More than muscle: The fine line between health and performance

Performance goals are common in health and fitness culture. They can provide tangible targets and a sense of purpose. But at what point does the pursuit of improved performance have a detrimental effect on overall health?

As I lowered myself into the bath the hot water pierced my skin, but I knew this pain was necessary. The fear of not making the weight category I was due to compete in the next day sent another anxious wave through my mind and body. Everything I was doing was driven by that fear. I had already spent an hour in the sauna that evening, but when I arrived home I was still too scared to step on the scales. And so I decided to continue to try to sweat out more water weight in the bath.

I watched the beads of sweat build up on the skin of my arm and willed them to build up faster. It felt like torture but was almost addictive. I pulled the neck of my t-shirt away from my throat as I felt my heart beat faster and my breathing get heavier – I started to panic. I stumbled out of the bath as quickly as I could and called it a day, easing my feelings of guilt with the compromise that I’d try again in the morning.

The above excerpt is a shortened version of an auto/ethnographic vignette taken from my PhD thesis which explored the subculture of strongwoman – a strength sport that along with its male counterpart, strongman, are also known as strength athletics. Whilst strongwoman is, by its very nature, a competitive and performance-based sport, the findings of this study demonstrated the range of ways that competitors ‘stumbled’ into the sport – the majority of which had health-seeking, rather than performance-based, origins.

This was certainly true for me, as someone who had started casually strength training for its associated health benefits, but had stumbled, fell and got swept away by the drive for continual performance improvement. And whilst my PhD study specifically explored what this meant for those taking part in strongwoman, the bigger questions I believe it poses are: what is the place of performance goals and behaviours in health and fitness culture? And how can they be used in a way that promotes overall health, rather than just physical fitness?

Because when I read the excerpt above – I don’t see health. But at the time I was firmly entrenched in my belief that my behaviour was about bettering my health AND my performance – that the two were one and the same. Of course, there is a great deal of overlap – increased physical fitness is considered a measurable attribute that supports health, but the two are not synonymous. A holistic view of health includes mental and social-wellbeing, not just the physical – but these components of health can be sacrificed in the pursuit of high-performance, as this second auto/ethnographic excerpt from my PhD suggests:

Do you want to go the pub to watch the football tonight? - a simple question, you might think. But amid my progression as a competing strongwoman questions such as this one would send me into a spiral of agonising deliberation that ultimately always left me unhappy with my decision, whatever that was. A glance in the mirror and a reminder of my discontent with my body, or a scroll through Instagram dominated by posts showing other competitors training hard and eating well, would often be enough to convince me to stay at home. But the frustration, loneliness, and the pain of feeling left out when I chose not to go out with my friends would often leave me in tears. But this is what it takes right? You don’t get better if you don’t put the work in.

In my applied work as a qualified personal trainer and sport and exercise psychologist in training, I see this conflation of health and performance behaviours regularly across fitness contexts. Whilst some thrive on the sense of purpose performance goals can provide, others are left feeling frustrated, despondent, and sometimes believing that they ‘aren’t an exercise person’ because they can’t and/or are not willing to make such sacrifice to other areas of life that performance-seeking behaviours require. Behaviours that they have been led to believe are integral to health – in turn perpetuating an all or nothing mentality towards exercise (and fitness) that has invalidated their non-high-performance seeking activity and exercise endeavours.

So at what point does a focus on continued performance improvement lead to a detriment in overall health? And how can we, as health and fitness professionals, critically engage with those we work with to ascertain the appropriateness, relevance, and healthiness of performance goals and behaviours on an individual basis? Some food for thought!

Author

Research Fellow, Dr Han Newman