Managing fatigue and reducing your fatigue threshold are essential to maintaining maximum performance. No one can work at peak efficiency when he or she is exhausted all the time. According to Dr. Hans Seyle, a leading stress researcher, we all have an energetic savings account and a checking account. If you consistently overdraw your energetic checking account—your daily energy reserves— through overwork, unmanaged stress, and ignored health warnings, eventually your checking account will empty and you will have to draw on your savings account—the body’s emergency energy reserves.
Many years ago Lomas Brown, an NFL player on the offensive line for the Detroit Lions, came to me because he was having problems with his knee joints. Since the NFL is always looking for bigger, stronger, and faster linemen, Lomas’s weight was 310 pounds. When I ran him through our health checks, I discovered that his Body Mass Index and his body fat composition were much too high.
At this point, Lomas had already played eight years on the defensive line. He knew that he didn’t have the energy of a rookie anymore. He wanted to improve his performance so he could stay in the game for a few more years, but he couldn’t do this unless something changed for him. He also knew that overweight offensive and defensive linemen had a 50 percent greater chance of dropping dead of a heart attack than the average man on the street. He wanted to be around to enjoy his children and his grandchildren when his career was over.
Since Lomas was a seasoned veteran with some of the best technique I’d ever seen, there was only one suggestion I could make. I told him, “Since the quickest way to compromise technique is to become tired out, let’s work on improving your fatigue threshold by dropping your weight and getting you better conditioned.”
Soon we had his weight down to 280 pounds, with more lean muscle and less body fat. But then Lomas said, “Mackie, that’s all fine and good, but my offensive lineman coach wants me to weigh in at 295.”
I said, “But you’ve also had knee surgery. Increasing your weight will be harder on your knees in the long run, so I think we’ll have to keep your weight down lower if you want to achieve your goal. Talk to your agent. Tell him ‘When I go into the preseason training camp, weigh me in at 295 automatically. Let my statistics speak for me. If I do what I need to do, then my coach can just assume I’m 295 pounds.’”
Lomas followed this advice and became all-pro that year. He’s been all-pro for a total of nine seasons. At a final weight of 276 pounds, he became the lightest player in the NFL at left tackle.
When he first came to me, he only wanted to squeeze another three years out of his career. But he got an additional nine, as one of the highest paid left tackles in the game—and he’s still playing as of this writing. He learned how to improve his performance by managing his fatigue.
Since you are born with only a limited amount of energy, the key to maintaining a high level of performance and productivity is learning how to manage that energy. There are several ways to do this:
Many years ago Lomas Brown, an NFL player on the offensive line for the Detroit Lions, came to me because he was having problems with his knee joints. Since the NFL is always looking for bigger, stronger, and faster linemen, Lomas’s weight was 310 pounds. When I ran him through our health checks, I discovered that his Body Mass Index and his body fat composition were much too high.
At this point, Lomas had already played eight years on the defensive line. He knew that he didn’t have the energy of a rookie anymore. He wanted to improve his performance so he could stay in the game for a few more years, but he couldn’t do this unless something changed for him. He also knew that overweight offensive and defensive linemen had a 50 percent greater chance of dropping dead of a heart attack than the average man on the street. He wanted to be around to enjoy his children and his grandchildren when his career was over.
Since Lomas was a seasoned veteran with some of the best technique I’d ever seen, there was only one suggestion I could make. I told him, “Since the quickest way to compromise technique is to become tired out, let’s work on improving your fatigue threshold by dropping your weight and getting you better conditioned.”
Soon we had his weight down to 280 pounds, with more lean muscle and less body fat. But then Lomas said, “Mackie, that’s all fine and good, but my offensive lineman coach wants me to weigh in at 295.”
I said, “But you’ve also had knee surgery. Increasing your weight will be harder on your knees in the long run, so I think we’ll have to keep your weight down lower if you want to achieve your goal. Talk to your agent. Tell him ‘When I go into the preseason training camp, weigh me in at 295 automatically. Let my statistics speak for me. If I do what I need to do, then my coach can just assume I’m 295 pounds.’”
Lomas followed this advice and became all-pro that year. He’s been all-pro for a total of nine seasons. At a final weight of 276 pounds, he became the lightest player in the NFL at left tackle.
When he first came to me, he only wanted to squeeze another three years out of his career. But he got an additional nine, as one of the highest paid left tackles in the game—and he’s still playing as of this writing. He learned how to improve his performance by managing his fatigue.
Since you are born with only a limited amount of energy, the key to maintaining a high level of performance and productivity is learning how to manage that energy. There are several ways to do this:
- Your heart has only a finite number of beats in it before it stops forever, but you do not have to squander those beats because your aerobic conditioning is poor. Through exercise,
you can always develop a lower resting heart rate. - Get regular health checkups.
- Make sure you get enough sleep.
- Keep your weight within acceptable limits.
- Manage your stress.
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