Tag Archives: leverage points

Linguistic Traps, Thinking in Systems, Training Ideas

The importance of a “Vision.”

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These days, we find ourselves in a multitude of wars, literal and metaphoric. We are always fighting against something. Whether it is obesity, aging, injury or death, it seems that most of what we do is to try and stave off the avalanche of the inevitable. This battle cannot be won—and yet we fight it. But the reality is: we don’t have to.

When the majority of us lay athletes begin to exercise, we often do it to hold something at bay. Maybe it’s heart disease. Maybe it’s something else. In systems thinking, is often referred to as “Negative Vision.” We bring into our minds the image of what we don’t want to happen, and we exercise accordingly.

There are several big problems with this approach: first and foremost, we don’t have a mission in mind—something that we are driven to accomplish. For that very reason, we find whatever it is that we’re trying to outrun constantly nipping at our heels. That is a losing battle.

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Thinking in Systems

The “hip complex:” The body’s differential.

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The “hip complex”—the intricate arrangement of bone, muscle, nerve, and connective tissue that makes up the human hip—is one of the most sophisticated pieces of machinery in nature. As runners, it behooves us to get to know it intimately, because it is the center of athletic power. When the hips don’t function correctly, the body is not capable of dealing with the majority of the resultant torque (from forces produced during walking and running). This is the source of many common running injuries.

Addressing problems with the hip allows the resultant torque to be properly channeled and allocated to the center of gravity, which, during standing, lies squarely within the hips. Therefore, most interventions into the mechanics of the hip complex have to do with maintaining and facilitating the proper flow of mechanical energy throughout the body.

In Donella Meadows’ list of “leverage points” into a system, changes to hip mechanics are characteristic of place # 10:

10: The structure of material stocks and flows.

In this case “materials” refers primarily to the forces that the body generates and interacts with.

It’s important to discuss the hip complex from a few different perspectives. The technical details of how it functions are extremely important. However, even more important is to understand why it operates as it does: If we understand the proper function that it was evolutionarily designed for, and why it is so important to maintain it in correct working order, we’ll be able to divine many of the details of its mechanical function as necessary side-effects of our journey of athletic development.

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Thinking in Systems

Leverage Points Into A System (For future reference).

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In Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Donella Meadows outlines 12 “leverage points”—12 places where we can intervene into a system to change its behavior. They are outlined in increasing levels of effectiveness:

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information).
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
3. The goals of the system.
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises.
1. The power to transcend paradigms.

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