December 19, 2023 • 26 mins
This week we chat with performance physiologist Dr. Ben Sporer. Dr. Ben suggests sustaining high performance through what you can control: your output.
You don’t need to be an elite athlete to be at the top of your game. By understanding the dynamic relationship between your objectives and the actions required to achieve them, you can perform at the highest level in your profession—consistently, on demand, when it counts. If you’ve got your eyes locked on your outcome, you need to get your mind set on your output.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hi everyone, welcome back, Greatto be with you and welcome to
the Pool deck. I am sitting here watching my
daughter swim and editing podcast episodes in between
races, so I hope you enjoy the cheering in the background as I
introduce our guest for this week who is Ben Sporer Doctor.
Ben found his passion for competitive sport in early
adulthood and has since spent 25years working in elite sport and
(00:23):
human performance. He's held multiple roles with
the Canadian Sport Institute, where I also used to work, and
as an accomplished physiologist.Same job I have has LED support
teams at the Summer and Winter Olympics, as well as at the
World Cup and World Championshipevents.
In addition to his role as founder of Resync, which is a
boutique consultancy firm for sports organizations, athletes
(00:44):
and corporate clients, Ben's an adjunct professor at the
University of British Columbia and the Vice president of
Performance Strategy for the Vancouver Whitecaps FC of the
MLS. I'm so excited to have been on
the show to talk about his new book output, which has a really
interesting different perspective on how we can
achieve high performance. I've been speaking a lot about
(01:05):
process versus outcome and then actually adds an interesting
step in that whole process that takes it to another level.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with
Ben. He is awesome.
Super brilliant individual who explains things really nicely
and and makes it super accessible.
So without any further delays, please enjoy my conversation
(01:28):
with Doctor Ben Sporer. Ben, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me Greg. Happy to be here.
Yeah, it's really great to speakto you Saw your work recently
reached out. Super glad we finally managed to
figure out a time to get you on the show.
I know how busy you are, so thisis great.
Tell us a little bit about your background and introduce
yourself to my audience. We'd love to hear a little bit
(01:49):
more about how you got started in the field.
Great, Sure. Like our backgrounds are
actually quite similar. As you know I I'm a physiologist
by training. I've worked in high performance
sport for over 25 years and throughout that process went
through a lot of different iterations and you know from
going to and a practicing physiologist to leading
multidisciplinary performance teams and and really becoming
(02:09):
I'd say in the latter part of mycareer right now and currently
as being more around performancestrategy.
How do you drive high performance building programs
and teams to support that? Worked in the Canadian Sport
Institute for well over a decadeand has still worked with
national sport organizations, doa lot of work with B210 and and
work now currently with the Vencor Whitecaps and the NLS?
Wow. Yeah, it's it's super cool to
(02:30):
connect with you. I've had a lot of people who do
psychology on the show recently,so it's great to get back to the
roots and have a physiologist. We're going to talk about my
stuff this time, which is really, really, really great or
what I'm interested in, which isphenomenal.
And recently you've been talkingand thinking and writing and
publishing about the idea of performance being about output,
(02:51):
not outcome. And that I love that because it
leads us into process, not outcome, which is something I'm
trying to work on a little bit more these days.
But perhaps we could start just talking a little bit about that.
Sure, sure. I think, you know, it sort of
manifested itself over the course of the career to be
honest with you. And I think it was probably back
in. I think inherently we always
thought about output. We're thinking about what we
(03:12):
need to do to achieve pieces. But what it was probably the
Beijing Games after the Beijing Games where I really thinking
about high performance and beinga high performer and relating
that to the actual output you delivered as opposed to the
outcome. I really sort of dove into it at
that point and and then more practice in that regard as a
whole. So when working with athletes
and working with teams and clients is really driving this
(03:35):
concept around. You know an outcome is how often
people measure the performance, right?
You see in sport it's all over media and the reality is, is
that we don't have any control over the outcome.
You might come up against a better team.
You might have some sort of error or mechanical or decision
by a referee and or things couldjust happen that are out of your
control. And the only thing we really
(03:57):
can't control and this is one ofthe messages that came out of
that Beijing Games was our actual output and our ability to
deliver that output on demand. And when I when I started to
think about the concept of output versus process, because
we we do think about a lot aboutprocess, it was a differentiator
to me because I think an output,I look at it as an output as an
integrated delivery or performance.
(04:20):
And so if you have an objective,you have to be able to deliver
that integrated output that's required to achieve that
objective. And you can go through process
and you might do all the processes right.
But if they're not the right processes or they're not at the
right level, they're not at the right level of integration
between them in the environment that you're trying to achieve
your objective, you still may not achieve that objective.
(04:43):
And one of the things speaking with athletes and coach is it
really I realized what we're trying to do was increase the
ability of athletes and teams todeliver an output that was
required to achieve the objective.
But even in the end, all we weredoing was increasing the
likelihood that they were going to achieve that objective.
(05:04):
So we had full control over how we prepared athletes, how we
prepared teams. We had athletes have full
control over how they committed to the preparation and how they
delivered and prepared themselves for that moment.
And then that's how they actually deliver the output
that's required to achieve that.And and I'll give you one quick
story about that. An athlete that finishes 8th in
(05:27):
the Olympic Games, it wasn't expected to finish in the 20th,
but they hit PBS. They delivered on everything in
the preparation strategy and maybe they don't have the
genetic makeup that maybe the top five athletes in that sport
do because some of them are verygenetic based, but they
performed at an incredibly high level and they might have been
the highest performer in that moment if everybody else didn't
(05:47):
quite reach their PB, but they still had success above them.
And I think we saw that. We see that regularly in sports
and we also see the same thing is that some athletes and some
teams and some people are successful in achieving
objectives. In spite of your performance at
times we have to be and that wasanother piece around the output
is that it may not have been a really good output.
(06:08):
We still achieved your objectiveand I think that that's when we
started talking to athletes and coaches about how do you really
continue to strive to get betterand be a a higher performer at a
higher level? Is evaluating those lucky wins
or those lucky outcomes just as much as you evaluate the unlucky
ones? I really like that we've
(06:28):
differentiated between process, output and outcome.
I've actually never thought of it that way before, but I really
like it. I and I can see the difference
actually. And what I would love to do is
tease that out a little bit more.
And what I gathered from your explanation was that it's all
(06:50):
about delivery of integrated performance in the environment
in that moment. So let's tease that out.
And I want to talk about integrated performance a little
bit and what that means. And the reason why is because
what I'm think you're trying to say, correct me if I'm wrong, is
that we're basically trying to replicate what we need to do in
(07:12):
competition in practice at the level that's required to give us
the best chance possible of doing it.
When it matters, yes. But that integrated performance
piece is curious. So I wanted pull on that thread
just a touch. Perfect.
I'll give you a really simple example.
I use this one in the book, so think about a time trial and a
site list. So if you have to do a pursuit
(07:33):
or let's just use a pursuit on track cycling, it's a it's a
very simple one. It's a very measurable certain
amount of power outputs requiredto get around the track in a
certain period of time. And if you're able
physiologically, physically to produce that power output,
great. Now can you do that over a
period of three times in the course of a a day or two days
(07:54):
when you have to do multiple heats?
Now, can you do that when the objective is actually on the
line, right. Mentally, can you do it now?
Can you do it when there's 10,000 people screaming and a
gold medal's on the line? Right, not just not just a World
Cup, but a gold medal? Now, can you do it when you just
(08:14):
had some news from home that your grandmother's sick or your
grandfather's sick? And emotionally that's actually
challenging you in a different environment.
And So what the integrated output is, is it's not.
And quite often and you know this term we use this a lot in
sport and and I think it exists in more so in for your listeners
group and where they work in business and life.
(08:36):
We work in silos. We go see a doctor over here,
right. We go see your strength trainer
over here and and often what youneed to do in the end of the day
is deliver an output that takes in the Core 4.
As I talk about in the book, mental, physical, technical and
tactical, you need to deliver anoutput that's an integration of
those four areas. In a moment that's specific.
(08:56):
But when we prepare in isolation, which I'm not saying
we can't do that, but I think the output that you're trying to
deliver, you have to understand what that output is in that
environment is and be honest about what it is.
That's really, really helpful. And I would also like to expand
a little bit upon the idea that it requires mental, physical,
(09:17):
emotional and tactical, because that applies not just I think in
sports, but probably also to writing an exam, doing a job
interview, crushing it in a sales meeting.
So let's break that out and justexplain that a little bit.
Yeah. So then the four is mental,
physical, technical and technical.
I mean I sort of I sort of bunchemotional into the mental side
(09:38):
because I think it's everything around how we prepare ourselves.
And so I use an example in the book about a woman who is an
accounting person who is able todoes a great technical skill in
tax accounting. And she's one of the best
technical people in the industryand she's very tactically
oriented in how she approaches her technical skill with the
(09:59):
clients. She's very tactically able to
listen to the clients and understand which approach to
use, when and when is the right approach to use it.
She's mentally able to handle the pressure when a client is
really upset or she's, you know,and they're really in a rush or
there's a multiple of jobs on the line and she physically in
(10:21):
her own situation is there's nota lot of physical demand to it
other than she has to serve shopfor work every day.
But what happens is now the job because she's done such a great
job and she's highly regarded, they want to have her work
across the country with all their national clients.
So now she has to travel more and she's fine and she's away
from home more and she still hasthe technical skills and she
(10:44):
still has the tactical skills. But the physical load that's
being imposed on her from the travel, the jet lag, the fatigue
of changing time zones, the emotional load that's being
followed on from taking away from time from their family,
those have an impact and the ability to then it changes her
personal state when she's working with the clients.
(11:06):
And so that's really where I think about the concept of an
integrated output. Those areas do have a have a
play, and it's needing to understand how those different
OR components, physical, mental,technical, tactical, are able to
influence that output positivelyand negatively.
So someone in that situation needs to be more physically have
(11:30):
a higher physical capacity. They'll be able to handle the
travel load, they'll be able to handle the fatigue a little bit
better. They'll also be able to handle
some of the stresses a little bit better.
Someone who eats well, if they have poor dietary habits, will
have an integrated it'll moderate that performance or
that output that's being delivered.
You know, if they eat really well and they manage their food
(11:52):
over the course of travelling and getting on a plane and
hitting hotels and all these other types of things that
happen, they actually had that as a positive, can't have a
positive or negative influence on the output.
And so we're talking about that integrated output.
All those pieces come into play that you need to prepare, and
you can prepare to help deliver what is actually required in the
second scenario for that, for the accountant, the output
(12:15):
that's required is very different than when the
accountant's working in their home territory, right?
So knowing the output that's required to deliver and achieve,
the performance has changed and so the preparation needs to
change to to meet that new need.When we're thinking about the
different elements and preparingor training or practicing,
(12:41):
inevitably, sadly, we run up against time.
And you don't have time to do everything.
You don't have the energy to do everything, You don't have the
capacity to do everything. So you got to make decisions.
What am I going to practice? What elements am I going to work
on? Am I going to practice my mental
skills by doing some visualization?
Am I going to go to the gym? Am I going to map out my cue
card as to what my strategy is going to be like?
(13:02):
You get there's a lot of stuff you got to pick and choose from,
which leads us to thinking about, OK, how do we prioritize
and figure out strategically what is the most important thing
to move forwards with? Yeah, it's a great.
It's a great question, Greg. And I see it every single day
and it's actually the same challenge we have in sport.
I see it in sport and even with business clients that I work
(13:22):
with. And fundamentally my my belief
is, is that the challenges with that come from really not
spending the time right up frontto be honest about what it is.
Your objective is. And I think and more often than
not, actually I'd say 99% of thetime when working with clients
or teams or athletes, that if wespend that time right up front
(13:45):
to be really clear about what isthe objective and ask those
questions and then why that's the objective and make sure that
the, the individual's honest about what that is, the pathway
in the strategy becomes really clear.
And I think that once you once you're really clear about what
that objective is and then you spend the time to articulate
what's the output that's actually required to achieve
(14:06):
that objective, you can be honest with yourself saying, you
know what, I can't do that or I can do that.
Where we run into trouble, I think where most people run into
trouble and get overwhelmed is there's an abundance of
information. And so they start at the point
of taking in the information on what to do as opposed to
figuring out what they actually need to do first and then going
(14:29):
out to the resource to say, well, how do I do this or how do
I do this right. And I think that that's that's
the fundamental, once you've gotthat point, to be honest about
what it is you're trying to achieve and why.
Because look if you don't connect with why you're doing
something and everybody knows what Simon Says why.
And it's a great it's a great approach.
But I think it's on so many levels.
(14:50):
If you don't connect to why you're doing something, it's
really hard to get up at 6:00 inthe morning to hit that workout
or it's really hard to not have a drink out with your friends
socially because you know next morning you've got to get up or
the the hard, the why's. If you're not connected to why,
the actions become more difficult to do on a consistent
basis. But the minute you're able to
(15:11):
connect to that Y, you're then able to articulate what it is
that you need to do to achieve that.
And going back to your question is, I would say I always start
with pick the top three priorities that you can focus on
and any more than that is a lot.Yeah.
If I stay focused on one to three things, whether it's my
(15:31):
big three for the year, my big three for the quarter, my big
three for this week, even my three things I want to get done
today, things tend to go very well.
I usually feel anxiety, go up, stress, go up, overwhelm, go up.
When I get distracted and start to pile on more things that
maybe aren't actually important,they're just urgent.
(15:54):
And that practice of constantly checking back on what are those
three things I need to do? Like you literally have to check
in every single morning. I have to check in every single
morning to make sure I stay on target for sure.
Yeah, and I think it's, I think that's common even with athletes
when we build up plans for the year, we have some priorities
that we want to actually focus on in their plan.
(16:17):
Like what is the object of this camp.
And and I believe it or not, even at the elite level in pro
sport and Olympic sport, there'sa lot of people who go into
camps and they they just go through the motions.
It doesn't mean they're they're actually really good at what
they do, but they could actuallyoptimize that performances to a
different level. And so I think that the same
thing holds true very much in personal performance as well.
(16:41):
How do we get some equivalent clarity around what we can
control versus what we cannot control?
To ensure that once we've done our prioritization, we're
allocating our attention, our energy, our focus, to the things
that can actually move the needle.
Yeah, I think you have to actually ask the question.
(17:02):
Is there something else that. So for example, can you control
your effort every day? Yeah, I can control my effort.
Can I control whether I go to the gym or not every day?
Yeah, I can. But there might be a few things.
My schedule might not allow me to do it right.
My work schedule, my kids, my Uber in for my kids might not
allow me to do it. But OK, so then what are the
(17:23):
limitations to my schedule now? I can control in those in those
open windows whether I go or not.
I can make the choice to go whether I go or not.
And I think you always have to get down to the question and say
ask yourself, do I have ultimatecontrol over it?
Am I able to actually control this?
And I will say this is that we can control the the factors of
(17:46):
what our objective is. We control that everyone of us
can control that. We can control what we choose
our objective to be personally. We can control the effort we put
into prioritizing what are the things we need to work on.
We can control our preparation to deliver the output that's
required to achieve that objective.
And we can control how we prepare for those moments by
(18:09):
getting good sleep, optimally recovering, eating good food.
You know, we can prepare for those moments when you get into
the moment and you evaluate yourperformance.
And this is a big thing about the concept of output.
You have to evaluate your performance based on whether or
not you were able to deliver theoutput that you prepared
yourself to deliver. OK, that's a very big, important
(18:33):
piece to this. If you evaluate it still on the
objective, you're get you're falling into the trap of whether
or not you actually try. You're going basing on outcome
as opposed to output. Yeah, the the a key piece in
this is to understand that when you think about output or when
you think about your preparationto achieve an objective, you're
really preparing yourself to increase the likelihood that you
(18:57):
can deliver the performance thatwill achieve your objective,
right? You still have things that you
can't control. Referee makes a bad call, boss
changes your what you need to do.
You know something happens at home to a family member and you
have a stress that's immediatelythere before big presentation.
You can't control those things. They happen in life.
(19:19):
But what you can do is prepare yourself.
You can control your ability to prepare yourself to handle those
In those moments, have the biggest toolbox.
Have some capacity. Be well rested.
You know. Be well nourished so that you're
not tired and having to make decisions under stress.
Or you're not having you know you're undernourished and you're
(19:39):
hungry and you're angry, as my family likes to call it.
You know and and then you're having to make decisions in a
stressful environment. From your perspective, is it
worth when you talk about preparing and understanding the
controllables versus the uncontrollables?
Of course you want to take care of everything that you can
control, Sleep. Nutrition, training, mindset,
(19:59):
prep. You know, all those sorts of
things. But of course it's possible that
something happens that disrupts your ability to perform in the
moment. Is it worth allocating attention
to, trying to anticipate what those might be and coming up
with, maybe even thinking through a strategy and in
advance of what happens if it doesn't go well?
Let me give you an example. Yes, I was doing a speech.
(20:22):
Tried to connect my computer to the AV system at the City of
Toronto City Hall where I was supposed to be presenting.
It doesn't work because the system's 25 years old and I
actually had to go through threedifferent dongles to find the
one that would connect my Mac totheir system.
But I had all three dongles withme because I knew sometimes my
(20:44):
computer just doesn't connect. I had them with me because I had
thought through what could go wrong and I tried to figure out
is it a powered one? Is it a you know?
Anyway so USBC, HDMI or whatever.
So is it worth thinking about what can go wrong?
I mean, I do sometimes, but I'm curious about your thoughts on
that. Absolutely.
I think you have to do that withthe appreciation though that you
(21:07):
can't prepare for everything andso and I and I talk a little bit
about this in the book is I think you really got to prepare
for those that are most likely to happen right.
And and there are things and andthen the the other thing I'd say
is for those that are that ones that you haven't prepared for is
you prepare yourself to handle an unpredictable moderator.
(21:31):
Prepare yourself. How do you handle that situation
Do you get flustered? Do you get stressed or are you
able to handle in the way that'sable to deal with the situation
at the time, Right. I think that's a big part of it.
You can't prepare for everything.
I think that's. I think it's foolish, you know,
delicious, endless about all thethings.
Totally. You want to do psych yourself
out about, you know, everything that could go wrong?
(21:52):
Yeah, I. Think you end up having some
mental it could be mentally challenging to be that over an
incredible stress. But yeah, I think you prepare
for those that are most likely and also.
My daughter, for example, like when she's swimming, take a
couple pairs of goggles with you, because it's quite likely
that at some point your goggles going to break.
But you know, anyway, so I get it.
That's that's fair enough. I understand.
(22:12):
And even I, I give a story aboutthe Olympics of 2010 is we we
were competing at home. We knew we had more ability to
deal with certain certain instances if they arose.
But we prepared for the things that we thought were most likely
to happen. We figured there was going to be
some weather challenges you know, when we were at the
Olympics. So it's I, I I grew up here.
I know the weather is unpredictable.
(22:32):
You get rainfall and sun, no snow, tons of snow.
And so one of the things that weprepared for was the most likely
fog rain and and what that meantis that we wanted to make sure
that we had and and delays because of the fog and rain.
So we made sure we had Google management, we made sure that we
had proper rain gear and we had we had a little warming HUD
(22:54):
available. We made sure that we had proper
clothing. And I remember actually in the
final race that, you know, in the, in the parallel of the
Giants Slaw and JC Anderson's Racing Benjamin Karl for the
gold medal, there was a delay before the men started race
started. JCJ came down almost 3/4 of a
second behind Benjamin Carl in the first run.
JC came over. We went through our process,
(23:16):
goggle management, warm jacket on straight up to the top.
As soon as they get Benjamin, Carl went over.
They had like a plastic bag or there wasn't a lot of
preparation. They went up to the top.
We had micro wrinkle warmups planned out in case there's a
delay. There's a 15 minute delay,
right? JC felt really prepared and
ready, came back down and ultimately he won.
(23:37):
So which is a fantastic thing for him.
But all we did was prepare for the most likely scenarios.
Tell us. About the new book.
So the book's output, it's, it'sgreat.
Thanks for having me on the talkone.
I think first of all, one as youwould know having written books,
it's it's a challenge. It was probably one of the
biggest challenges I went through in the last 15 years and
(23:59):
one of the things I most excitedabout the book is it came out of
COVID. It was a we took a we took a
scenario that was not super goodfor a lot of people.
It was a stressful scenario, bigchange and something good came
out of it from us. We ended up my wife Trina and I
worked hard to put it together. We'd go for hikes regularly and
walk through the process of asking questions and talking and
(24:22):
and really the book came great from speaking with clients
speaking to organizations similar to like you do with
yourself and people often comingup and saying hey, here's my
situation like what would you doin this scenario Or my my son or
daughter is an athlete and they're learning to develop.
What would you suggest or how would you suggest helping them
achieve their goals. And it really came from that
(24:44):
constant question was there is there a place I can get your
thought process on this Do you have a book.
And so over time it just evolvedand I think we took the
opportunity of COVID to put it out.
So pretty excited about it. And it's a new chapter of, well,
literally a few new chapters, yeah.
A few new chapters, like actual chapters?
That's actual chapters. Well, we really appreciate you
(25:07):
joining us to share your wisdom and check out the book.
If people want to learn more about you and your work and
connect with you and maybe get acopy of the book, where should
they go? Welloutput-book.com is the book
website Instagram it's just output book.
I'm on LinkedIn usual channels. Right on, Ben.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to hang out with us.
I'm really happy to, you know, dig into this.
(25:27):
I learned something new about Performance day.
So, I mean, how cool is that? And just super thrilled to have
a chance to spend a little bit of time with you.
Likewise, Greg, thanks so much for having me on.
I really appreciate it and keep going all the work you're doing.
I love it. All right everyone, I hope you
enjoyed that episode. The Last episode of 2023 with
Doctor Ben Sporer. If you want to learn more about
Ben and get his book, check out triplew.output-book.com and all
(25:54):
of his info is there. I hope you had a great year.
Hope you enjoyed the podcast this year.
We've got some exciting plans for 2024.
Really thrilled to have all of you here with me on this journey
and excited to keep everyone growing into 2024 in the areas
of health, well-being, and peak performance.
All right everyone, that's it. Happy New Year.
(26:14):
We'll see you in the next one.
Hi everyone, welcome back, Greatto be with you and welcome to
the Pool deck. I am sitting here watching my
daughter swim and editing podcast episodes in between
races, so I hope you enjoy the cheering in the background as I
introduce our guest for this week who is Ben Sporer Doctor.
Ben found his passion for competitive sport in early
adulthood and has since spent 25years working in elite sport and
(00:23):
human performance. He's held multiple roles with
the Canadian Sport Institute, where I also used to work, and
as an accomplished physiologist.Same job I have has LED support
teams at the Summer and Winter Olympics, as well as at the
World Cup and World Championshipevents.
In addition to his role as founder of Resync, which is a
boutique consultancy firm for sports organizations, athletes
(00:44):
and corporate clients, Ben's an adjunct professor at the
University of British Columbia and the Vice president of
Performance Strategy for the Vancouver Whitecaps FC of the
MLS. I'm so excited to have been on
the show to talk about his new book output, which has a really
interesting different perspective on how we can
achieve high performance. I've been speaking a lot about
(01:05):
process versus outcome and then actually adds an interesting
step in that whole process that takes it to another level.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with
Ben. He is awesome.
Super brilliant individual who explains things really nicely
and and makes it super accessible.
So without any further delays, please enjoy my conversation
(01:28):
with Doctor Ben Sporer. Ben, thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me Greg. Happy to be here.
Yeah, it's really great to speakto you Saw your work recently
reached out. Super glad we finally managed to
figure out a time to get you on the show.
I know how busy you are, so thisis great.
Tell us a little bit about your background and introduce
yourself to my audience. We'd love to hear a little bit
(01:49):
more about how you got started in the field.
Great, Sure. Like our backgrounds are
actually quite similar. As you know I I'm a physiologist
by training. I've worked in high performance
sport for over 25 years and throughout that process went
through a lot of different iterations and you know from
going to and a practicing physiologist to leading
multidisciplinary performance teams and and really becoming
(02:09):
I'd say in the latter part of mycareer right now and currently
as being more around performancestrategy.
How do you drive high performance building programs
and teams to support that? Worked in the Canadian Sport
Institute for well over a decadeand has still worked with
national sport organizations, doa lot of work with B210 and and
work now currently with the Vencor Whitecaps and the NLS?
Wow. Yeah, it's it's super cool to
(02:30):
connect with you. I've had a lot of people who do
psychology on the show recently,so it's great to get back to the
roots and have a physiologist. We're going to talk about my
stuff this time, which is really, really, really great or
what I'm interested in, which isphenomenal.
And recently you've been talkingand thinking and writing and
publishing about the idea of performance being about output,
(02:51):
not outcome. And that I love that because it
leads us into process, not outcome, which is something I'm
trying to work on a little bit more these days.
But perhaps we could start just talking a little bit about that.
Sure, sure. I think, you know, it sort of
manifested itself over the course of the career to be
honest with you. And I think it was probably back
in. I think inherently we always
thought about output. We're thinking about what we
(03:12):
need to do to achieve pieces. But what it was probably the
Beijing Games after the Beijing Games where I really thinking
about high performance and beinga high performer and relating
that to the actual output you delivered as opposed to the
outcome. I really sort of dove into it at
that point and and then more practice in that regard as a
whole. So when working with athletes
and working with teams and clients is really driving this
(03:35):
concept around. You know an outcome is how often
people measure the performance, right?
You see in sport it's all over media and the reality is, is
that we don't have any control over the outcome.
You might come up against a better team.
You might have some sort of error or mechanical or decision
by a referee and or things couldjust happen that are out of your
control. And the only thing we really
(03:57):
can't control and this is one ofthe messages that came out of
that Beijing Games was our actual output and our ability to
deliver that output on demand. And when I when I started to
think about the concept of output versus process, because
we we do think about a lot aboutprocess, it was a differentiator
to me because I think an output,I look at it as an output as an
integrated delivery or performance.
(04:20):
And so if you have an objective,you have to be able to deliver
that integrated output that's required to achieve that
objective. And you can go through process
and you might do all the processes right.
But if they're not the right processes or they're not at the
right level, they're not at the right level of integration
between them in the environment that you're trying to achieve
your objective, you still may not achieve that objective.
(04:43):
And one of the things speaking with athletes and coach is it
really I realized what we're trying to do was increase the
ability of athletes and teams todeliver an output that was
required to achieve the objective.
But even in the end, all we weredoing was increasing the
likelihood that they were going to achieve that objective.
(05:04):
So we had full control over how we prepared athletes, how we
prepared teams. We had athletes have full
control over how they committed to the preparation and how they
delivered and prepared themselves for that moment.
And then that's how they actually deliver the output
that's required to achieve that.And and I'll give you one quick
story about that. An athlete that finishes 8th in
(05:27):
the Olympic Games, it wasn't expected to finish in the 20th,
but they hit PBS. They delivered on everything in
the preparation strategy and maybe they don't have the
genetic makeup that maybe the top five athletes in that sport
do because some of them are verygenetic based, but they
performed at an incredibly high level and they might have been
the highest performer in that moment if everybody else didn't
(05:47):
quite reach their PB, but they still had success above them.
And I think we saw that. We see that regularly in sports
and we also see the same thing is that some athletes and some
teams and some people are successful in achieving
objectives. In spite of your performance at
times we have to be and that wasanother piece around the output
is that it may not have been a really good output.
(06:08):
We still achieved your objectiveand I think that that's when we
started talking to athletes and coaches about how do you really
continue to strive to get betterand be a a higher performer at a
higher level? Is evaluating those lucky wins
or those lucky outcomes just as much as you evaluate the unlucky
ones? I really like that we've
(06:28):
differentiated between process, output and outcome.
I've actually never thought of it that way before, but I really
like it. I and I can see the difference
actually. And what I would love to do is
tease that out a little bit more.
And what I gathered from your explanation was that it's all
(06:50):
about delivery of integrated performance in the environment
in that moment. So let's tease that out.
And I want to talk about integrated performance a little
bit and what that means. And the reason why is because
what I'm think you're trying to say, correct me if I'm wrong, is
that we're basically trying to replicate what we need to do in
(07:12):
competition in practice at the level that's required to give us
the best chance possible of doing it.
When it matters, yes. But that integrated performance
piece is curious. So I wanted pull on that thread
just a touch. Perfect.
I'll give you a really simple example.
I use this one in the book, so think about a time trial and a
site list. So if you have to do a pursuit
(07:33):
or let's just use a pursuit on track cycling, it's a it's a
very simple one. It's a very measurable certain
amount of power outputs requiredto get around the track in a
certain period of time. And if you're able
physiologically, physically to produce that power output,
great. Now can you do that over a
period of three times in the course of a a day or two days
(07:54):
when you have to do multiple heats?
Now, can you do that when the objective is actually on the
line, right. Mentally, can you do it now?
Can you do it when there's 10,000 people screaming and a
gold medal's on the line? Right, not just not just a World
Cup, but a gold medal? Now, can you do it when you just
(08:14):
had some news from home that your grandmother's sick or your
grandfather's sick? And emotionally that's actually
challenging you in a different environment.
And So what the integrated output is, is it's not.
And quite often and you know this term we use this a lot in
sport and and I think it exists in more so in for your listeners
group and where they work in business and life.
(08:36):
We work in silos. We go see a doctor over here,
right. We go see your strength trainer
over here and and often what youneed to do in the end of the day
is deliver an output that takes in the Core 4.
As I talk about in the book, mental, physical, technical and
tactical, you need to deliver anoutput that's an integration of
those four areas. In a moment that's specific.
(08:56):
But when we prepare in isolation, which I'm not saying
we can't do that, but I think the output that you're trying to
deliver, you have to understand what that output is in that
environment is and be honest about what it is.
That's really, really helpful. And I would also like to expand
a little bit upon the idea that it requires mental, physical,
(09:17):
emotional and tactical, because that applies not just I think in
sports, but probably also to writing an exam, doing a job
interview, crushing it in a sales meeting.
So let's break that out and justexplain that a little bit.
Yeah. So then the four is mental,
physical, technical and technical.
I mean I sort of I sort of bunchemotional into the mental side
(09:38):
because I think it's everything around how we prepare ourselves.
And so I use an example in the book about a woman who is an
accounting person who is able todoes a great technical skill in
tax accounting. And she's one of the best
technical people in the industryand she's very tactically
oriented in how she approaches her technical skill with the
(09:59):
clients. She's very tactically able to
listen to the clients and understand which approach to
use, when and when is the right approach to use it.
She's mentally able to handle the pressure when a client is
really upset or she's, you know,and they're really in a rush or
there's a multiple of jobs on the line and she physically in
(10:21):
her own situation is there's nota lot of physical demand to it
other than she has to serve shopfor work every day.
But what happens is now the job because she's done such a great
job and she's highly regarded, they want to have her work
across the country with all their national clients.
So now she has to travel more and she's fine and she's away
from home more and she still hasthe technical skills and she
(10:44):
still has the tactical skills. But the physical load that's
being imposed on her from the travel, the jet lag, the fatigue
of changing time zones, the emotional load that's being
followed on from taking away from time from their family,
those have an impact and the ability to then it changes her
personal state when she's working with the clients.
(11:06):
And so that's really where I think about the concept of an
integrated output. Those areas do have a have a
play, and it's needing to understand how those different
OR components, physical, mental,technical, tactical, are able to
influence that output positivelyand negatively.
So someone in that situation needs to be more physically have
(11:30):
a higher physical capacity. They'll be able to handle the
travel load, they'll be able to handle the fatigue a little bit
better. They'll also be able to handle
some of the stresses a little bit better.
Someone who eats well, if they have poor dietary habits, will
have an integrated it'll moderate that performance or
that output that's being delivered.
You know, if they eat really well and they manage their food
(11:52):
over the course of travelling and getting on a plane and
hitting hotels and all these other types of things that
happen, they actually had that as a positive, can't have a
positive or negative influence on the output.
And so we're talking about that integrated output.
All those pieces come into play that you need to prepare, and
you can prepare to help deliver what is actually required in the
second scenario for that, for the accountant, the output
(12:15):
that's required is very different than when the
accountant's working in their home territory, right?
So knowing the output that's required to deliver and achieve,
the performance has changed and so the preparation needs to
change to to meet that new need.When we're thinking about the
different elements and preparingor training or practicing,
(12:41):
inevitably, sadly, we run up against time.
And you don't have time to do everything.
You don't have the energy to do everything, You don't have the
capacity to do everything. So you got to make decisions.
What am I going to practice? What elements am I going to work
on? Am I going to practice my mental
skills by doing some visualization?
Am I going to go to the gym? Am I going to map out my cue
card as to what my strategy is going to be like?
(13:02):
You get there's a lot of stuff you got to pick and choose from,
which leads us to thinking about, OK, how do we prioritize
and figure out strategically what is the most important thing
to move forwards with? Yeah, it's a great.
It's a great question, Greg. And I see it every single day
and it's actually the same challenge we have in sport.
I see it in sport and even with business clients that I work
(13:22):
with. And fundamentally my my belief
is, is that the challenges with that come from really not
spending the time right up frontto be honest about what it is.
Your objective is. And I think and more often than
not, actually I'd say 99% of thetime when working with clients
or teams or athletes, that if wespend that time right up front
(13:45):
to be really clear about what isthe objective and ask those
questions and then why that's the objective and make sure that
the, the individual's honest about what that is, the pathway
in the strategy becomes really clear.
And I think that once you once you're really clear about what
that objective is and then you spend the time to articulate
what's the output that's actually required to achieve
(14:06):
that objective, you can be honest with yourself saying, you
know what, I can't do that or I can do that.
Where we run into trouble, I think where most people run into
trouble and get overwhelmed is there's an abundance of
information. And so they start at the point
of taking in the information on what to do as opposed to
figuring out what they actually need to do first and then going
(14:29):
out to the resource to say, well, how do I do this or how do
I do this right. And I think that that's that's
the fundamental, once you've gotthat point, to be honest about
what it is you're trying to achieve and why.
Because look if you don't connect with why you're doing
something and everybody knows what Simon Says why.
And it's a great it's a great approach.
But I think it's on so many levels.
(14:50):
If you don't connect to why you're doing something, it's
really hard to get up at 6:00 inthe morning to hit that workout
or it's really hard to not have a drink out with your friends
socially because you know next morning you've got to get up or
the the hard, the why's. If you're not connected to why,
the actions become more difficult to do on a consistent
basis. But the minute you're able to
(15:11):
connect to that Y, you're then able to articulate what it is
that you need to do to achieve that.
And going back to your question is, I would say I always start
with pick the top three priorities that you can focus on
and any more than that is a lot.Yeah.
If I stay focused on one to three things, whether it's my
(15:31):
big three for the year, my big three for the quarter, my big
three for this week, even my three things I want to get done
today, things tend to go very well.
I usually feel anxiety, go up, stress, go up, overwhelm, go up.
When I get distracted and start to pile on more things that
maybe aren't actually important,they're just urgent.
(15:54):
And that practice of constantly checking back on what are those
three things I need to do? Like you literally have to check
in every single morning. I have to check in every single
morning to make sure I stay on target for sure.
Yeah, and I think it's, I think that's common even with athletes
when we build up plans for the year, we have some priorities
that we want to actually focus on in their plan.
(16:17):
Like what is the object of this camp.
And and I believe it or not, even at the elite level in pro
sport and Olympic sport, there'sa lot of people who go into
camps and they they just go through the motions.
It doesn't mean they're they're actually really good at what
they do, but they could actuallyoptimize that performances to a
different level. And so I think that the same
thing holds true very much in personal performance as well.
(16:41):
How do we get some equivalent clarity around what we can
control versus what we cannot control?
To ensure that once we've done our prioritization, we're
allocating our attention, our energy, our focus, to the things
that can actually move the needle.
Yeah, I think you have to actually ask the question.
(17:02):
Is there something else that. So for example, can you control
your effort every day? Yeah, I can control my effort.
Can I control whether I go to the gym or not every day?
Yeah, I can. But there might be a few things.
My schedule might not allow me to do it right.
My work schedule, my kids, my Uber in for my kids might not
allow me to do it. But OK, so then what are the
(17:23):
limitations to my schedule now? I can control in those in those
open windows whether I go or not.
I can make the choice to go whether I go or not.
And I think you always have to get down to the question and say
ask yourself, do I have ultimatecontrol over it?
Am I able to actually control this?
And I will say this is that we can control the the factors of
(17:46):
what our objective is. We control that everyone of us
can control that. We can control what we choose
our objective to be personally. We can control the effort we put
into prioritizing what are the things we need to work on.
We can control our preparation to deliver the output that's
required to achieve that objective.
And we can control how we prepare for those moments by
(18:09):
getting good sleep, optimally recovering, eating good food.
You know, we can prepare for those moments when you get into
the moment and you evaluate yourperformance.
And this is a big thing about the concept of output.
You have to evaluate your performance based on whether or
not you were able to deliver theoutput that you prepared
yourself to deliver. OK, that's a very big, important
(18:33):
piece to this. If you evaluate it still on the
objective, you're get you're falling into the trap of whether
or not you actually try. You're going basing on outcome
as opposed to output. Yeah, the the a key piece in
this is to understand that when you think about output or when
you think about your preparationto achieve an objective, you're
really preparing yourself to increase the likelihood that you
(18:57):
can deliver the performance thatwill achieve your objective,
right? You still have things that you
can't control. Referee makes a bad call, boss
changes your what you need to do.
You know something happens at home to a family member and you
have a stress that's immediatelythere before big presentation.
You can't control those things. They happen in life.
(19:19):
But what you can do is prepare yourself.
You can control your ability to prepare yourself to handle those
In those moments, have the biggest toolbox.
Have some capacity. Be well rested.
You know. Be well nourished so that you're
not tired and having to make decisions under stress.
Or you're not having you know you're undernourished and you're
(19:39):
hungry and you're angry, as my family likes to call it.
You know and and then you're having to make decisions in a
stressful environment. From your perspective, is it
worth when you talk about preparing and understanding the
controllables versus the uncontrollables?
Of course you want to take care of everything that you can
control, Sleep. Nutrition, training, mindset,
(19:59):
prep. You know, all those sorts of
things. But of course it's possible that
something happens that disrupts your ability to perform in the
moment. Is it worth allocating attention
to, trying to anticipate what those might be and coming up
with, maybe even thinking through a strategy and in
advance of what happens if it doesn't go well?
Let me give you an example. Yes, I was doing a speech.
(20:22):
Tried to connect my computer to the AV system at the City of
Toronto City Hall where I was supposed to be presenting.
It doesn't work because the system's 25 years old and I
actually had to go through threedifferent dongles to find the
one that would connect my Mac totheir system.
But I had all three dongles withme because I knew sometimes my
(20:44):
computer just doesn't connect. I had them with me because I had
thought through what could go wrong and I tried to figure out
is it a powered one? Is it a you know?
Anyway so USBC, HDMI or whatever.
So is it worth thinking about what can go wrong?
I mean, I do sometimes, but I'm curious about your thoughts on
that. Absolutely.
I think you have to do that withthe appreciation though that you
(21:07):
can't prepare for everything andso and I and I talk a little bit
about this in the book is I think you really got to prepare
for those that are most likely to happen right.
And and there are things and andthen the the other thing I'd say
is for those that are that ones that you haven't prepared for is
you prepare yourself to handle an unpredictable moderator.
(21:31):
Prepare yourself. How do you handle that situation
Do you get flustered? Do you get stressed or are you
able to handle in the way that'sable to deal with the situation
at the time, Right. I think that's a big part of it.
You can't prepare for everything.
I think that's. I think it's foolish, you know,
delicious, endless about all thethings.
Totally. You want to do psych yourself
out about, you know, everything that could go wrong?
(21:52):
Yeah, I. Think you end up having some
mental it could be mentally challenging to be that over an
incredible stress. But yeah, I think you prepare
for those that are most likely and also.
My daughter, for example, like when she's swimming, take a
couple pairs of goggles with you, because it's quite likely
that at some point your goggles going to break.
But you know, anyway, so I get it.
That's that's fair enough. I understand.
(22:12):
And even I, I give a story aboutthe Olympics of 2010 is we we
were competing at home. We knew we had more ability to
deal with certain certain instances if they arose.
But we prepared for the things that we thought were most likely
to happen. We figured there was going to be
some weather challenges you know, when we were at the
Olympics. So it's I, I I grew up here.
I know the weather is unpredictable.
(22:32):
You get rainfall and sun, no snow, tons of snow.
And so one of the things that weprepared for was the most likely
fog rain and and what that meantis that we wanted to make sure
that we had and and delays because of the fog and rain.
So we made sure we had Google management, we made sure that we
had proper rain gear and we had we had a little warming HUD
(22:54):
available. We made sure that we had proper
clothing. And I remember actually in the
final race that, you know, in the, in the parallel of the
Giants Slaw and JC Anderson's Racing Benjamin Karl for the
gold medal, there was a delay before the men started race
started. JCJ came down almost 3/4 of a
second behind Benjamin Carl in the first run.
JC came over. We went through our process,
(23:16):
goggle management, warm jacket on straight up to the top.
As soon as they get Benjamin, Carl went over.
They had like a plastic bag or there wasn't a lot of
preparation. They went up to the top.
We had micro wrinkle warmups planned out in case there's a
delay. There's a 15 minute delay,
right? JC felt really prepared and
ready, came back down and ultimately he won.
(23:37):
So which is a fantastic thing for him.
But all we did was prepare for the most likely scenarios.
Tell us. About the new book.
So the book's output, it's, it'sgreat.
Thanks for having me on the talkone.
I think first of all, one as youwould know having written books,
it's it's a challenge. It was probably one of the
biggest challenges I went through in the last 15 years and
(23:59):
one of the things I most excitedabout the book is it came out of
COVID. It was a we took a we took a
scenario that was not super goodfor a lot of people.
It was a stressful scenario, bigchange and something good came
out of it from us. We ended up my wife Trina and I
worked hard to put it together. We'd go for hikes regularly and
walk through the process of asking questions and talking and
(24:22):
and really the book came great from speaking with clients
speaking to organizations similar to like you do with
yourself and people often comingup and saying hey, here's my
situation like what would you doin this scenario Or my my son or
daughter is an athlete and they're learning to develop.
What would you suggest or how would you suggest helping them
achieve their goals. And it really came from that
(24:44):
constant question was there is there a place I can get your
thought process on this Do you have a book.
And so over time it just evolvedand I think we took the
opportunity of COVID to put it out.
So pretty excited about it. And it's a new chapter of, well,
literally a few new chapters, yeah.
A few new chapters, like actual chapters?
That's actual chapters. Well, we really appreciate you
(25:07):
joining us to share your wisdom and check out the book.
If people want to learn more about you and your work and
connect with you and maybe get acopy of the book, where should
they go? Welloutput-book.com is the book
website Instagram it's just output book.
I'm on LinkedIn usual channels. Right on, Ben.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to hang out with us.
I'm really happy to, you know, dig into this.
(25:27):
I learned something new about Performance day.
So, I mean, how cool is that? And just super thrilled to have
a chance to spend a little bit of time with you.
Likewise, Greg, thanks so much for having me on.
I really appreciate it and keep going all the work you're doing.
I love it. All right everyone, I hope you
enjoyed that episode. The Last episode of 2023 with
Doctor Ben Sporer. If you want to learn more about
Ben and get his book, check out triplew.output-book.com and all
(25:54):
of his info is there. I hope you had a great year.
Hope you enjoyed the podcast this year.
We've got some exciting plans for 2024.
Really thrilled to have all of you here with me on this journey
and excited to keep everyone growing into 2024 in the areas
of health, well-being, and peak performance.
All right everyone, that's it. Happy New Year.
(26:14):
We'll see you in the next one.
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