By Mat Herold:
Nassim Nicholas Taleb – an author, professor, and researcher – wrote a book entitled “The Black Swan,” not to be mistaken with the movie with Natalie Portman, discussing how highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about the world. If you think about yourself as an athlete, you may realize that sometimes things happen that we did not prepare for: an official makes a horrible call, you suffer a freak injury or, on a more positive note, you have the performance of your life.
More recently, in his book “Antifragile”, Taleb discusses all forms of systems from love to economics to the human body, and breaks them down into three categories which he calls “the Triad”. By his classification, each system is characterized by being either:
- Fragile: things that break under pressure (ie. glass objects)
- Robust: Things that don’t care about stress or pressure (ie. a diamond) and
- Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder and need stress and chaos in the right amounts not only in order to survive, but thrive (ie. human bone)
If we take the 3 examples from above – glass, diamond, and bone – we can examine “anti-fragility” a little closer. Glass will break if it is dropped. Thus, it is fragile. Diamond is extremely resilient, and requires special tools to make even a mark. But on the other hand, diamonds don’t get any better from stress. They’re strong, but stress has no impact, positive or negative, on them. They’re thus classified as robust. Human bone, by contrast, gets stronger from the right amount of stress and, in fact, needs it. Otherwise, bone will atrophy, leading to problems such as osteoporosis. Hence, “anti-fragile.”
At this point you might be wondering how these concepts relate to jumping higher or running faster. Taleb has many fascinating anecdotes in his book, but a few of the concepts stood out to me as profound ways athletes and coaches can find more success in all things, from getting physically and mentally tougher to performing better under any conditions. Let us examine a few principles of antifragility and how we can apply them to sport and life.
Fragilistas and touristification:
A fragilista is someone who causes fragility because he thinks he understands what is going on. He also usually lacks a sense of humor.
An example of this in sports is the athlete who cannot take criticism or adapt because they think they know better. Or the coach who refuses to modify his tactics or listen to any philosophies that compete against their own.
Taleb says “Fragilistas fragilize by depriving variability-loving systems of variability and error-loving systems of errors.” In other words, a variability loving system is a healthy athlete. The athlete develops more when exposed to different environments, surfaces, teammates, etc. A fragilista fears change. The anti-fragile athlete relishes the variations and the challenges they bring.
Anti-fragile speed training
Touristification is similar to being a fragilista and is referred to as the “attempt to suck the randomness out of life”. Touristas want things to be certain and predictable, which is not how training and sports work. By seeking stability and a lack of tension, weakness and vulnerability ensue. Taleb says “Good students, but nerds–that is, they are like computers except slower. Further, they are now totally untrained to handle ambiguity.” A lack of exposure to a variety of conditions such as field or running surface, weather, or elevation, leads to poor performance or worse yet, an injury.
Taleb once quoted the baseball legend and funny man Yogi Berra, teasing the pressures of sport and media when he commented after a loss, “We made too many wrong mistakes.” Life, like sport, is full is mistakes and not all of them are necessarily wrong. If a coach always comments on a player’s mistakes or benches them when they are playing poorly, it impedes growth much in the same way that street ball or pick up sports can accelerate development. This fact is evidenced by some of the best players of all time coming from pick-up games around the world.
Fundamental Asymmetry:
Another way of saying upside versus downside.
When predicting the future of a possible recruit, coaches often focus on whether the player has a “strong upside.” A strong upside means the athlete has the potential to improve consistently rather than stagnate. Say a college coach is looking at an 18 year old freshman and will have him/her for 4 years. They are not only thinking about the first year, but looking at the 4-year potential that player may bring to the program.
An athlete who is at a high level technically yet still has muscle mass and size to gain is usually seen as having a strong upside. As they develop physically, it will only get easier to make an impact and showcase their technical ability. In contrast, athletes who are dominating at the younger ages simply because they are farther along in physical development (puberty) are perceived as maxed out because at the next level everyone will be bigger, faster, and stronger.
While certain physical attributes such as height or structural aligment may be out of our control when it comes to upside, there are several factors that are in our power. Good leadership skills, good work ethic, and a willingness to learn (even when it means taking criticism) are all examples of things coaches consider when assessing an athletes future. And beyond improving as an athlete day to day, those are also the character traits that win games when the going gets tough.
Via negativa:
The focus on what something is not. In action, it is a recipe for what to avoid, what not to do – subtraction, not addition.
Here are some examples of things that, when eliminated (or at least reduced) prepare a person for success: eating junk food (increasing body fat), staying up late (delaying recovery and increasing fatigue), gossiping about teammates and coaches (draining energy and focusing on the externals), staying in unhealthy relationships, tolerating negativity (versus setting boundaries). The list, of course, goes on. Being a consistently high level soccer athlete has little room for that sort of stuff, period.
Iatrogenics:
Harm done by the healer, as when the doctor intervenes more harm is done than good.
Iatrogenics reminds us that for each modern day invention or intervention, there is a potential consequence even though the intervention provides relief in the short term. If an athlete has “weak” ankles and tapes them every training session or game, perhaps the ankle feels more stable in the short term, but long term the athlete is likely to pick up an injury somewhere else on the body if not reinjure the ankle. There are times for drugs and taping, but the key point is to understand that there comes a time when they do more harm than good (like many drugs).
Instead of relying on taping, or pills, an athlete should begin to start training the injured ankle by exposing it to more and more tension, including the position in which the ankle was injured. As they say, “prevention is the best cure.” Taking preventative steps such as involving yourself in a comprehensive strength training program that addresses things like ankle sprains through exposure training, or getting strong in compromised positions, is a better strategy than relying on trainers, tape, pills, and other crutches.
Hormesis:
A bit of a harmful substance, or stressor, in the right dose or the right intensity, stimulates the organism and makes it better, stronger, healthier, and able to withstand a stronger dose the next exposure.
This relates to what was said above about ankle sprains. When the body reaches a compromised position in sports (call it a black swan), the anti-fragile athlete is prepared for this by having previously exposed themselves in training. (Either genetically, inadvertently through experience, because of a smart coach, or because of a conscious effort after reading this article) Weight training is a great example of hormesis, as lifting weights actually breaks down, or harms the muscle fibers in the body which eventually leads to the adaptation of getting bigger, stronger, and more resistant to fatigue.
As mentioned before, bone operates the same way, growing denser and stronger given the right amount of stress. It goes without saying that if you overdo things – like start lifting weight with far more volume or weight than you can handle – you will end up with muscle damage that sidelines you or delays your ability to train (the extreme would be, the very rare cases of rhabdomyolysis where your muscles actually release their contents into the bloodstream which can be life threatening). Even something like fasting, the absence of food intake, has a stress response that offers both short and long term benefits to our health. “When you starve yourself of food, it is the bad proteins that are broken down first and recycled by your own body, a process called “autophagy.” This is a purely evolutionary process, one that selects and kills the weakest for fitness.” Like the German philosopher Nietze said, “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger”.
Skin in the game:
Every captain goes down with every ship.
Do not trust someone who has not walked the walk, and if you’re a leader or coach, lead from the front. As a player, it means you have to play the game, watch the game, and live the game. Question each injury (sometimes they are not actually injuries but instead somatic pain based on fear of failure) and excuse you may come up with to get out of playing. Sometimes it is easier to sit on the sidelines with the illusion of how good you would have been playing versus actually playing and dealing with mistakes and setbacks.
Skin in the game means there is no room for excuses, blaming, or relying on anyone else for anything. It is about taking responsibility by being fully immersed in whatever you are doing and leaving no stone unturned. This means showing up, listening, asking questions, and staying grateful. I’m not saying to become insecure and ask everyone how you played after each practice and competition. But stay honest about your abilities and how you can improve. Watch what other athletes do well and how they approach things. The game, or a meet is the greatest teacher, as long as you are in it.
Built in redundancies:
Taleb says, “Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens-usually.”
At some point in your playing career, you have probably made an amazing play or set a PR you never thought you could have and when you were least expecting it. It all traces back to training. The book Talent Is Overrated and the concept of deliberate practice comes to mind. “How expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times. An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback.” Training may not always be fun, but embracing the redundancies in sport and life often sets us up for future success.
Conclusion
In our pursuit to become the greatest athletes possible, there will inevitably be setbacks. Steep challenges, surpassing the difficulty of the hardest fitness session imaginable that make us want to throw in the towel. We won’t always get the lucky bounce, literally, and there are times when there is nothing we can do about it. But as we learned from Nassim Taleb, much like Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl argued in his book, A Man’s Search for Meaning – in any set of circumstances we can always choose our attitude. That is anti-fragile.
About Mat Herold
Mat Herold is a former Division 1 soccer player, has a MS in Exercise Physiology, and coaches at the collegiate level. His website is empoweredathletes.com and he recently came out with a new ebook called Soccer Strong: Physical Training, Nutrition, and Mindset For Serious Soccer Players, which is also available in Kindle.
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