Want resilience?
Resilience is built by systems and individuals - approaches from sports science
Resilience…
Resilience is one of those ubiquitous, desirable, characterful, words: resilience is something we all should have; resilient is something we all should strive to be. And there is an elasticity to the concept: individuals, financial systems, and nation-states should all possess (or develop) resilience as a matter of course. There are close synonyms: ‘antifragile’ is one, but antifragility doesn’t seem to have the same popular purchase as does ‘resilience’ in the collective mind.
The general idea is clear: resilience has **something, something, mumble, mumble** to do with being able to tolerate unpleasant, uncontrollable things, and being able to (somehow) recover from those unpleasant, uncontrollable things when they have passed. These unpleasant, uncontrollable things could be life events affecting you personally - the death of a loved one, or a redundancy, or a life-altering injury, for example; or they could be something as seemingly abstruse as the capacity of a bank, via its financial capital reserves and human capital to absorb a large-scale loan default. Or worse again: the capacity of a society to tolerate, absorb, and respond to a large-scale assault of some sort: disease or war, for example.
Resilience is therefore a ‘good thing’ to have. But can you get it more of it? That’s what I’d like to consider in the rest of this post. I think there are good lessons in resilience-building for individuals and organizations from an area that is rarely considered in the mainstream, collective, discussion: namely sports science. This is a pity, because sports science is a very serious endeavour, with lots of cash at stake, with sporting performance under an unforgiving public eye, with very clearly-defined metrics. There is an almost Darwinian selection effect at work in sport: training methods that work - allowing you to win this week, recover, and do the same all over again next week - are selected for by performance outcomes.
Did you win? Great, now go do it again, next time.
Did you lose? Why? What can you learn from defeat? Now, go pick yourself up, don’t lose next time. And try this new thing instead, next time, as that other thing didn’t work last time…
Let’s define our terms a bit more precisely
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress.” This definition emphasises adaptation and recovery during adversity, and presumably continuing to do so afterwards, as well.
Another definition of resilience is one I particularly like: resilience is ‘the capacity to recover from challenges that are as inevitable as they are unpredictable’ (Scheffer and colleagues; abstract at bottom). This definition emphasises the inevitability of challenge and adversity during life, and contrasts with APA definition because it focuses on the capacity to recover, and doesn’t pretend that we can be insulated from challenges - challenges are inevitable in life.
We underestimate dramatically our own resilience
One thing is pretty clear from the literature: we substantially underestimate our own individual capacity for resilience - we do not really have a good sense of how we will respond to, and recover from, a difficult or traumatic challenge until faced with the challenge.
The economists, Reto Odermatt and Alois Stutzer have asked people to predict their own likely future well-being after facing major life events - if they were to experience widowhood, unemployment, disability, marriage, separation, or divorce. The individuals are all panel members and are tracked and interviewed over time, including through these various adverse experiences.
Their panel members showed quite remarkable levels of recovery after having experienced these major life events; so much so that Odermatt and Stutzer conclude we humans show substantial ‘prediction errors for widowhood, unemployment, disability, and marriage potentially …. driven by biased beliefs about future changes in circumstances, as well as by unanticipated adaptation.’ We can and do recover from and adapt to, even to very difficult life events.
What Promotes Resilience?
There is a large, often correlational, literature available on resilience, and there have been some conspicuous failures, as well as successes in devising methods and techniques that supposedly build resilience (see, e.g., this somewhat sceptical review).
The (correlational) lists available of things associated with resilience include having had an extended education; being older; having excellent social support (who can I talk to/learn from when things go wrong?); having extensive specific situational training; and higher levels of dispositional optimism (having the general ability to look at things using a glass-half-full lens).
There are, however, some very decent large-scale metanalyses available now, along with large-scale, interventional programmes - very often involving the military.
One recent systematic review and meta-analysis of of 17 resilience training programmes and interventions found that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-based interventions, mindfulness-based interventions and mixed interventions (those combining CBT and mindfulness training) had a moderate effect on individual resilience.
Thus, standard clinical psychological therapeutic techniques have an important role to play in building at least some forms of resilience - techniques involving a focus on changing negative thoughts and behaviours seem to moderately assist in resilience-building. Similarly, techniques focused on developing a present-moment-oriented, non-judgmental attitude towards the stream of one’s own thoughts also seem effective. And a combination of the two also seems valuable.
Building resilience
Both people and organizations can be resilient - and it is through people, and stress-tested processes that organizations can learn to be resilient in the face of adversity.
Here, I want to focus on one possible pathway to building resilient organizations, by focusing on changes that are possible within individuals, but for which the organization is responsible.
A starting point is to ask if individuals are capable of responding and adapting to stress and adversity - whether mental or physical - right throughout the lifecourse.
A recent case study (2016) examines 'Maximal Oxygen Consumption and Performance in a Centenarian Cyclist' (abstract below). This paper tells the remarkable story of the remarkable Robert Marchand (he was born 26 November 1911, and retired in 1987, at age 76) , a centenarian cyclist who, when he was 101 years old, set the one-hour cycling record for persons greater than 100 years old. Marchand broke the centenarian cycling record twice - first in 2012, and again in 2014. He took up cycling again after a more than 75 year gap - having not cycled since the age of 25.
Marchand improved on all the various measure of cycling performance - oxygen uptake, strength of pedal push, and maximal pedaling frequency.
Marchand's remarkable performance offers several lessons:
It is never too late to improve your performance at something, if you are motivated to do so, and willing to work at at it;
Marchand’s performance improvement was a team effort - it involved a group of physiologists and others to measure his performance, and all of the other things involved in performance (from choosing an appropriate bicycle to maintaining the bicycle, to the use of a velodrome);
The organization is invisible, unless you step back and think about it. Someone has to organise things, get the performance measures done, ensure access to facilities and a hundred other small and large jobs to ensure individual success;
Organizations can build resiliently-performing individuals by investing in training, learning and measuring performance, and providing feedback quickly;
Non-sporting organizations should learning from team performance in sports. It is unthinkable today that sports performers and sports teams are not maintained in peak shape by providing an invisible and dedicated, active support team that provides psychological support, physiology, nutrition, and performance feedback.
Businesses that are serious about performance should invest likewise in their people. The business of sport is far ahead of other types of business in this regard.
Lessons from sports resilience
My reading of the sports resilience literature leads me to the following conclusions: in order to build longevity in high-performance athletes and high-performance teams, you need to implement programmes to measure and assess:
Rest: recovery ratios - downtime is just as important uptime for optimal performance
Ensure periodization of training - continuous high-intensity training is a no-non - instead, regular go for intermittent, regular, spaced practice schedules
Explore the utility of active vs inactive recovery methods - that is, non-interventional recovery versus some form of interventional recovery (some athletes employ hyperbaric oxygen chambers, or cryotherapy, or other methods to assist recovery; but the question needs to be asked - do these methods actually work? Gather the evidence!)
Ensure high-levels of baseline conditioning (i.e., training), and, of course, monitor training
Have good sleeping routines - sleep is important for almost every physiological and psychological function
Have good nutritional practices (don’t eat pizza all the time!)
Finally, have dedicated and active support teams – psychological support, physiology, nutrition, performance feedback (how many organizations bother with any of these?). And obviously these support teams must build trust and confidence in the performers they are working with.
Resilience is not a panacea; it's not a cure-all. It is a property of the invisible system around us, just as much as it a property of individuals.
And, the final lesson: ‘resilience’ is not a magical cure-all, cynically-deployed word magic dispensed by HR professionals on behalf of an exploitative management looking to squeeze more from a benighted workforce.
Case Studies in Physiology: Maximal Oxygen Consumption and Performance in a Centenarian Cyclist
Veronique Louise Billat, Gilles Dhonneur, Laurence Mille-Hamard, Laurence Le Moyec, Iman Momken, Thierry Launay, Jean-Pierre koralsztein, Sophie Besse
Journal of Applied Physiology, 29 December, 2016
DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00569.2016
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the physiological characteristics of an elite centenarian cyclist who, at 101 years old, established the one-hour cycling record for individuals ≥ 100 years old (24.25 km) and to determine the physiological factors associated with his performance improvement two years later at 103 years old (26.92 km; +11%). Before each record, he performed an incremental test on a cycling ergometer. For two years, he trained 5,000 km a year with a polarized training that involved cycling 80% of mileage at "light" RPE ≤ 12 and 20% at "hard" RPE ≥ 15 at a cadence between 50 and 70 rpm. Results: his bodyweight and lean body mass did not change, while his ⩒O2max increased (31 to 35 ml.kg-1.min-1; +13%). Peak power output increased from 90 to 125 W (+39 %), mainly due to increasing the maximal pedaling frequency (69 to 90 rpm; +30%). Maximal heart rate did not change (134 to 137 bpm) in contrast to the maximal ventilation (57 to 70 L.min-1, +23%), increasing with both the respiratory frequency (38 to 41 cycle.min-1; +8%) and the tidal volume (1.5 to 1.7 L; +13%). Respiratory Exchange Ratio increased (1.03 to 1.14) in the same extent as tolerance to ⩒CO2. In conclusion, it is possible to increase performance and ⩒O2max with polarized training focusing on a high pedaling cadence even after turning 100 years old.
Quantifying resilience of humans and other animals
Marten Scheffer et al, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Abstract
All life requires the capacity to recover from challenges that are as inevitable as they are unpredictable. Understanding this resilience is essential for managing the health of humans and their livestock. It has long been difficult to quantify resilience directly, forcing practitioners to rely on indirect static indicators of health. However, measurements from wearable electronics and other sources now allow us to analyze the dynamics of physiology and behavior with unsurpassed resolution. The resulting flood of data coincides with the emergence of novel analytical tools for estimating resilience from the pattern of microrecoveries observed in natural time series. Such dynamic indicators of resilience may be used to monitor the risk of systemic failure across systems ranging from organs to entire organisms. These tools invite a fundamental rethinking of our approach to the adaptive management of health and resilience.