Photo by Jigar Panchal on Unsplash In exercise science, we typically derive causality in a bottom-up manner. When we evaluate performance, we assess factors such as cardiovascular capacity, metabolic efficiency, or muscular contractile capacity. However, I’ve always grappled with a chicken-and-egg dilemma in exercise physiology. This dilemma highlights the challenge...
Lately, I’ve been exploring the concept of complex adaptive systems and their relevance to human performance. Every coach or sports scientist understands that we cannot break down performance into isolated parameters and expect that a single parameter will account for the performance as a whole. The function of any complex...
In today’s world of sports, we’re seeing a rapid rise in the use of technology, both among amateur enthusiasts and professional teams. This growth involves everything from data acquisition to predictive algorithms. On one side, amateur athletes invest in wearable gadgets that track everything from sleep patterns, and heart rate...
In exercise science, we typically derive causality in a bottom-up manner. When we evaluate performance, we assess factors such as cardiovascular capacity, metabolic efficiency, or muscular contractile capacity. However, I’ve always grappled with a chicken-and-egg dilemma in exercise physiology. This dilemma highlights the challenge of understanding sequences of events where mutual dependencies exist — each outcome depends on a preceding event, and vice versa.
Consider a simple example: biomechanical testing of an NBA basketball player might reveal that certain parameters (x, y, z) predispose them to excel at that competition level. However, we can also argue that these parameters likely developed in response to the competitive demands of the game. As... (read 1876 more words →)
Lately, I’ve been exploring the concept of complex adaptive systems and their relevance to human performance. Every coach or sports scientist understands that we cannot break down performance into isolated parameters and expect that a single parameter will account for the performance as a whole. The function of any complex system depends on the interaction of its components. As Russell Ackoff once said, you cannot decompose a car and assume that the engine alone will take you to your destination.
Every system (we can assume that an athlete is a system) has a primary component known as an attractor, which is a highly stable component of a system and typically does not fluctuate... (read 2026 more words →)
In today’s world of sports, we’re seeing a rapid rise in the use of technology, both among amateur enthusiasts and professional teams. This growth involves everything from data acquisition to predictive algorithms. On one side, amateur athletes invest in wearable gadgets that track everything from sleep patterns, and heart rate variability to continuous blood sugar values. Meanwhile, PRO teams are going all-in on advanced prediction models, hiring top-class computer science undergraduates to develop models that can break down the game into an algorithmic language.
As someone who’s fascinated by tech and machine learning, I find it hard to fully jump on the data-driven hype train. Why? Well, most of my career has been... (read 1970 more words →)