Too Long For a Tweet, Too Short for a Blog Post XII
“Go back to Roger
Bannister’s time and the most sophisticated equipment we had was a stopwatch,”
says Michael Gervais. “Knowing how long it takes someone to do something is
useful, but it’s still a gross metric that explains little about the why. The
stopwatch told us Bannister ran a sub-four mile, yet we learned nothing about
how he did it or how we could do it. But between then and now there have been
six or seven measurement milestones. We moved from gross physical measures to
more precise bio-data, from invasive bio-data procedures to noninvasive
procedures. Until you get to where we are today—able to measure and quantify
ATP (adenosine triphosphate—essentially cellular energy) levels in real time.
This means that our ability to stalk elite performance has undergone a sea change.”
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