Humans: World-Class at Task Completion, Compensation

Psst! If you’re reading this sentence, I’ve got good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you’ve got a remarkable ability to get tasks done. The bad news is that you are likely compensating in order to do so and those compensations can have negative consequences like injury and limited top-end performance.

Lately, we’ve been running through some foundational assessments and progressions lately in Coach’s Prep amongst our staff. To keep things simple, these “tests” have to do with key baseline capacities like breathing, bracing, and range of motion. And, the reality is many people (dare I say most people) fail some of these tests. Here’s the sobering truth about that:

The people that fail assessments still complete gym tasks.

Said differently, when someone can’t maintain an organized trunk position when overhead, for example, it doesn’t mean they can’t go overhead. In fact, they will. Maybe you do! Completing that task, however, is made possible with tradeoffs and compensations elsewhere.

Now, what do we do with this information?

On one hand, an extreme dogmatic clinical approach would say, “STOP! Do nothing and live in a bubble until everything you do is perfect.” On the other hand, the willfully ignorant trainer approach would say “if you can perform the task and it’s not painful, carry on.”

I’m proposing neither path. Like most great questions, there are more than two answers.