Variations in Performance

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In all disciplines, I mean all, humans will experience both extreme performances interspersed with less extreme ones. Humans, simply because we are human, will not achieve the same top results but rather a system or state of, “Variations in Performance.” It is a matter of, “The mean,” meaning, “the average of both extreme performance and less extreme.” In truth, it is a matter of timing where one who enters a match does so with the thought and intent to reach the higher level of the mean, extreme performance, so they can do their very best and succeed to the top spot in that match. We will call this one a milestone where the practitioner works to achieve his extreme performance level at the exact same moment they participate in a match, contest or competitive endeavor. 

The way to achieve this goal is to train and practice with a system that embraces the upper, mean and lower levels of the performance with a milestone of elevating the overall performance to levels where the lower end is less of a lower end, elevating the entire system so when the actual less extreme performance level exceeds the higher performance level of those who are competing with him or her. 

To ignore this regression of mean can lead to less than optimal consequences. When you hear someone say, “I threw bad darts but after I practiced for five hours over the weekend my Monday game was spot on.” In reality, the practice may have exceeded the optimal practice interval for true progress and the person merely traveled the path back into the upswing of his performance level to extreme performance. Often, such marathons of practice are more a feed into this fallacy of regression of mean. 

What this means is the practitioner of any discipline where performance be it mental or physical or both is about understanding that we all have this system the travels the path as if a set of waves ebbing and flowing with upside waves we ride like a surfer and the downside waves that literally throw us under the water and willy nilly to the shoreline. You can’t ride the perfect wave on top all the time, you will always slide down the front and endure the cascade of the wave top tumbling you down as if you were a novice surfer. 

Variations in Performance are like breathing, it is what humans do naturally and according the nature and its physics. Like being full of energy during the early hours of a day, and early  energy person, then slowing down in the afternoon, not a late day person, until your energy level is at its lowest. The Chinese medicines all teach this diurnal system of the human body, i.e., patterns of the body and mind from full energy to falling and into resting energy toward recharge, etc.

We call this the, “Circadian Rhythm,” where the bodies biological processes oscillate during a twenty-four hour span much like the ticking of a clock. These circadian or diurnal rhythms are set according to the environment in which the human lives to included its weather, etc., such as light, temperature and other effects. Add in the environmental effects of the tribe, clan or social order along with culture and beliefs then you get a system that dependent on other factors to the individual provides a clock where you may be at your best at 8am and worst at 8pm. 

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