Inefficiency Drives Adaptation

To be efficient is by definition, “to achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.”

Nearly everywhere in our lives, we are taught to chase efficiency. We want to spend less time working so that we can spend more time with our loved ones. We want to spend less time in the gym so that we can get more results and pursue activities that we enjoy.

In sports and competition, efficiency is top of mind. The distance runner must not bleed any force laterally. The powerlifter must conserve as much energy as possible while also exerting enough to be successful. The baseball pitcher must not let wasted mechanic fatigue his arm.

Efficiency is a profitable pursuit that often results in competitive victory. There are, however, two pesky little areas where efficiency might not be so great.

Fitness adaptation and body composition.

With these pursuits, I’d like to make the case to be as physiologically inefficient as often as possible.

There are likely a few competitive runners in the crowd. To you, a five miler is nothing. You have high functioning mitochondria and a Cadillac for a circulatory system. Your heart pumps lots of blood and you have truckloads of enzymes to transfer energy. In other words, you are highly efficient. Accordingly, a five mile run does very little for your body composition or performance, it’s routine. But, take a weightlifter and put them on a running plan and watch their body change dramatically in a few short weeks due to inefficiency. Watch their fitness level explode as their body routinely adapts to stay upright, moving, breathing, and maintain a forward line that’s progressively faster than the week prior.

Now let’s take that same runner and put them into a weight training program. While the 135# back squat may be a breeze for the weightlifter, to the new runner, this represents a massive efficiency struggle. Where they excel at putting one foot in front of the other for miles on end, their body has no idea how to move a barbell three feet for five reps. The high level of inefficiency will create huge demands on the runner’s body, and it will change quite dramatically just as the weightlifter who takes up a runner’s program. Their strength levels will spike and in a few months, a race PR is all but guaranteed for the runner who takes a hiatus to strength train.

Inefficiency sneakily at play.

To step into this world more literally, recall how you were once a beginner and how dramatic your results were in the first few months? Your performance results graph was likely a massive upward spike and your body fat likely came plummeting down in the near term.

That’s inefficiency, folks, and it’s powerful.

-Dave