Performance optimization? How 'bout OPTIMALITY (Theory)?
Insights on Health and Performance from Linguistics
Overview
Total Read Time: 6 - 8 Minutes
Introduction (1 minute read)
Optimization (2 - 3 minute read) The main problem with the concept of optimization.
Optimality Theory (4 - 5 minute read) An explanation of Optimality Theory and why it applies well to the world of health and performance.
The Gist (less than 1 minute read) What this all means for you.
Part 1: Introduction
I’m going to break with convention here for a moment and introduce myself: My name’s Courtney. In addition to being passionate about training, I’m obsessed with linguistics.
Before teaming up with Strength Ratio, I strongly considered pursuing a Ph.D. in cognitive science with a focus on psycholinguistics. And in strongly considering this career pathway, I learned a lot about the mind, the brain, and how communication among humans actually works.
And in learning all of that stuff, I came across a model I think applies extraordinarily well in the health/fitness/training world: Optimality Theory.
So! During this article, I’ll be pulling the concept of optimality from the shelves of cognitive scientists and offering it up to the world of health and fitness as a worthy and healthier alternative to optimization. Buckle up!
Part II: Optimization
I suppose the best place to start is the reason that I began considering alternatives to optimization in the first place: Its definition and implication, its prevalence and relevance.
The word “optimize” means, “to create the best with what’s available.” Note: I was careful there to use “with”, not “of”. Because making the best of what’s available implies the existence of contextual elements that aren’t ideal. And that doesn’t jive with the ethos of “optimize,” which draws heavily on the concept of “perfection.”
Semantics aside (sorry… this is the article where I’ve decided I get to let my inner language nerd off leash), what optimization looks like is a meticulous analysis of every factor contributing to a situation. It looks like a calculated manipulation of those factors (all of them) according to the most reliable scientific data available. And it looks like an outcome that could not, under the same circumstances, be better.
Okay...WHOA. If that’s what “Optimize” looks like, then the prevalence of its use in health and fitness messaging is terrifying! “Optimize your nutrition” means, roughly: “Make your food/ drink choices absolutely perfect in every way possible.” And, “Optimize your performance” means “Be the absolute strongest, fastest, most powerful, most accurate, most agile, most enduring you could possibly be.”
Which makes me think of Stepford wives, robots, PCs and CPU’s, of and RAMs and AI and things that aren’t H.U.M.A.N. It makes me think that, “Optimize your health” is just another way of saying, “Become a machine.”
I’m aware: “Machine” as in, “She’s a machine,” is a good thing in gym-speak, but I also am not entirely convinced it should be. Is it possible to align every aspect of what you eat and how you sweat and when you sleep with what scientific evidence says is ideal? Is this pursuit relevant to walking talking thinking feeling people? I suspect not. Here’s why:
Part III: Optimality (Theory)
The reality is, human life is complex, dynamic, and teeming with unpredictable elements. This makes it a poor candidate for optimization, which fares a whole lot better with subjects that are made up of countable, controllable variables. And since when is a human life made up of that sort of thing?
Let’s face it, you can’t meticulously analyze every factor composing every aspect of your life, and you can’t control every variable contributing to every situation. Heck, you’re lucky if there’s a few elements you can control-- and even then, take too much time thinking about them and you run the risk of failing to act when you need to. You could be caught weighing pros and cons in the middle of the road, for example, which is not only annoying (for drivers) but hazardous (to you)!
The only way to function in the great, messy, seething sea of life is give yourself a little structure and some S.O.Ps. You need pre-ordained courses of action that you can either plug-and-play or modify slightly and then plug-and-play. And the only way to create these life-enabling necessities is to do two things:
Acknowledge your principles (you can also think of these as constraints)
Prioritize these principles according to how important they are
And THAT is what optimality is all about. Optimality Theory views complex human behavior as resultant of ranked principles interacting with one another.
In language, these principles describe rules that enable effective communication. Prioritization of these principles gives humans S.O.Ps for situations when two rules come into conflict. This happens quite a bit in language, and even more in life. So! It’s important to know which rules trump others.
This is best illustrated with an example. Take me. Here are a couple of rules that govern my life:
Family is important.
Training is important.
During the holidays, these two rules come into conflict with one another. I simply can’t see all of my family members when visiting for the holidays and train the way I normally do. (I am fortunate enough to have one of those huge, loud, raucous, Irish Catholic families which have 3 Georges and 3 Chrises and you gotta make sure you have meaningful conversations with everyone while edging your way to the turkey so you can actually have some this year.)
So I have to figure out which rule is more important to me over the holidays. Otherwise I’ll just sit around stressing about the fact that I have to break one of my rules.
In my book, family outranks training. So I will sacrifice my workouts in order to fulfill the principle that’s more important to me on the holidays: Thou shouldest spend quality time with the people you love.
Of course, this is oversimplified because there are actually a lot of rules at play during the holidays. Including:
Overall health is important.
And so this means that I will try to squeeze in a couple of workouts while traveling to see family, but I will not hold myself accountable to my typical 5 weekly sessions. Especially because time with loved ones is critical for my health, too.
When you start to consider and enumerate all of the rules or principles governing your decisions, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are zillions! Fortunately, many of these principles or values-- especially the very high ranking ones, have been instilled in all of us from a very young age. And most of the time, we apply them rather automatically. Maybe you’re not conscious of it, but you are responding to the rankings of your values when you ditch your workout in order to have dinner with grandma.
We’ve all experienced situations in which high ranking values come into conflict-- it’s massively stressful! Let’s say you’re a software developer. In order to launch the application you’re helping to develop, you need to stay put for all of August, but your sister just experienced a significant life trauma and to be there for her, you’ve got to get your butt on a plane. What do you do?
Some reflection can help. When given two high ranking principles, ask yourself, “Which really is the most important?” Once that’s been decided, your course of action becomes clear. And that course of action will NOT be optimal because it requires you to violate a principle. What would have been optimal is to somehow fulfill all of your principles at once. But that just isn’t possible in many situations (like the one illustrated above) unless you spontaneously clone yourself.
Of course, within your training practice itself, ranking your values is also critical to actually making progress. Meaning, you have to decide what your goals are before you can make your program, and, inherently, choosing certain goals will mean that you can’t accomplish others. As an example, if you want to train for an ultramarathon, you will not be able to train for a bodybuilding competition at the same time. The two goals require conflicting actions, and you have to decide which goal is more important in order to develop a program that will allow you to accomplish one of them.
The sacrifices Olympic hopefuls make can be explained in terms of Optimality Theory, too. While they train to compete, their performance is one of the highest if not THE highest ranking value in their lives. Which doesn’t mean it always has to be. Which is another key point that Optimality Theory makes: Rankings of values can change over time. It’s why language evolves, and it’s why people evolve.
Part IV: The Gist
This is all to say: I believe that, when making choices around health and performance, the concept of optimization is fundamentally inapplicable. It ignores the reality of life, a reality which consists of countless constantly changing, unpredictable facets outside of training and choosing what to eat.
Viewing your training and nutrition practices as values, values that might be outranked by other principles in your life, is much more reflective of reality. It accounts for the fact that, now and again, you’ll have to sacrifice your training and nutrition preferences so that you can fulfill the other, more important principles that you have. And that is totally okay. It’s actually… optimal.