What is Human performance? These 5 pillars will change how you look at what is possible.

In over a decade and a half of our practice these categories have been revealed as the most accurate determinants of human performance. This isn’t limited to just the athletic attributes like running fast or jumping high, but the cognitive-physical output that each one of us is capable of. When we say “human performance,” we are describing the ingredients for living a fulfilled life.

Stress

"Managing stress" doesn't necessarily mean transforming it into a beneficial trait. Many of us have adopted coping mechanisms to deal with stress, but these often merely mask its harmful effects. Over time, your health will mirror your habits, blurring the line between psychological distress and physical ailments.

Our nervous system acts as a conduit for stress, receiving the stimulus and triggering a response. This process can follow two distinct paths, often likened to a car's "gas pedal" (Sympathetic state or fight or flight) and "brake" (Parasympathetic state or rest and digest). However, a more accurate analogy might be to view the Sympathetic response as either the gas pedal or brake, and the Parasympathetic response as coasting. Stress, in this context, is the terrain. Any incline or decline must be navigated using either the brake or gas. Failure to do so can result in a standstill or, worse, a runaway vehicle—symbolizing feelings of being overwhelmed and the inability to manage significant life changes.

Stress can be categorized as acute or chronic (the stimulus), and localized or systemic (the response). For instance, a physical task like dragging a heavy object a significant distance is a localized acute stress. It might directly impact your aerobic system, back muscles, legs, or grip. Depending on the task's duration or intensity, it could also become psychologically demanding. However, once the task is completed, the stress largely dissipates. Proper nutrition and rest then allow your body to adapt, building stronger muscles and increasing oxygen capacity. Your biology is always striving for efficiency, so it adapts to better handle stress. However, acute stress is rare in modern life, and most of us are more familiar with a different kind.

Consider the scenario above but expand on it: you're dragging a body to hide it. Once the physical task is done, a new type of stress emerges—the systemic chronic stress associated with the fear of discovery and potential punishment. This type of stress, which is pervasive and unyielding, is harder to manage. In our society, we all have our metaphorical "bodies" buried—unresolved issues like bills, traffic, work, children, the economy, inflation, etc. Without periods of rest, we can't adapt to this relentless stress, making it a major contributor to all-cause mortality and modern metabolic disorders.

The world's top performers have developed conscious strategies to manage stress. Recognizing a stressor can help you compartmentalize it and understand your tolerance levels. It can also inform your decision-making process, allowing you to assess risk and reward through the lens of your nervous system, rather than just external factors. Stress management is a skill you can cultivate, a tool that enables you to adapt more effectively to your circumstances and environment.

While many of us are adept at leveraging acute stress, such as exercise, to boost our performance, we often overlook the importance of properly managing chronic stress. The reality is that chronic stress is a constant in our lives. However, the silver lining is that our strategies for helping individuals manage it are both cost-effective and practical.

Consider breathwork, an ancient practice gaining modern popularity. Unfortunately, the techniques often taught are not easily integrated into our daily routines. Few people can spare ninety minutes for pranayama or "breath of fire," and some techniques are so intense they require guidance, making them impractical for regular use. To address chronic stress, we need a solution that can be applied daily.

Enter the technique we call "triggering." It involves a single, mindful breath: a deep nasal inhale for 3-4 seconds, a pause for 2 seconds, and a 10-second exhale through the mouth, using your tongue against the roof of your mouth for back pressure (also known as a ventilation breath). The "trigger" is an external signal that reminds you to take this breath. For instance, every time you hear a text or email notification, take one of these breaths before checking it. Or, when someone cuts you off in traffic, use it as a trigger. This practice creates a buffer between a stimulus and your response, allowing you to neutralize your state and prevent external factors from dictating your nervous system's reaction. In our experience, this technique has improved heart rate variability and reduced resting heart rate in less than a month!

Remember, the key to managing chronic stress lies not in its elimination, but in our ability to respond to it effectively. How might you incorporate this simple yet powerful technique into your daily routine?

Rest/Recovery

The common misconception about Rest and Recovery is that they are passive processes, mere byproducts of time. We challenge this notion by teaching our clients to view Rest and Recovery as proactive skills that can be honed, personalized, and amplified, especially during periods of heightened stress. The key to enhancing Rest and Recovery lies in mastering the ability to regulate your state, both in terms of up-regulation and down-regulation. The first step often involves consciously inducing a parasympathetic state, which can significantly improve the quality of your rest and speed of recovery from stress.

Begin by observing your body, your surroundings, their impact on you, and your mind's interpretation of these factors. This practice is often referred to as "mindfulness," a term that ironically suggests a lack of "mind," if we consider "mind" to represent our analytical and logical thinking. This aspect of our cognition is often what hinders our ability to rest or recover, a fact supported by various brain scans and technologies.

As previously discussed, the systemic and chronic nature of modern stressors often traps our conscious mind in a state of analytical paralysis. Our minds are designed to solve problems, and the frequency at which we excel at this can be measured. Electroencephalography (EEG) measurements reveal that analytical mindsets correspond to "deep beta" 50Hz brainwave states. In contrast, states of deep conscious rest are much lower, falling within the Theta (3.5-7.5Hz) or Alpha (5-13Hz) ranges. Using our vehicle analogy, remaining in a constant Beta state is akin to revving at high RPMs in a low gear. It's useful for initial movement and heightened awareness, but prolonged Beta states can lead to associations with future doom and past trauma. The inability to "shift up" and offset the load results in slow progress and undue strain on the system.

While this is a complex and profound subject, one way to illustrate the power of practicing conscious rest is to pair it with exercise. Exercise imposes an acute and localized effect, but many rush back to their busy lives after intense training sessions, metaphorically leaving themselves in a low gear. To maximize the benefits of training, we recommend resetting the system post-exercise using a simple box breathing pattern for a few minutes after an aerobically challenging session. This conscious effort to slow down signals to your body that the stress has ended, allowing you to effectively shake off the stress. Immediately after your workout, find an air bike or cycling erg and pedal at a low effort to maintain blood circulation. Start with a 4-second inhale, 2-second pause, 4-second exhale, 2-second pause. Each minute, add 1 second to the pauses after the inhale and exhale. If you're fatigued from a hard effort, the pause on the exhale may induce feelings of anxiety due to elevated CO2 levels. As you deepen your breath and relax your body during the exhales, you'll find the pauses become easier, even after just 2 minutes. Once you can maintain a 4-4-4-4 breath pattern, sustain it for 3 minutes.

Incorporating these resets throughout your day can significantly impact your energy levels and conscious states. You'll start to recognize which stressors leave you in a lingering state of rumination, and you'll begin to understand how to regulate your state beyond just exercise, appreciating the benefits of down-regulation before eating or sleeping. How might these practices transform your approach to rest and recovery?

Sleep

While the advice to "get more sleep" is common, it's crucial to distinguish between the quantity and quality of sleep. With rigid work schedules and a plethora of responsibilities, finding an extra 30 minutes for sleep can seem impossible. What's more, many of us underestimate the impact of sleep deprivation on our mental health. Research has shown that just five days of reduced REM sleep can lead to significant signs of psychosis in otherwise healthy individuals—a fact that should alarm us all.

Fortunately, we can all enhance factors that contribute to sleep quality, a practice we refer to as "sleep hygiene"—the art of nurturing our sleep state. The foundation for high-quality sleep lies in the environment, but to optimize conditions, we must address pre-sleep behaviors and, perhaps more importantly, our waking habits. It often surprises our clients when our initial sleep-related questions focus on the furthest point in the day from sleep.

One game-changing aspect of our practice has been the use of biometric testing and trackers to obtain verifiable sleep data. Devices like the Apple Watch or Whoop can reveal helpful patterns, but the most powerful tool is the Dutch Plus test. This test uncovers the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR) curve and how your body responds hormonally throughout the day. It can reveal the presence and potency of the hormone cortisol upon waking and throughout the day, how we flush melatonin, and a host of other influences on our sleep and recovery.

We use this data to tailor practices precisely for each of our clients, but we've found some sleep hygiene rituals that generally benefit most people. Exposing your skin and eyes to full-spectrum light (ideally, sunlight) can help wash away melatonin and kickstart the myriad processes that set your cortisol expression on a good trajectory. If you live in a northern climate or wake up when it's still dark, we recommend a 10,000 LUX light for 10 minutes every day, and a red light panel or face lamp for later in the afternoon or evening.

Next, we focus on priming the conditions for deep sleep. An hour before bed, we recommend turning off all screens, phones, and tablets, and dimming the lights around the house to a level where reading a book is just possible. This is a significant ask for our clients, many of whom unwind by watching shows and movies or scrolling on social media. While these activities may seem harmless, they are designed to engage your nervous system, leaving you in an aroused state that hinders deep sleep. However, the benefits of this shift are so profound that if we can get people to try it for a week, we're confident the practice will stick. There's nothing more rewarding than the positive feedback loop from getting quality sleep and seeing how much more you can accomplish and experience day-to-day when you simply feel good. Are you willing to take up the challenge to feel better?

Exercise/Training

Most people understand, or have been explicitly told, that regular exercise is essential for enhancing health and longevity. Many hit the gym regularly, yet few see results. In our practice, we help individuals make a shift towards effective use of their time by teaching them core principles about the purpose of physical training. It's crucial to define what you're doing. Training is physical effort aimed at changing a trait or behavior, while exercise is physical effort for its own sake. Neither is superior; both are useful for enhancing human performance, but they yield radically different outcomes and uses.

Our approach to fitness differs from other organizations, which often view training as an extension of specific sport preparation. This insight has helped us steer our clients away from random acts of fitness, such as sporting events, bikini season prep, or 6-week body transformations. Instead, we aim for the return on investment of time spent training to result in daily useful attributes. This shift aligns physical effort with the original definition of fitness, which refers to the qualities and attributes necessary for survival, or to "fit" into an environment.

Goal-oriented training implies a finish line, suggesting that once the goal is achieved, the training becomes unnecessary. Fitness, by our definition, is an act of persistence, akin to living, feeding, or loving. There's never a day when you're "fit enough" or have fulfilled a required task. This perspective presumes that I will always strive to exhibit qualities like strength and endurance as well as I can for as long as I can. This changes motivation. When aligned with understanding the qualities of longevity, it becomes as habitual as eating or fostering quality relationships.

We assist people in planning their training and exercise by identifying the behaviors they want to exhibit daily. This includes well-known aspects like resilience, confidence, and discipline, but also lesser-known traits like creativity, focus, and sensitivity. Through our physical training programs, we reveal a crucial, yet rarely discussed phenomenon: "the dichotomy of motivation" or "the quit/don't quit conversation."

Have you ever noticed a part of you that's highly motivated to explore your personal potential? This inner voice plans new diets and dreams of pushing physical boundaries. But once the slightest discomfort presents itself, a very different voice emerges. This isn't a personality trait but an untrained aspect of your physiology.

Appropriately dosed training and exercise activate the aMCC (anterior midcingulate cortex), your "will power" center. When activated, you develop more tolerance to slight discomforts, which compounds your ability to develop beneficial behaviors.

There are countless ways to experience the benefits of training and exercise, but a useful test to get in touch with our internal dialogue is the "10min airbike test". This physical effort brings us face to face with the two parts of our internal dialogue that seem to disagree on our future. If you want a quick way to experience what we're talking about, set a timer on any exercise machine of your choice, preferably a fan bike, Assault bike, or Airdyne. Try to accumulate as many "calories" (a measurement of power output) or distance in 10 minutes. Pay close attention to what happens around the 4-6 minute mark. Use your final score to revisit and push yourself deeper into the internal dialogue.

There are many physiological benefits to doing hard aerobic efforts with very little risk, but the most pronounced benefit we find is a consistent way to access this "dichotomy of motivation" in order to improve it. This is training. Are you ready to explore this aspect of yourself?

Nutrition/Supplementation

Nutrition is the cornerstone of performance, and its impact on our health and performance is undeniable. However, the complexity of individual dietary needs necessitates a personalized approach to nutrition. We've transformed eating into a form of entertainment, often deriving the value of a meal from its immediate pleasure rather than its long-term benefits. This mindset has led us to prioritize cravings and convenience over the nutritional support our bodies need to thrive.

We don't endorse any specific diet. Instead, we encourage a thought experiment: If you could silence your preferences and analytical thinking, and simply listen to your body's needs for recovery and life-sustaining processes, what would it ask for? The answers often diverge from our actual diets, largely due to the over-engineering of foods for consumption and profit, resulting in nutrient-poor but pleasure-inducing options.

The alarming correlation between dietary changes and the rise in chronic diseases underscores the importance of this issue. Through our consultations, we use testing to pinpoint what should be added or removed from your diet. This approach can save you from the trial and error of fad diets and unnecessary supplements, helping you identify nutritional deficiencies and establish clear dietary guidelines.

Protein intake is a complex issue, dependent on factors like your body's ability to break it down and absorb it. Through a gut map, we can assess enzymatic density and determine your optimal protein sources and supplements. The debate over fats and carbohydrates should be based on your personal metabolism, not popular opinion. A Dutch test can reveal if your cortisol or insulin levels are affected by your intake, guiding us in making food choices that balance your nervous system and support your sleep patterns.

A GI map can indicate if you're not properly breaking down fats, suggesting malabsorption. Specific measurements can reveal if an imbalance in your gut flora, an overgrowth of harmful bacteria, or the presence of pathogens or parasites is hindering your progress, rather than your diet itself. Nutrition is more than just being told what to eat. While there are general principles, fine-tuning is what truly enhances performance. Many people feel overwhelmed by the complexity of nutrition, adding unnecessary stress to a topic that should be about nurturing and stress reduction. Our advice is simple: don't give up, test don't guess, and harness the power of nutrition to reach your full potential.