Black Swan, Fitness, and the Texture of Life

I am hanging out down the shore in New Jersey, where I have been vacationing for the last week. My parents go to dinner with my neighbors and my sister is on a recruitment call for her sorority. I look at the trending section on Netflix and find a show called 72 Dangerous Animals: Asia and I turn it on. I see an Asian rhinoceros charging people, an Asian centipede poisoning people, and a scared leopard attacking people. In my head, I say good thing I don’t live next to these dangerous animals.

Being attacked by a predator wouldn’t be considered a Black Swan event in our current evolution, but we can still learn from this scenario. A Black Swan, as described in the book The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, is an event that lies outside of our expectations, yet has major consequences. For example, he discusses the stock market crash of 1987, 9/11, and the rise of the internet as examples of a Black Swan event. We cannot predict when these events will happen; all we can do is deal with the consequences.

The Black Swan theory can be applied to fitness in the fact that our bodies need some degree of randomness, otherwise our bodies stagnate. I have encountered many people who believe that steady exercise, without variation, is the best way to reach their goals, which is not true. The law of accommodation states that the response of a biological object to a given constant stimulus decreases over time. Therefore, I am alternating and cycling programs for my clients every three to five weeks to constantly keep the body adapting to new stimulus.

My biggest takeaway from the book is this: prepare yourself for the things that no one else is expecting, rather than trying to predict what is going to happen. The universe doesn’t reveal their plans to us so we have to guess. From this understanding, I am adopting a new mental framework for the world: we will never be able to predict when a Black Swan event will happen, which it inevitably it will happen, but we can study the consequences of this event and make decisions accordingly.

In an increasingly interconnected world, Black Swan events are going to happen more frequently. Ultimately, we will be safer when we know where the wild animals are and where the danger lies.

June 20, 2019

Okuri Eri Jime (sliding lapel strangle): Right hand grabs uke’s right lapel, pull lapel down to take the slack out of the gi, pass lapel to the left hand, right hand grabs and pulls down on uke’s left lapel, and finish the choke