Clever Levers

Using Leverage In Health and Performance

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
⁃ Archimedes

In physics, a lever is a simple machine that uses mechanical advantage to magnify force inputs. This leverage allows smaller forces to move larger objects with ease.

Levers are used constantly in everyday life. Scissors, wrenches, tweezers, pliers, and even the human jaw are examples of the various classes of levers we use to simplify our work and have greater effect in the world.

This article isn't about that kind of lever, however. There is a different class of leverage which has the potential to help health and performance practitioners maximize our effect on those we work with—or for health enthusiasts to improve their own outcomes.

Nonlinear Responses

Human beings are not simple machines (although it might seem that way when you're stuck in rush hour traffic). We are complex biological organisms. As such, an additional set of concepts needs to be understood if we want to manage our lives more effectively.

Complex systems are made up of interconnected components that are constantly interacting, changing, and adapting. Human biology is also in continuous exchange with the environment; constantly trading both energy and information. In complexity science, this is called openness. On top of that, human behavior is shaped by feedback loops built from each individual’s unique history and context.

Taken together, all of this complexity leads to a critical quality that I consider a linchpin in understanding performance: nonlinearity. In complex systems, small changes can produce large effects or no effect at all depending on the system’s current conditions and environmental constraints.

If we can’t be certain our actions will have the intended impact or if they do, we can’t predict to what degree, then we have to be far more mindful about where we place our energy.

So how do we influence outcomes in systems that are nonlinear and unpredictable?

We start by identifying high-leverage domains. These are places in the system where small, well-placed inputs can create outsized shifts. That’s where experimentation becomes valuable.

Which leads to the next question: how do we actually use all this complexity and leverage talk in a practical way?

By changing where we place our attention and the types of questions we ask.

Learning to work with levers in complex systems doesn’t mean throwing out your existing problem-solving toolkit. But it does mean thinking differently about what tools you use, when you use them, and why.

Clever Levers

Like most readers of this Substack, you're probably interested in the practical side of this stuff. "Yeah, yeah, complexity is cool and all, but how can I find these levers to get to what I want?"

Let's take a look at some of my favorite levers.

Breath Control

Breath control is a way we can directly interface with our deepest stress physiology without having to mentally untangle our experience. This simple exaptive technology is built right into the body and provides a robust way for us to harness attention and focus, recover and rest, and modulate our emotions all in one package.

The application can be made simple and accessible for nearly anybody. Because of its low user friction, breath control is easy to use with high frequency and has cumulative potency with very little investment required from the user.

Environmental Cues

Environment is often an invisible hand shaping behavior. Changing your surroundings can create massive shifts in energy, focus, and routine without relying on willpower.

This could be as simple as moving your phone out of the bedroom to improve sleep, training in a different room to reset focus, or shifting light exposure to influence your circadian rhythm. In coaching, it might mean staging recovery stations in plain sight or making warmups feel less like obligation and more like invitation.

In complex systems, the environment is always exerting influence (openness). Why not use it to move us closer to what we want?

Language and Framing

What we say, especially to ourselves, matters.

The framework we use to make sense of the world shifts our perception, which in turn influences the actions we take. At the heart of this is language.

This Substack, for example, is all about sharing a unique perspective on health and performance and, in so doing, potentially changing the way you view your own experience as a coach, athlete, or health enthusiast. When you get exposed to a new perspective, it shifts how you attune your attention in the world around you. This means the opportunities you perceive for action change.

On the surface, this may seem benign, but all of us have certainly had an experience that shifted how we thought about and acted in the world. Whether a cue from a coach, a book we read, or a come-to-Jesus moment with a mentor, a reframing can send ripples of change through our lives.

Human health and performance are no exception to this reality.

These are just a few general examples of where leverage matters, but applying leverage can mean more than which broad domains are chosen to create an effect in performance. It can also refer to the way specific strategies are applied within those domains.

Let me give you a recent example from my own experience.

Practical Leverage

Recently, a friend of mine who is a longtime jiu jitsu player had an Achilles rupture.

He mentioned to me that he’d been tracking his sleep and had been having really disrupted deep sleep, which was clearly reflected in his daily energy levels.

He’d recently discontinued prescribed pain medication and thought that may be having an effect. Fair enough.

To be thorough, I asked to look at his wearable data. One consistent thing stuck out at me—he was going to bed after 11 p.m. most nights. Being an early riser by nature meant he was only getting about a 6.5-hour window to squeeze in the sleep nutrition he needed.

My recommendation? Go to bed at least an hour earlier. Before supplements or adding fancy sleep hygiene, let’s try the thing that required the least energy but might yield a big return.

I was staying at his home during all of this, so the next morning I was greeted by a polite, “Good morning and what the fuck?” His sleep data showed a steady, continuous block of deep sleep, and he felt far more energized than normal. While this was only one night of data, it was still enough to get his attention.

I posted an abridged version of this case study on my Instagram account recently, and my friend in question actually commented that seeing a change from this small intervention contributed to an entire paradigm shift for him. He now has a more consistent sleep hygiene ritual that includes breathing exercises to help downshift before bed.

In this case, my recommendation created a "butterfly effect" of sorts that branched into a series of behaviors I could not have deliberately controlled.

That's nonlinearity and leverage in action.

Precision Over Force

Instead of relying on generic protocols and hoping for results, we can become more precise in how we approach health and performance.

Recognizing leverage points within a complex system like human life allows us to use less time and fewer resources while achieving more meaningful outcomes. That kind of precision isn’t about working harder, it’s about paying closer attention to where small inputs can have the biggest effect.

The ability to spot these levers improves with experience. And that experience becomes more valuable when we stop defaulting to surface-level answers and start looking deeper. Toward the patterns, behaviors, and constraints that actually shape results.

In complex systems, it’s not about force. It’s about timing, placement, and understanding the system well enough to move it with less.

Thanks for reading,

Rob

---

If you haven’t yet check out my book!

Check Engine Light: Tuning Body and Mind for Performance Longevity