What is High Performance? Ross Tucker's 12 minute master class

Over the last few years I have become a fan of Ross Tucker, mostly through his "The Real Science of Sport Podcast." He brings a measured, thoughtful approach to sport and sport science. In the latest episode (Season 6, Episode 20, Oct 3 2024), he gives a 12 minute master class on what it is to do "high performance." The discussion starts around the 40 minute mark. 

As a physical therapist, I am most interested in how all of this relates to rehabilitation and the return to sport process. Here are my key take-aways:

1.  Apply principles, not knowledge. With principles in place, you are better equipped to determine what knowledge to apply to your situation.

2. Performance science is implementing a "logical, systematic process" not just throwing technology, staff or money at performance questions. Process & Systems >>>> Stuff. Develop a "framework to understand your environment" that is free from bias and helps you systematically approach and evaluate each problem you define.

3. The goal of the systematic process is to define your challenges and then find the solutions that bring the most value, via a "constant questioning of where is the value and why are we doing this" and then reinvesting that information back into the process to further refine it. We drive performance by establishing a culture of constantly investing answers into new questions and not just looking for any one "answer" to add to the old pile of answers.

4. "If something is not part of a functional solution on the back end, it is not worth collecting on the front end." Where is the most bang for your buck in terms of money, human capital and time? If something does not directly, positively impact the process, is it worth doing? Does it take time and resources away from other things you could be doing more consistently? Cal Newport talks about this in depth in Deep Work. 

5. It is imperative to leverage the most fundamental human behaviors, e.g. sleep, nutrition, trainability, emotional health, team culture, into the knowledge and understanding that will inform and ultimately be the foundation of your process, i.e. the Big Rocks. For those of us in the rehab/RTS space, this is comprehensive Physical Literacy.

6. The key benefit of having specific content/knowledge expertise is not to tell you what to do, it is to tell you what not to do. We must filter out the things that do not make a difference so that the stuff that does make a difference has room to work. I recommend Subtract by Leidy Klotz if you want to understand why this is so hard for us to do.  

7. We can have the best theories in the world, but they often "run up against people." Egos, biases and professional insecurities are the biggest barriers to organizational implementation and success. Successful high performance leadership appreciates the art of navigating the human side of the equation and prioritizes people to get the most out of the process.




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