On Convexity & Building A Healthy Practice

We’ve all seen the graphs, heard the warnings, repeated the generic lines passed on from generation to generation - preachings like ‘less is more’, ‘addiction is the enemy’, ‘winning isn’t everything’ etc.

Equally, the exercise (and movement) industry, much like the diet industry, education, film, fashion, music etc, goes through trends that can grab you by the throat if not careful.

Yoga had all the answers, just as meditation, cross-fit, running, pilates, Martial Arts claim to also, depending which expert or podcast you listen to. The next year it’s high intensity interval training (HIIT) or weights, or hill reps, or the cold plunge, or sauna.

Making sense of the pseudoscience, media trends and cultural evolution is certainly no easy thing!

There is a principle that’s stood the test of time, however, and can be applied across all domains, which speaks truth to many of those ancient lines - the wisdom of the stoics that are reiterated and passed on time and again. That term is ‘Convexity’ and is going to put to bed, quickly, many of those (largely BS) miracle cures that find their way into our consciousness when designing our daily lives.

Convexity is, simply put, the curvature in the relationship between two dynamic properties. For the sake of ‘Movement and Monkfulness’, upon which all of my writing these days is based, these properties will refer to Intensity and Time.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, for example, gives the example of a car driving against a wall: 100 crashed at 1mph is obviously NOT the same as 1 crash at 100mph. Not even close; not even in the same ‘ball park’.

In conclusion, the moving car in relation with the impending wall has Convexity. To further reiterate the concept, at a certain point the speed’s consequences for the car will reach a plateau - crashing at 250mph will have very similar results to crashing at 270mph for example (a much smaller difference than the 20mph gap between, say, 30mph and 50mph).

Imagine a curved line whose rate of increase suddenly rockets with little change in result after a certain point. The ‘car’, of course, can also be your body falling from a building, your mind after X number of chess matches, your stomach after consuming so many calories OR even your muscles after enough sets of deadlifts.

Everywhere around us, life presents the same pattern - some amount of anything can be healthy, effective, useful etc, but after a certain point then the pros are severely outweighed by the cons.

Let’s take Running as one isolated area of training, for example. Anyone who has ran a marathon knows it’s not the same as running 2 separate half marathons, nor is it the same as running 1 kilometre a day for 42 days in a row. The distance alone would imply it absolutely is, but the bodily systems being what they are (riddled with convexity!) mean things are quite a bit more difficult with every passing kilometre after a certain point.

Runners, in turn, have the rather slippery task of discovering their own personal ‘plateaus’ - the point at which things break down to the extent that continuing is no longer useful for their training, general health and wellbeing or (in certain cases) their very survival.

Professional marathon runners compete 2 (max 3) times per year for a good reason! That reason being that it takes WAY longer to recover from running a 2:10 marathon than a 4-hour one, or from a 30-minute 10km race etc.

With enough intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards at stake, treading the (convex) line can be well worth the risks and efforts at stake. If not, however, then obviously the entire thing can be disastrous , or at least a giant waste of time. I personally enjoy treading the safe and careful line for as many slow hours as I can per week, up as many mountains as I can, while allowing my body to safely recover in between efforts also. It’s a joyful practice filled with many semi-daring adventures with only a low-medium amount of risk involved.

For many years now I’ve succeeded in only accumulating very minor injuries, requiring a little more sleep or stretching or a ‘walking day’ only before training normally again. Needless to say, our plateau can change gradually over time also (so that 30kms per week feels as easy as what 25kms used to, for example). Such plateaus are always indeed very gradual though, so one should think in terms of years or even decades when plotting grand ultra-running plans, for example, as is the case with most other domains also (weightlifting, MMA, chess or road cycling, to name a few).

The safe or ‘convexity-considered’ approach is simply too boring for some, and also unnecessary for others that just run or train to ‘blow off steam’. Many know 2 extremes in life only - complete rest/exhaustion or the high intensity (usually rather chaotic and injury-prone) ‘getting shit done’ mode.

The practitioner works to blur the lines and play anywhere and everywhere in between. It doesn’t mean we don’t push to our outer limits; we do, but on specific days of the year, in certain places with certain people. This is the only way to maximise our potential, and to do so over a long period of time. Ironically, pushing hard (and likewise resting) when the time calls allows the entire process to remain rather harmonious, despite the ups and downs that are still inevitable within the ‘convexity-considered’ approach.

There’ll always be peaks and dips, and there should be; but when framed consciously throughout the year they become smooth and transient - ‘just another day’ in the life of a practitioner.

Let’s now look at some numbers, to finish things off somewhat mathematically, just as we began. This time we’ll use bodyweight exercise however, because (apparently?) not everyone’s into running…

If I perform 5 press ups in a row, 3 times in total, with 60 seconds of rest in between the 3 sets, I might require zero additional time or energy to fully recover in time for next morning’s session. If I do DOUBLE the amount (6 sets of 5 press ups) I may need one extra day in between sessions. If I do TRIPLE the amount, however, I might need an extra week!

Why? Again… convexity.

The higher amount of work above my ‘normal’ is not directly proportional to the rest required to recover from and integrate it. It’s ‘concave’ instead; meaning it’s a steep curve rather than a straight line.

Needless to say, assuming the athlete has other responsibilities and tasks worth being somewhat healthy and prepared for, it’s rather pointless for him/her to do more than double their ‘norm’ on any given day, and even this extra dose should be done with caution and for special purposes only (competition prep, a specific project or a controlled experiment of some kind for example).

The specialised body suffers for his/her art; the specialised mind does also. And even a little too much of a certain thing, for a few too many days, can make the wellbeing and practice of an individual come crashing down.

Harmony means (largely) without harm. And practice is all about practice - not intensity, or glory, or even ‘skill’ necessarily. The habit and the repetition of one’s practice will trump any other measure of success in the long term, no doubt…

Some of the greatest skills that I and others around me possess are largely invisible ones. You don’t see the all-out performance version of them, just as you don’t hear them boasting or even identifying with them most of the time. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist…

…instead they arise as an emerging quality; one that whispers a certain wisdom and a certain truth - that they (knowingly or otherwise) have understood Convexity.

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