The “Total Performance Tripod”: Balancing Health, Wellbeing and Performance.
The photo of me here was taken in early 2017: a rippling ball of muscle, single digit body fat, and an athletic capacity that would stack up with many elite athletes; fast, fit, strong, powerful and on the verge of returning to play Football for the first time in 4 years at close to my peak physical condition in my entire life (keeping in mind I had played semi professionally at a younger age and maintained a regular commitment to training since then). I’d spent the past 6 months training daily combining gruelling running and skills sessions with multiple weight training sessions per week, yoga, daily stretching and mobility sessions and a host of recovery methods including ice baths, massage and sauna. I would argue that I my commitment to ‘performance’ and the condition I was in was truly ‘elite’.
Whilst I looked amazing and the performance of my body was incredible, physiologically and internally I was broken. Tests I had done around that time revealed that my body was in a severe catabolic state i.e. it was literally breaking down. Characterised by low testosterone levels, chronically elevated cortisol (stress hormone), adrenal fatigue and a number of other hormonal imbalances. Although I acknowledged and understood that these were issues that needed to be addressed, I put it on the back burner as I focused on the season ahead where I went on to play every possible game, performing at a high level and finishing runner up in the team’s Best & Fairest (MVP) player award.
The ‘ego’ inside me loved the way I looked and how I was performing, but my ‘true self’ knew this wasn’t sustainable or optimal for me if I was going to overcome my issues and recapture ‘true health’’. Combined with a demanding and stressful job and the pressures of daily life, I was ‘running on fumes’, stacking stress on stress and leaving myself with basically nothing in the tank to do anything else in my life. I ground my way through most of 2017 in a state of fatigue, malaise and lack of drive and energy.
This personal story is a classic example of the challenge for people today to strike a balance between ‘health’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘performance’. Particularly for driven, type A personalities (which I certainly am), in a world where we are constantly looking to do more, push harder, and perform better often this comes with a compromise to our underlying health and wellbeing.
‘Fitness’ and ‘Performance’ are the ideals we are sold to strive for by the the world around us: bombarded on social media, admiring and modelling our sporting heroes, comparing ourselves to peers and even people we don’t know. The desire is driven often by aesthetic reasons i.e. to look good, or ‘prove ourselves’ through the demonstration of a physical skill or capability. Underlying this is for many people is a psychological ‘addiction’ to training that is fueled by a sense that ‘more is always better’ and that to look great and perform at our best we need to push ourselves to the limits all the time. People get stuck in this insidious cycle of constantly chasing the high of exercise without understanding that the exercise or training is merely the stimulus, and that the benefits come from the response and adaptation to the exercise which can only be fully realised with appropriate behaviour and practices in the rest of your life (e.g. sleep, rest and recovery)
The reality is that when it comes to sustainable, long term health, this is ‘putting the cart before the horse’, unnecessary for most people and in actual fact dangerous. This comes back to the question of ‘why’ you are training or exercising in the first place,and what your drivers and motivations are? Realistically, unless you are a professional athlete (which is a very small percentage of the population) your primary focus should be on prioritising ‘health’ and ‘wellbeing’ and seeking to balance these three aspects. If you are not being compensated i.e. paid to prioritise performance at the expense of your health and wellbeing, than why would you do it?
We need to reorient our thinking towards looking at ourselves like a tripod: whereby the three legs are ‘health’ (physical and mental/emotional), ‘wellbeing’ (social and spiritual), and ‘performance’ (strength, speed, power, endurance, mobility, agility, coordination etc)
Imagine yourself like a camera perched on top of the tripod, projecting yourself out to the world around you. If one of the legs is shorter than the other or underdeveloped, then the camera (you) will be unbalanced and unable to project the best version of yourself to the world. All you will get are weird off centre pictures blurry shots or at worst, a broken and smashed camera.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for people striving to achieve and perform at a high level. But the core foundation for this has to come from a place of health and wellbeing first, not seeking to drive performance at the expense of both of these things. In my opinion. from personal experience and what I have observed in others, if people put more energy, effort and attention into how you can improve your health and wellbeing, they wouldn’t have to ‘do’ so much of the other stuff (exercise, training, 'working out' etc) required to allow them to look good, feel great and perform better. A lot of people are cranking up the ‘performance’ leg of the tripod up so high that the camera is literally falling off and unable to ever give itself a chance of projecting a stable, clear and strong image out to the world.
Whereas, if you just looked more holistically at your life and addressed the ways in which you can optimise ‘health’ and ‘wellbeing’, you can balance the legs, enhance your performance all without having to destroy yourself in the process.
So where am I now? Well It’s been almost two years since this photo was taken. Since that time I have reevaluated my priorities and adapted my approach, scaled back the training and exercise and refocused on health and wellbeing as my primary drivers. I think I look just as good (still single digit BF but far healthier), spend far less time and energy ‘training’ and ‘exercising’ and I feel much more vibrant and full of life elsewhere. And to be honest my performance has improved across all areas of my life: physically, personally, and professionally.
The moral of the story is this: there is nothing wrong with striving for performance in your life, particularly when it comes to your desire to look good and express your physical capabilities. But as you do this, think about your own tripod, and where you might be out of balance and inadvertently damaging yourself and holding yourself back from achieving “total health’ that can be sustained and enjoyed on all levels over the long term.
If you or anyone you know are seeking help as to how you can balance your own tripod and optimise health, wellbeing and performance, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help.
Luke