🥇 The Athlete Development Journal

Developing speed, strength, power, health, and character, so athletes get the most out of their athletic career.

Listen to this episode on your way to practice. ⬇️

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Mind. Don’t fall in love with complexity

William of Occam borrowed a thought process from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas and used it so frequently and so effectively that it was later named after him:

“The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

Occam used it to cut down extravagant theological arguments, but the applications for this are infinite.

The root cause of your right shoulder pain likely isn’t because your left hip is out of place, it’s because your work exceeded your work capacity.
Or, to become a better hitter, you don’t need to do 36 different hitting drills with bands tied to your waist, medballs between your legs, on one knee, on two knees, upside-down, inside-out, or whatever other oddities I see on social media. You just need more reps in the box.
Or, to become more confident, you don’t need to reinvent who you are. You just need some daily affirmations and a supportive environment.

Don’t let the mysterious allure of complexity draw you away from effective, actionable solutions.

Body. “It just started hurting out of nowhere…”

To continue with the theme of mental models, I want to formally introduce the world to one of my own creation.

I’ve given it the professional sounding name of “The Law of Mechanical Idiopathy.” But, if you guys want to feed my ego, you can just call it “Zach’s Law”:

The more obscure the mechanism of injury, the quicker it tends to self-resolve.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the more strange the injury, the quicker it tends to resolve. I once had a soccer player who tore his pec when he tried to tackle a runaway cow. That was strange, but not obscure. That didn’t heal fast.

No, obscurity refers to how vague and unclear it is how the injury happened.

You know, those situations where you were just walking and out of nowhere the back of your knee started hurting really bad. Or you stood up out of bed and noticed your right forearm was achy. Or you did a regular squat and somehow pulled your calf.

Those injuries don’t make sense. You can’t point to a logical physiological, biomechanical, or psychological rationale for pain developing.

What I’ve noticed over the tens of thousands of person-sessions where I’ve trained and rehabbed athletes is that: Injuries that don’t make sense, don’t last.

So, if you have something that pops up out of nowhere and you and your rehab expert can’t find a logical reason for it, take a deep breath and remember Zach’s Law.

*an important caveat here is that the pain must be idiopathic and mechanically reproducible. If something is idiopathic and is not mechanically reproducible (meaning you can’t reproduce it by moving, stretching, or pressing on the area), then we have to have our ears perked for more sinister causes.

Soul. They’re not mean, just dumb.

Ya know what? Let’s finish this out by going 3 for 3 with mental models. This time, let’s explore Hanlon’s Razor.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

If someone is doing something that is negatively affecting you, it’s more likely that they’re ignorant than cruel.

Maybe you think you should be dressing varsity over that one kid, but your coach has it out for you.

Realistically, the varsity coach isn’t spending any extra time thinking about who should be the 15th man on the varsity bench. They quickly made that decision once at the beginning of the year, then never thought about it again.

Your coach doesn’t hate you, he’s just ignorant of who is more deserving right now. Just ball out on JV and take care of what is under your control.

Let’s wrap it up with a couple important things…

This newsletter and podcast is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, illustrating, recording, editing, and uploading. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to gtperformance.co/newsletter and they can subscribe there!
Everything in these newsletters, podcasts, social media, and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Be >,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS