Pursuing Robustness

Breaking the Fragility Trap

This article was originally posted on my old Substack - HumanAF - almost two years ago. My thinking has changed a bit and my writing has gotten better (I hope). I revised a few things here to help with the readability of the article but the body of the content is fundamentally the same.

Robustness is something I think and talk about quite a bit. I want to ask you, my readers, what you think about this topic.

What does robustness mean to you?

Is there something beyond robustness?

Let’s talk.

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Across strength and conditioning, return to play, and healthcare, a misguided undercurrent of thought prevails. This undercurrent is directly associated with attempts to avoid disease, evade pain, and prevent injury. It's this denial of reality that forces us to cling to empty controls and fall prey to quick fixes, hacks, and quackery that not only don't help us to truly abstain from the displeasures of the physical body but delay our embodiment of practices that ultimately would offer us better protection from that which ails us.

Fragile things break easily. Under conditions of slight perturbation they become vulnerable to insult. Environmental pressures betray their sensitivities and as a result not only to they break more easily, they can become less adaptable than they were to begin with. While it seems obviously counterintuitive to pursue fragility we often do so without even knowing it. When it comes to health, our orientations far too often have avoidance of disaster baked in as the primary orientation. With such a weak target we do as little as possible in hopes that we've done enough to get away with it.

One thing is for sure in this world. Things fall apart. Empires, countries, ecosystems, relationships, technologies, and most assuredly, the bodies we live in. Entropy and chaos are the ever pervasive undercurrent of reality. Order in its most organized expression is purely the domain of humankind.

This metaphysical truth can be seen at every level of our existence and our health is no different. Our denial of this reality often causes us to falsely overextend our attempts to control that which implicitly cannot be, rather than put our attention on that which we have some say over. The answer? Rather than trying to run away from that which breaks down by its very nature we directly target improvements in our robustness.

The Fall

The fall is inevitable. You will get stressed, broken down, and sad. You will get injured. You will get sick. Most of the factors that contribute to what, when, and how these things occur are outside of your control. The denial of these basic realities gives only a slippery grasp on the illusion of control. We attempt to chase away disease, pain, and injury with special medicines, supplements, protocols, and exercises. The latest pills and recuperative gadgets rake in ungodly amounts of profits. No amount of any of these things will ultimately "prevent" the chaos from getting to us.

At first read this might sound morbid and even fatalistic. But I don't think so. Instead, it's an attempt to audit the amount of psychological currency we expend on strategies of avoidance rather than pursuing simpler answers that reside right in front of our faces. Spending energy on the relief of suffering and the alleviation of disease, pain, and injury are important. But as a fundamental directive for behavior, they fall horribly short. They hope to control factors in a mysterious and complex universe that we think we've figured out.

Many of our health gurus and resources begin with a fundamental denial of the reality we face. They sell us avoidance strategies for what we don't want. Eat this way so you don't get that disease. Exercise like this so you don't die like that. I don't want to eat my way to diabetes or have my heart give out any more than the next person. But I've found through experience that running away to avoid that which we don't want has a very short life span. We will delude ourselves into thinking that simple avoidance is enough. If I measure HRV and go to bed on time like a good boy, nothing will go wrong. Not true. Life has a say. Even if you take every supplement, eat every vegetable, do all the right exercises, and drink the blood of the young-shit happens.

Fear of what is unwanted can be a place to start, but my experience with clients for decades now shows me that those on the path of avoidance soon fall off. Instead, a vision of what you do want is far stronger and sustainable. This is a path of robustness.

Be Robust

A better orientation than avoidance might be towards improved robustness and adaptability. When we move towards general robustness we reduce vulnerability to all threats to our well being including threats that both originate within and outside of us. In fact, if we look at the most health producing behaviors known to exist we see some incredible trends.

For example, increasing research is showing that physical exercise is more effective at managing depression than both medication and counseling. The cool thing about exercise? It does lots of other cool stuff for your brain and body too. It seems that cardiovascular fitness is directly related to brain health (apparently your brain needs lots of blood flow and oxygen too-who would’ve thought?).

My point is that being stronger makes you...stronger. The attitude of moving towards robustness by its very nature takes on a more holistic viewpoint. Instead of looking for single causes and cures we can look to the interaction of factors that lead towards a more adaptive human on the whole. There's no need to look for specific hacks to avoid certain health problems or avoid aging (impossible) have a practice that moves the needle on the entire system at once.

This sentiment is actually at the core of what it means to be truly healthy. Health is not determined by a certain dietary restriction, genetic makeup, or particular workout plan. Health is not measured in what tools you use to achieve it. Health is marked by the ability to adjust consistently to the changing demands of life.

Aim True

Things do fall apart. There is little in this life we have real control over. But we can engage in simple practices that make us stronger and more resilient. If we focus on moving towards robustness as our general orientation rather than the avoidance of the inevitable reality of entropy we'll find sustainable habits that work to not only protect us from insult but enjoy a fuller and more complete life for however long we have it.

Thanks for reading,

Rob

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