Visualizing Performance Adaptations - Reverse Cone Analogy
You might have noticed that athletes come in all sizes - Sprinters are lean, gymnasts are compact, and strongmen are just massive. But why? Turns out certain archetypes are more favorable for specific performance characteristics, which also explains why no single person is the best at everything. This is a consequence of how our bodies adapt to training stressors and why specific adaptations, like power and endurance, oppose each other, meaning when you train for one you lose the other.
While it may be hard to specialize and excel in all athletic abilities, I believe we should all strive to possess a foundation that targets each of these characteristics in some way. Regular life requires us to have a dash of strength, a splash of endurance, a pinch of hypertrophy, a sprinkle of power, and maybe a mix of movement variability. Without a broad foundation to build upon, we lose our resilience to surpass simple obstacles.
For example –
Pulling a 600 lb deadlift = Awesome
At the expense of becoming breathless after 2 flights of stairs = Not so awesome
So, before we start lifting 5x a week for that huuge bench, maybe we should think about balancing the foundation it’s built upon. Let’s first develop a well-rounded foundation, then focus on specifying what performance features are going to let you perform in life.
I like to use a Reverse Cone analogy to visualize how we might try to train towards our Prime Athlete. Here’s how I see it:
Bottom: The bottom is where novices or untrained individuals stand.
Top: The top symbolizes the elite, trained, or pro-level abilities.
Therefore, vertical movement up the cone signifies improvements in performance. As you train, your performance qualities (strength, endurance, power, etc.) all improve, climbing you higher up the cone.
Center: The midline within the cone indicates a well-rounded athlete. Someone who has decided to balance all of the performance characteristics instead of specializing in one or two.
Edges: The sides of the cone show specialization towards a specific performance feature. For example, Usain Bolt would lean towards Speed and Power.
Therefore, horizontal movement describes the degree of specialization an athlete acquires.
Now how is this relevant to you?
1. The more trained you are, the more you can specialize in a performance quality. Therefore, at the onset, our ability to specialize is limited and our best approach may be to establish a well-rounded foundation. As we become more trained, we can start to specialize more and use our foundation to support that pursuit.
2. The performance qualities (i.e. speed, power, strength, etc.) can be rearranged around the edges, to an extent. Here’s what I mean.
Training for body composition isn’t the opposite of training for speed – You can achieve both pretty well, so rearranging those attributes next to each other is possible.
However, some qualities, like endurance and power can be incompatible depending on how specialized you wish to get. Developing power endurance for something like speed cycling is attainable; however, power cleaning a 2x bodyweight while also running a competitive marathon is probably a little impractical.
This is why it’s important to be aware that specializing too much towards 1 characteristic means you will likely lose some ability in another.
3. Most important! – You get to decide where your Prime Athlete’s point exists. Everyone has their own aspirations. You might want to be able to perform at a higher level than your partner or friend, or vice versa. And that’s OKAY! We all get to decide how we want to perform in our own lives. So, while your friend might want to achieve Point A, you might prefer to establish your Prime Athlete at Point B. All that means is you’re willing to put more work into becoming your Prime Athlete.
I want you to use this visualization to help set your goals. Where does your Prime Athlete exist on the cone? Understand what you are working towards before you set your goals and establish metrics to measure your progress.
Know your priorities. Locate your point. Define your Prime Athlete.
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