is you need to achieve your goal? Search for the most efficient solution. An effective trainer or coach can help. Recognize that your body has finite capacity for work and recuperation. Efficiency is training only enough to trigger the adaption required to achieve the goal. If that means three sessions per week, and you want to train five times a week, then those extra two sessions are unnecessary. Or you might be doing eight exercises in the gym, but you may only need two to increase performance in a certain sport, then what will those extra six exercises do for you?

Training to failure is also inefficient use of your time, unless you’re a bodybuilder. Why train your body to fail? Observe that all Olympic athletes train pretty hard, but never to failure. Top level athletes train optimally, to trigger the necessary adaptations for increasing their performance. The key word here is optimal.

The Firebird approach to performance is this; efficient human enhancement. Do no more than necessary to obtain optimal performance. Identify and bring up your weak links. Enhance what needs enhancing. Everything else, leave for the moment of truth, for competition.

Sounds like an effort, why not just mindlessly exercise, then go home? Simply, what standard do you want to hold yourself to? Mediocrity, or high-achievement? Not many are happy with mediocre results, yet not many are prepared to do anything about it. The less time you waste in training, the more time you can spend elsewhere. Efficiency is the mark of high-achievers.

Vague goals produce vague results. Be specific. Dream to achieve and then do what you need to do.