Yes, a "football guy" writing about cycling, just hear me out!... The story starts with Great Britain's professional cycling team (Team Sky back then) and a man named Dave Brailsford. In 2010 he was the man tasked with leading the performance efforts of Team Sky in pursuit of their first ever Tour de France win. At top of mind for Mr. Brailsford was a concept he referred to as the "aggregation of marginal gains." In cycling, like in so many pursuits, there are a multitude of areas for improvement. His approach was to strive for a marginal improvement of 1% in as many areas as they could conceive. When you aggregated those marginal improvements together you would end up with a massive
improvement on the whole.
Naturally Mr. Brailsford and his team pursued improvements in the obvious areas of training programming, nutrition, equipment, etc. They also thought outside of the box into areas that were overlooked in the past like providing each rider with a custom pillow that would bring them the most restorative sleep and bringing in surgeons to teach the riders how to correctly wash their hands to avoid illness (reducing missed training time). The team searched tirelessly for improvements and aggressively implemented them.
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| Photo Credit: cyclingweekly.com |
With all of these 1% improvements in play Dave Brailsford made a calculation that the implementation of this strategy would put the British team in a position to have a Tour de France winner within 5 years. In the end he was wrong... because they got a winner in 3 years! A team that had yet to get a Tour de France winner in it's entire history captured the Tour de France title in 2012 and then again in 2013. For his efforts Mr. Brailsford was knighted by the Queen in 2013, so I guess that's actually Sir Dave Brailsford to you!
Important Caveat
Team Sky was in a position to be maniacal about the 1% improvements, because they already had a firm grasp on the bigger picture items. While they had not won a Tour de France up to that point, they were performing at an elite level. The aggregation of marginal gains approach was the thing that sent them to the top of the podium. While it may be tempting to begin scouring your respective discipline for small improvements, make sure you have the big ticket concepts locked down first. My personal playbook is to apply the
Pareto Principle first (also known as the 80/20 rule) to make sure I am expending the largest amount of energy towards the topics that will provide me with the best return on investment. Then and only then do I begin searching for those patented Brailsford marginal gains.
Where Words Become Actions
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| Photo Credit: cyclingtips.com |
So now comes the time for practical application. No matter what your chosen discipline is, there are marginal gains to be made. What are they for you? In my daily work I have located many areas of improvement for my athletes and have implemented plans to achieve those 1% gains. Rotational athlete-specific biomechanics, throwing velocity improvement protocols and leadership development being just a taste of them (future blog posts maybe). While you may not see me in a Tour de France team car climbing the
Alpe d'Huez any time soon, perhaps the aggregation of these marginal gains will be just what my athletes need to reach the top of their personal podium.
