The World’s Fittest Humans
Chapter 2: Airi Jokinen (Finland)
A woman may never win the Phenomic Games but the top women will command respect that so far has eluded women since ancient Greece or, really, since time immemorial. When women compete only against women or with different challenges than men, women will never command true respect for their capabilities. Just setting up competitions where men and women do not compete directly against each other sends the prejudiced signal loud and clear that women are less than, and this assumed inferiority affects lifelong behavior and pecking order not just in physical arenas but also in the classroom and boardroom and on payday.
— Airi Jokinen
Airi returned to Helsinki after the Turin Phenomic Worlds and was greeted as a national hero on equal footing to the “Flying Finn” Paavo Nurmi from the 1920s. Nurmi was the only man to simultaneously hold world records for running the mile, 5K and 10K and is Finland’s most iconic athlete. Finland historically is known for distance runners, Nordic skiers, and ski jumpers. Now Finland was the proud motherland of the world’s fittest woman, actually quite startling considering how small Finland is compared to the Goliath countries. But Airi had no concern for such commotion, glamour, bright lights and fanfare; she has no problem playing the David role amongst a rabid pack of Goliaths. She knew that to win the Phenomic Games you must slay the Goliaths that live within, not without. She pulled it off once, which is inspirationally tempting and fertile ground for hubris and complacency, but she knew too well her weaknesses; she has no time to gloat or sit on her laurels. If those weaknesses are not taken out, next year will end unceremoniously. It is time to regenerate and assess her future state of conditioning. Her approach needs serious planning with intelligence, insight, and a touch of boldness. Thinking incrementally and linearly will not cut it, she needs to be creative and aggressively attack her flaws because if she doesn’t others will.
There may be only 35 or so men that could beat her on a pound-for-pound basis, but she cannot lose sight of the five females with a legitimate shot at her, or maybe six or seven. Or eight. The long tail is immeasurably long and there is only one way to find out exactly how far it stretches: at Phenomic Worlds. The giant killers will come out of the woodwork. Her personal overall records were womenkind’s new records, trailblazing new frontiers of female mental + physical capability = gürlpower. Being the reigning Phenomics Queen, she is an inspiration and a guiding light to so many women — effortlessly traversing all cultural and demographic categories — and with that comes heavy responsibility that can be crushing: there is chaotic conflict at the boundary between other’s expectations and what she needs to do to move the needle past the redline over the course of next season. To put together the kind of training required to repeat the feat she will have to irk the public’s ire and risk getting labeled as a recluse or some breed of unfriendly radical, or freak. There is no public place she could train at on earth where there wouldn’t be swarming gawkers and selfie seekers. A blog and some well-timed interviews and training videos could serve as damage control. But what she really needs is a PR person or agent doubling as a spin doctor. She is on a mission that mandates tunnel vision: her fans cannot possibly grok the role the mind serves in keeping laser focus for so long in combat mode. She will compete only once next year, at Phenomic Worlds in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. The entire season needs to be dedicated to reinventing herself, retooling the process of discovering her potential. Other competitions or public engagements involving travel to satisfy her fan’s needs would torpedo her vision quest.
Finland lacks the sports performance resources and facilities of the major countries but the government offered support for her to train wherever she wanted, coaching, and full medical access. She needs to address her frontend deficiencies and Finland is not strong in weightlifting, sprint cycling, or rowing, but, on the bright side, Finland’s culture, climate, geography and expertise were instrumental in her construction of a lethal backend and a battle-tested Sisu mind. She is a Finlander forever and is grateful for the national support going forward.
At Finland’s University of Jyväskylä she has an appointment with the world-renowned researcher in neuromuscular science and biomechanics, Professor Luikki Jussi. He is a pioneering researcher in the stretch-shortening cycle, which is instrumental in the clean and jerk and also rowing. Given his expertise in biomechanics, his qualifications and extensive experience exquisitely dovetailed with her shortcomings. If she can find a visionary, innovative coach to design a periodized training program to build her a brand-new frontend, she will be positioned to kick serious ass in a blindsiding sort of way. Given Finland’s historical strategies in warfare, her ambushing approach is tattooed to her DNA. If you want to change the game you must change your game and not evolutionarily but revolutionarily.
Airi needed time to decompress and lick her wounds from the battle scars accrued from last season. The first month would be active rest only: easy mountain bike rides, swimming, short rowing sessions, and technique, lots of technique in her weak areas. The biggest error she could make would be starting back with highly focused and intense training too early. After meeting with Professor Jussi, she learned a lot, in fact many of his keen insights she may not have learned from anyone else on earth. He reviewed volumes of footage of her technique from last season in the clean and jerk and pulling movements and unearthed copious flaws and inefficiencies, errors in movement patterns that cause loss of the transmission of energy from floor to bar. She had not heard about the magic of the stretch-shortening cycle, essentially a colossal force multiplier when a muscle is rapidly loaded causing a stretch reflex that recruits all the affected muscle fibers in an explosive reversal of movement like a sprinter’s foot during ground contact or jumping off a box with a cat-quick rebound. If you don’t engage the stretch reflex or there is a delay, this effect is totally lost as the stored elastic energy is dissipated as heat at your expense.
Professor Jussi observed that Airi was trying to muscle her way through the movements and not harnessing the pop of quick reversal of movement like at the bottom of the front squat during the Olympic clean or engaging the whip of the bar during the knee dip before the jerk overhead. She wasn’t going deep enough in the clean or in the jerk meaning she had to lift the weight much higher than necessary: a power clean and a push press are not an Olympic clean and jerk. These were big areas of upside to exploit in her weakest event. He said she could see a 15% increase by Worlds if she trains smart and training smart will require a lot of basic strength work in assistance movements like squats, high pulls, dips, weighted chins using gymnastic rings, and glute-ham bench work. Additionally, her shoulder and ankle mobility were lacking which forced her to biomechanically compromise the skeletal positions that would facilitate enhanced efficiency. She will need a mobility prescription to address these flaws but that won’t commence until her bike positions and rowing posture are analyzed and deconstructed into joint movements and their corresponding remedial exercises which may originate from yoga, Pilates or hybrid stretching protocols. All of this goes into the periodized training plan and the team is held accountable.
But there was more. Biomechanically her rowing technique was a horrific comedy. She was breaking her elbow too early in the pull which short-circuited the energy from her leg drive, a huge technical error. 70% of rowing power is leg push and 30% is back pull in a coordinated, transfer of power from lower to upper body beginning with the pop from the stretch-shortening cycle which defines the transition from recovery to drive phase in the stroke, also known as “the catch”. Professor Jussi then pointed out that her aerobic power was way out of balance with her leg drive: rowing is the only event in the Phenomic Games where strength needs to be balanced with endurance to produce an optimal performance. Airi lacked the explosive strength to match her other-worldly aerobic power and, once again, she was not tapping into the magic of the stretch-shortening cycle at “the catch”. She didn’t have the pop but that can be remedied by plyometric box jump conditioning. By focusing on strength and explosive power improvements and tweaking her technique, she could easily improve by 20 to 30 seconds over 2000 meters taking her from a respectable rower to she-beast level.
Professor Jussi knew a coach in Helsinki that could put together all the new nuts and bolts Airi needs to build a new frontend: Olaus Veksa. Yes, he lacked knowledge of backend preparation but she doesn’t need that; she needs to focus this whole season on the frontend. After the three of them met and game planned, they put together a strawman periodized annual plan and Professor Jussi stressed to Olaus through the video footage of what is needed but he didn’t need to have it spelled out, he has seen these errors countless times and knew how to right the ship. He didn’t need highly nuanced and elegant theory, he had the blueprint of corrective practice ready to rock and roll. These were the mistakes of beginners and she needs to learn how to train for Olympic lifting starting with a broomstick while watching herself in a mirror to get the basic feel of the motor patterns down before even using the 15 kg bar. Ditto on the rowing, classic errors of neophytes. The good news is that once she gets these movements to a solid, functional level, she will experience a quantum leap in performance. Professor Jussi kept using the term ΔP [Ed. delta P] which means a change in performance, the gain from a past best effort to a future target performance. Mind and body build the visible tree and the invisible roots and ΔP is the fruit of training. No, her movements will not be perfected even after three years of focused training but the progress in the first year of an intelligently-engineered training plan is the low-hanging fruit: a target of +15% ΔP is penciled in for the clean and jerk and 25 seconds for The Erg in one season from World’s last year to World’s next season with little change in body weight. Airi is excited; her competition, not so much. Jōtara, Gabriela and whoever else is out there will need to up their game.
Winters are harsh in much of Finland and being so close to the Arctic Circle they come fast and the hours of daylight vanish into endless nights during the dead of winter especially in the north. Airi knew of a few log cabins in the Koli National Park, a place of pilgrimage for several Finnish artists in the late 19th and early 20th century among them Jean Sibelius, the great classical composer. The park affronts Lake Pielinen, not that far from the Finnish-Russian border to the east. She got permission from the government to setup training camp in a very cool spot and they offered to fly in all the necessary equipment and provisions by seaplane including a satellite uplink for communication with Coach Veska and Professor Jussi. The 6½-foot Olympic bar barely fit and the Olympic bumper plates assured lousy fuel mileage. A rowing scull was located not too far away and that was towed in by boat. This is going to be a pilgrimage of the spirit of similar nature as her artistic predecessors but with a little different itinerary for the body than they had the pleasure of experiencing — an old-school training camp out in the middle of nature but with a lot of several high tech gadgets to keep a very tight feedback loop for learning technique, grasping form, and feeling movement — all with precise correctness. She wanted to be alone in the company of nature — crisp air, old-growth forests, and communing with her spiritual, wild peers, fellow beasts whose first exposure to man would be the world’s fittest woman.
The first week was a culture shock, living in a log cabin with a long dock that opened up to a vast space of wilderness — sky, forest, and lake, forever. She had read in the Tao Teh Ching when she was in grade school and recalled: “To be silent is natural, for silence alone endures in Nature.” She thought she knew what that meant when she read it as a kid; she thought she knew what nature, silence, and endurance meant as an adult, but now she realized she knew nothing — now she could feel nature, be aware of silence, and be on the threshold of true endurance, that timeless flow of what is natural and that “what” can be you. Training is not a struggle to overcome: nature cannot sustain high winds all day without fatigue — how can woman? None of that: training is about understanding the flow of energy and tapping into that energy. The stretch-shortening cycle is a natural way to conserve energy, it is built into running, throwing, and lifting; it is just part of our basic programming. It is free energy. The endurance events of the Phenomic Games are — at the highest level — about tapping into Big energy, an energy source that transcends man’s concepts of metabolism, ATP, physiological limits, science at large. Limits are focal points for losers and ivory tower pedantics. There is always more ΔP to be harvested from nature if you know where to look and how to connect. Being mentally silent long enough is a good place to start Airi discovered.
A neuromuscular therapist was flown in twice a week and Airi offered to pay for it but the Finnish government refused; they were in it to win it. No, Finland didn’t have a big youth development program and nation-wide training facilities but they did have something better: the reigning Phenomics Queen. They would support her all the way. Coach Veska and Professor Jussi are going to fly in for a few days in two weeks to discuss her training progress. Going into the fourth week she was on a different wavelength than ever before, even different than her time in the Andes in Peru. There were very clearly defined objectives, a structure to her training that clearly was connecting the dots to ΔP. A different kind of confidence was brewing, a confidence fueled by an inner knowing as opposed to ego — she had internalized a road map to her potential. Ego is about the mind’s external projection on beating others; inner knowing is about self mastery, achieving perfect execution. “Good enough is best” is the mantra of roadkill. Good enough isn’t good enough; accepting good enough is a cardinal sin. Good enough is the enemy of excellence, is the enemy of the sublime, is the soulmate of the comfort zone, is the enemy of the opportunity to seize your potential, and is fuel for the cowardice and laziness to not assimilate an adjacent possible source of ΔP. The Olympic hendiatris’ spirit captures the sacred essence of inner knowing elegantly: Citius, Altius, Fortius.
Mentally she knew what she could do now and what she needed to do but couldn’t do now. That is an advanced mental training exercise in visualization and the outcome is understanding the meaning of ΔP on a much deeper level. It is like burning in a new ROM permanent memory chip as opposed to a single, fleeting memory state in a RAM chip. In other words, you take it to your grave after all else is forgotten, even the name of your first born.
Without the distractions of normal life circumstances, her mental training deepened and broadened. Her senses were heightened. Both her mental foreground — her direct attention — and her mental background — the nonconscious deeper cognition just beyond the periphery of consciousness — were becoming strikingly more potent. Her willpower projected like a Mach front from a nuclear detonation and sensitive others could feel it a mile away. But no one was here except indigenous wild things. They could sense it because they were on the same wavelength.
Knowing precisely what your training is going to be composed of is a mission critical element of improving the execution and performance of movement. It doesn’t matter what the movement is just as long as you know precisely what it is. Fighter pilots have a preflight briefing on the specifics of a mission down to granular detail including most likely contingencies: plan B, plan C. Airi quickly realized that her training was of higher quality the more she grooved her mind for the task planned tomorrow. As for her weaknesses, she increased the mental “preflight” intensity: FOCUS, see it, feel it, burn it in. Visualize yourself doing it from the perspective of a spectator. Correct bad biomechanics in your mind from that angle. Visualize the body internally doing it. Learn more anatomy and physiology to visualize at higher levels of granularity and authenticity during mental deep dives. Is there a difference in how it feels doing it correctly and incorrectly? Study the video. Detect flaws, assassinate bad habits, become your coach. If you become aware of something sloppy, fix it and fix it yesterday. When a great coach can find no flaw in your execution, then you are well on your way to becoming a great coach yourself.
There is a “preflight” mental training session before the physical training session, and, really, there are “pre-preflight”, “pre-pre-preflight”, and “pre-pre-pre-preflight” mental rehearsals and simulations in your head for a day, sometimes two, before a particularly demanding session where you have to be on top of your game firing on all cylinders. You do it mentally until you feel you have already done it physically a thousand times; the actual doing it in crunch time is a formality, literally and figuratively an afterthought. After training you debrief your performance in detail; that means full granularity of every training layer: why you did it, how you did it, did you do it, technique analysis, how it felt, and what would you do differently. This entire behavior chain morphs into autopilot: you create a new habit by targeting and defining a single training element, dig a beachhead in the fertile soil of your mind for this training element, and then rinse and repeat until it graduates from mental foreground to background — then go down to the next task on the list of weak links to ambush. Use your mental foreground as a tool to feed the nonconscious background; it requires extreme mental discipline in synch with precise thinking to keep the pipeline loaded, it has an inexhaustible capacity that few people comprehend and exploit.
Most people leave this mental tool orphaned and it is the most important mental tool to scaffold yourself to your potential. Your mental background is orders of magnitude more powerful than your mental foreground: the power of the mind is there, not in thought.
Over time as your mind’s background is wired to a huge library of downloaded programs that automatically control your body’s movements with precision in space, you edge closer and closer to perfect execution, closer to poetry in motion, closer to your potential. Start building your mind and your body’s performance will flow like a runaway truck. Airi’s mental focus and willpower is palpable; she emanates a strong force, perhaps the same strong force particle physicists daydream about. This is phenomic mental training. It takes years to build out your mental background. It takes years to build out your body. It begins with mental foreground feeding mental background which builds your phenomic mind and body. So start planting mental seeds and nourish them. Sequoias will follow. Airi keeps the throttle in her mind pegged pedal to the metal.
Airi got word that Coach Veska and Professor Jussi were flying in late Wednesday afternoon with special guests from the London Herald: Dr. John Beasley and his cameraman. No need for a translator since Airi, Coach Veska, and Professor Jussi spoke English, but turns out Coach Veska’s English is a little shaky. They all would be here for two days. The editor-in-chief of the London Herald promised Dr. Beasley he would have access to anyone, anywhere, training for Whistler Phenomic Worlds and with this trip into the wilderness the Herald wouldn’t need to prove itself in any other way. This island was not on most maps but Airi was ground zero on John’s map. He could feel her Mach front from the seaplane.
It was still relatively warm outside, the sun wouldn’t set for a couple of hours. Airi is wearing a tank top and shorts when the group deplanes and meets her at the dock. Airi knew she had physically changed since Turin Worlds but these guys were a little shocked when seeing her in the flesh. Airi was four pounds heavier, around three pounds more muscle and one more fat. But she no longer could be strictly pigeon-holed as an endurance athlete: at 5–8 and 141, her shoulders, arms, and back had more size and development and the shape of her legs was different, there was a new, harder look with her quads now having slight but sleek teardrops at the knees. She has arms that look like the thickness and ruggedness of ropes used to moor large East Indiaman merchant ships from the late-18th century. An ancient Chinese proverb summed up Airi’s new look to a tee: “Habit begins as a spider’s thread and ends up as a steel cable.” The look is a reflection of her mental resolve.
The plan is to focus on more basic strength and technique for several more months before kicking in long endurance work. She might gain another pound or two before reversing from an anabolic energy flow into a more dominant catabolic energy flow which will transform her look into a sleek alpha deer with stilettos. Her proportion is now more balanced, her visual line is still there, she just has a little more roundness in the muscle bellies. She even has some traps; the pulls are forging their trademark! But no one could say she looked muscle bound, or manly; she is beautiful to everyone sans wimps. And Airi didn’t suffer wimps gladly.
Airi greets Professor Jussi first.
“Professor Jussi, bet you never imagined to be in a place like this to discuss stretch-shortening cycle theory.”
“Airi, please, call me Luikki. Au contraire, we are completely surrounded by masters of the stretch-shortening cycle here on water, land, and air. And you are becoming one of them. You have made incredible progress in such a short time. Let me introduce to you Dr. John Beasley from the London Herald and his cameraman Ralph Towers.”
“It is such a pleasure to meet you, Airi. I have been looking forward to this for months. Call me John.”
“John, I have heard a lot about you. You want to tell the world about a few crazy people’s drive to redefine what humans can do. Your job maybe harder than mine.”
“I don’t think so, Airi. By the looks of it you are certainly redefining what women should look like…wow. Since form follows function I bet you are capable of amazing performance.”
“Not yet. Long way to go. Right, coach?”
Coach Veska is clearly here to roll up his sleeves.
“Airi, you have made substantial progress for sure. And quickly. You nearly cleaned up all the big form problems. But we have work to do. You’ll see what I have planned.”
“You’re the mastermind, Coach. The other cabin is ready for you guys. You want to do an interview tonight, say at 7.”
Ralph pipes in: “You want to set it up in your cabin?”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“OK, I’ll get the audio and video dialed in. Great to meet you, Airi.”
“Likewise. Let’s do it!”
___________________________________________________________
May 2, 2015
Emailed transcript to the LONDON HERALD for the weekly column:
Portraits of The World’s Fittest Humans: Preparing for the Phenomic Games
Airi Jokinen, reigning female Phenomics World Champion
Dispatch from Koli National Park, Finland
— — — — — —
by Dr. John Beasley, PhD
Scientific Journalist
My mission is to track down the leading contenders for next season’s Phenomic Games World Championship in Whistler, Canada and bring their dreams, beliefs, and training approaches directly to you every Saturday.
Who are the world’s fittest humans?
What do they do to prepare?
Why do they do it?
___________________________________________________________
Airi Jokinen
Phenomic Human Ranking: 34 , 1 (female)
Age: 35
Height: 5–8 (1.73m)
Weight: 141 lbs. (64.1kg)
Birthplace: Raahe, Finland
Education: B.S. in Psychology from the University of Helsinki
Background: (early life) Alpine and Nordic skiing, middle-distance running
(adult life) mountain biking and hiking long distances at altitude
Started training for the Phenomic Games in 2012
Favorite event: The Climb
Most challenging event: Clean & Jerk
Favorite exercise: Nordic hamstring curls on glute-ham bench
Coach: Olaus Veksa
Diet: pescatarian (strict)
Favorite food: sushi
Status: single
Current residence: Helsinki, Finland
Nickname: AJ
Interview
Dr. John Beasley: Today I am reporting from a tiny island in the Koli National Park, Finland near the Finnish-Russian border. Airi Jokinen, the 35 year-old, reigning women’s Phenomic World champion, is deep in preparation for defending her title. I am here with her coach, Olaus Veksa, and also joining the discussion is Dr. Luikki Jussi, professor of Exercise Physiology at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. The sun has just set and we are inside the cabin where Airi is living while in training at this remote, beautiful location far removed from humanity.
We will never forget the epic battle between Airi and Jōtara Musashi, the 22-year old challenger from Japan, during Nemesis, the final event that ended up finally being settled in the clouds. For those of you at home, Nemesis was an ultra-endurance trek high up in the mountains near Monte Rosa Massif in the Pennine Alps close to the Italian-Swiss border. I don’t anticipate anything less fantastic next season. Airi, when you think back to the clash of the jaguaresses on Nemesis, what was your lasting impression?
Airi Jokinen: What do I think of that experience now? I know I have my work cut out for me! Looking at my performance compared to hers, I was lucky to win. A couple of breaks flip-flopping and I would have lost. She is just 22 and is going to improve a lot. That means I have to improve a full level just to stay in the game. That is why I am here and am grateful for Finland’s support, especially in providing the guidance of Professor Jussi and Coach Veksa.
Dr. John Beasley: You were a force in the endurance events and trailed in the strength events. We all saw that. So can we assume you are working toward a balanced attack?
Airi Jokinen: Assume nothing! [Dr. Jussi and Coach Veksa laugh] I may be 35 but that has its advantages…old age and treachery overcome youth and skill!
Dr. John Beasley: Airi, the three of us here know that first hand. [Everyone laughs]
Airi Jokinen: You are right, it is no secret. I was weak last year on the frontend so I am hard at work fixing that. Professor Jussi and Coach Veksa have the knowledge and experience to build out my frontend but all the training seems to be working pretty smartly on my other backend! [she points to her glutes, everyone laughs again]
Dr. John Beasley: Professor, I bet she is doing some squats, yes?
Dr. Luikki Jussi: John, squats, of course. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. We took apart Airi’s performance in Turin and laid out all her capabilities of basic movement patterns needed to succeed in the Games. The Phenomic 5 events leave no stone unturned so you have to determine the root weaknesses and game plan around those. Technique is most fundamental and then you can examine flexibility, strength, power, and endurance. We knew she had strong mental conditioning but we added drills there as well because of her lack of experience in mental preparation for strength sports. But technique was mission critical even before designing a training program to attack the strength events.
Dr. John Beasley: Coach Veksa, what is your take on the strategy?
Coach Olaus Veksa: Professor Jussi studied the video of Airi’s performances in Turin and also scoured over her training journals and training history in general. It was clear that technique was lacking in the clean and jerk and The Erg. Technique errors can be driven by lack of basic strength in fundamental movements and also lack of joint mobility can kill technique. We analyzed her mobility and looked at basic strength movements like front squat, power clean, and standing press. Also chins, dips, and glute-ham bench work. Plyometric box jumps and rows factored in. We put together a complete routine using Olympic gymnastics still rings that target the entire upper body. It all came together from there.
Dr. Luikki Jussi: John, it was clear that to do this right we needed to go back to fundamentals beginning with a broomstick for Olympic lifting and remedial work in rowing technique. We needed to start building the frontend events from the ground up by correct practice to burn in the movement so it becomes automatic.
Airi Jokinen: These guys aren’t joking. They drilled into my head that I need to have a beginner’s mind, I basically have to forget the idea that I am the world’s fittest woman and forget my training leading up to last year’s Worlds. That’s when I had the idea to go to a wilderness location and totally re-wire my mind and body. I just don’t need to be surrounded by people telling me how great I am. Because I’m not.
Dr. John Beasley: So you don’t look in the mirror and see the world’s baddest woman?
Airi Jokinen: John, I didn’t even bring a mirror out here! [everyone laughs hard]
Dr. Luikki Jussi: Airi had a great idea about how to re-boot herself with new training, new mental approach, new location. People need to think about what training means from the inside-out, not just from the outside. Sure, we see muscle and movement but what really drives performance is understanding the nervous system, both central, here [points to his head] and peripherally throughout the body. The nervous system controls the body’s movements through coordination of muscular contraction and relaxation which causes the bones of our skeleton to move and arrest movement. If you fail to get the nervous system wired like an Formula 1 car, you will never reach your potential and certainly have no shot at the Phenomic Games.
Dr. John Beasley: Explain that a little more for our audience, Professor.
Dr. Luikki Jussi: Certainly, my pleasure. Plasticity has unfortunately become a sort of catch-all buzzword but what we have learned from the neurosciences is that the nervous system is not just highly adaptable — that is, plastic — in early development but throughout one’s lifespan. Sure, a baby’s nervous system is rapidly changing but given the proper stimulus, a neurological network at any age changes to reflect improved behavior, meaning enhanced performance via increased efficiency given a different training stimulus which your body interprets as an adaptation to a changed environment. It doesn’t know what training or Phenomic Games are, it only adapts to perceived changes to its environment. To get to the essence of this you need to go past the conventional thinking of exercise physiology and get into evolutionary biology or, more precisely, evolutionary neurobiology and the latest theories of motor learning and motor control. So where does the efficiency come from? It comes from changes at the neuron [Ed. single nerve cell], neural circuit level, and beyond. In physical activities there are changes to the organization — or architecture — of how the nervous system commands movement patterns. This is where technique, which we academics call biomechanics, meshes with neurological control systems and the learning of movement patterns.
Dr. John Beasley: So, this is really multidisciplinary.
Dr. Luikki Jussi: Absolutely. Biomechanics, which, for real-world applications, is really mechanical engineering of biological systems, converges with cognitive science, neurophysiology and psychology. These are the power tools to learn a new motor skill: first learn it mentally and then use the mind to use the body as a tool to learn it physically. In other words, this defines the toolbox required to optimally train the body’s movement patterns without wasting time or energy. Most athletes don’t know this. Now if mobility is lacking then we have to look at modifying other structures like connective tissue: fascia, tendons, ligaments. This brings into play physical therapy, yoga, or even deep structural work like Rolfing. Through stretching modalities we modify the skeletal positions an athlete can assume until they can execute proper biomechanics to perform at the elite level. Airi had issues in the clean and jerk so she was unable to have proper technique which then means the nervous system learns to control the engaged muscles improperly or inefficiently. You waste energy and never reach your potential no matter what you do. It is impossible to train correctly under those conditions and most people fall into this category; it is the rule, not the exception. If I were to look at people training everywhere in the world you would see people working around structural flaws that are correctable but never get corrected. You just maladapt to the circumstances.
Dr. John Beasley: So what course of action did you recommend for Airi?
Dr. Luikki Jussi: We went to the root cause of her weakness which started with mobility. We got that fixed. Then we went to square one with technique. Coach Veksa has enormous experience working with young Olympic lifters to get them to have proper biomechanics for the Olympic lifts. It takes years to get proper technique consolidated for these complex, whole body strength and power movements. But we knew this would open up huge, latent upside in the first year. The integration of the Olympic rings work really jump-started the dynamic stability of her torso and the kinesthetic awareness of her movement in space. Airi had a lot of untapped potential that we exploited with a well designed periodized training plan. Proper training is magical; it takes the cork out of the bottle and lets Airi the genie out. The limits of human potential are unknown, this is just our first year and first approximation on a methodology.
Dr. John Beasley: Professor, I find that fascinating. Would you please explain for our audience what you mean by “consolidation”?
Dr. Luikki Jussi: Sure. Nervous systems when they are just introduced to a new movement pattern do them poorly: poor force production, poor endurance, poor precision of execution, bad fuel economy. In short, shaky and inconsistent. Think of using a putter for the first time in golf. When the conscious mind is integrally involved in the feedback loop of learning the movement, you proactively think about what you are doing. As you repeat the movement, that is, you practice, there occurs over time a migration of motor control toward lower brain centers and the peripheral nervous system. Through practice the mental concept, that is, the thought of learning a movement pattern, transforms via neural plasticity. It affects the premotor cortex, cerebellum, and the control of the peripheral nervous system running through the spinal cord and then to the “final mile” motor units, where a single motor neuron fires up to 1,000 muscle fibers simultaneously. It is your muscles that are the motors that move the skeleton by shortening and elongating via contracting and relaxing. Through the act of practice via countless repetition of the movement, you develop a motocept, a brand new neurological program that triggers the movement pattern automatically, independent of thought. The entire process in terms of evolution allows the conscious mind to be attentive to decision making on the level of tactics and strategy or simply amplified awareness with no thought while the refined, efficient motor pattern is managed by lower brain centers on autopilot in the background. The motocept loop is super reliable and much faster than involving executive command from the CNS [Ed. central nervous system].
Dr. John Beasley: Airi, how does it feel to approach training like this?
Airi Jokinen: It is very different. I like to train by feel, be more spontaneous. But that has its limits I found out. When Professor Jussi pointed out my faults I knew I had to change. It is pointless to continue to work so hard if you know you will just spin your wheels. I just lacked the knowledge to make these changes and organize them into a cohesive plan. I now understand the process of using my mental foreground to create perfectly executed movement patterns. It is not the thought per se that produces proper form, it is the use of thought in the mental foreground to train the mental background through countless repetition so that a new motocept is created that automatically sequences commands to the muscles in perfect coordination and with energy efficiency. The way I understand it is that there are two levels to learning: there is learning like studying for a test where you learn concepts and there is the body learning to do something so it can just do it automatically which is the motocept. Just like you can learn a bunch of nonsense in school, your body can learn to do things incorrectly. Garbage in, garbage out can occur not just mentally but also physically. Physically I had a lot of trash I had to take out!
Training really is about training the parts of the nervous system that you have no awareness of; you must understand and execute mental technique in order to display physical technique. Practice does not necessarily make perfect, it is only perfect practice that does and it takes years. And perfect practice means you know proper technique and your body can do perfect technique. Those are two very different problems! So you need knowledge and then you need to apply that knowledge to your training. You can’t just show up and will a great physical performance at show time, no, you use your will in a structured, disciplined way to train your brain which then trains the muscles. Teaching movement patterns is a delayed chain reaction where most of it lies below conscious awareness. You have to know the complete process and set your training up accordingly. It is the middle step of physical learning — the formation and consolidation of motocepts — that takes years of precise training in order to achieve sublime performance. I wish I knew this earlier!
Dr. John Beasley: Airi, you just made a very important point. All the major sports, professional and Olympic, require enormous levels of expertise and resources to perform at the upper registers of human performance. The Phenomic Games makes it a whole order of magnitude more difficult and technically overwhelming because of the supreme difficulty of having to demonstrate extreme strength and ultra-endurance along with every metabolic switching point in the power continuum. This has never been done before, even the best minds are uncertain in how to achieve the ultimate performance. You are a human guinea pig. How does it feel?
[everybody laughs]
Airi Jokinen: Geez, I knew it! Seriously, what I have come to terms with is that training phenomically is a process of self discovery. Beginners may not experience the same degree of challenge as the contenders for the title but there reaches a point where progress slows. You have to be really objective about what you are doing because it is so easy to fall into a trap where you train incredibly hard but there is nothing to show for your efforts other than a lot of sweat, soreness, and dirty laundry. The problem comes down to the organization of training and dealing with technique. Also, nutrition errors are fatal.
Dr. Luikki Jussi: Airi, that hits the nail on the head precisely. I think we have discussed the pitfalls and remedies of defective biomechanics and technique satisfactorily. The spinning-your-wheels part is the decreasing marginal return in adaptive yield due to the biological informational conflict between signalling for gains in strength and anaerobic power versus gains in oxygen transport and endurance capacity. Fuel regulation is quite different across the power spectrum and is contradictory and even negating. The margin of error in designing loads, durations, and frequencies vanishes to zero. This is where nutrition, rest, biological testing devices of all types including wearables, stress management, and recovery modalities weigh in. If you get the training right but the other factors wrong you just waste your time. I think Airi said “sweat and dirty laundry” are your results, not ΔP, the Phenomic Games’ holy grail.
Dr. John Beasley: Airi, psychologically what is it like to train at this level for weeks and months on end? What keeps the fire going?
Airi Jokinen: I have always loved to train ever since I was a little girl learning to ski. At first it was just doing a sport and watching myself improve. There was no science or method, just doing it. The more I did the better I got. Plus I was competitive, I am not a happy loser! But everything changed the last couple years because of the demands of the Phenomic Games. You can’t just do what you want to do or are good at. The Phenomic Games forces you to think deeply about what you do and why you do it simply because effort does not equate to results. I wasn’t very sophisticated last year and just depended on my raw talent. I knew I could do extremely well on the backend and so I worked on the frontend. Since I was relative beginner to weightlifting and rowing, I made great progress even without expertise.
But talent and effort will not take you to the podium anymore. The competition is too great, the level of expertise is vast. Humans dwell on limits whereas wild animals are ignorant of limits. Our potential can only be realized if we unlearn limits, only then can we perform in beast mode. We pretend to be athletes and not animals, but if we just drop the “athlete” mask and be the underlying animal, performance would be at a much higher level. To achieve mastery you must do exactly that.
Another observation is that it is psychologically very difficult to switch between an endurance workout one day and then a strength workout the next. Mentally they are very different. I am just now getting a handle on the role the mind plays in the preparation for and the execution of strength training.
Dr. John Beasley: Why do you do it?
Airi Jokinen: For me it is overcoming the obstacles between me and my potential me. I feel that I can persevere any challenge. I have the patience to learn what to do so that I can teach my body how to do it. The coach of your body is your mind. There is no limit to our ability to adapt. The biggest obstacle is maintaining the mental discipline to keep doing the little things correctly. Each day is composed of thousands of little actions. The more of those little actions you become aware of then the more you can correct errors in their execution until your actions are flawless without thinking about it. It is not about just doing it, it is about doing it correctly. The road to winning Phenomic Worlds is paved with wax on, wax off. The magic happens when you have the patience to wait for the payoff of doing the wax on, wax off long enough. Nobody has any comprehension of the power of a properly trained human. I am not properly trained yet. So everyday I get up knowing I am one day closer to being properly trained because each day I learn someway to improve and each day I train with the purpose of doing movement perfectly, effortlessly. I envision a day when I will be able to move without expending energy.
Dr. John Beasley: Professor, Airi has a Phenomic Human Ranking of 34 which means there are currently 33 humans — all males — that are more fit, pound-for-pound, across the board. Do you think it is possible for Airi or any woman to be the fittest human in the world, maybe even the fittest terrestrial mammal in history?
Dr. Luikki Jussi: John, that is a surprisingly deeper question than it appears. The knee-jerk answer is men are going to be superior, hands down. If we look at thoroughbred racehorses, the girls sometimes beat the boys but the boys have dominated historically. Comparing Olympic weightlifting world record holders in the lighter weight classes, men are 21% stronger at the same body weights. In marathons, men always beat women handily but the courses do not have substantial vertical challenge and it is gravity that must be a factor without having to fudge with any kind of clumsy algorithmic or physical handicapping. At longer distances a gap is still there but, once again, gravity’s impact on power-to-weight ratio is not represented the way it must to assess a comparison on a true pound-for-pound basis. Long climbs are the only way to achieve this like in the Alps and Pyrenees stages in the Tour de France. Race Across America is much too flat; in cycling on flat ground like in a road time trial or on the track, more muscle mass beats less muscle mass every time due to the relationship of frontal area drag forces relative to energy production of the prime movers [Ed. hip and knee extension and flexion].
Now, is it possible that phenomic training, which requires balanced performance contributions from maximal strength to ultra-endurance, will introduce some emergent advantage in the net contribution from whole body, highly-conditioned muscle mass? Well, given all the moving parts like neurological adaptation, hormonal responses, oxygen transport efficiency, and fine-tuning of muscle fiber cross-sectional area to manage contradictory demands of high force production and fatigue resistance, there is room for a few surprises to pop out of unexplored territory in the human phenome. Nobody knows the long term consequences of years of intelligent phenomic training on net performance for men or women let alone men versus women. At the present time it is speculation because nobody has witnessed the ultimately conditioned man or women yet. Not by a long shot.
Today, Airi is the fittest woman and Lake Jacoby is the fittest man. If I had to guess, my bet is that men will continue to occupy at least the top 30 spots with maybe a woman freak in the mix. Almost like a mare beating the stallions once in awhile but just not all the boys when it comes to humans. It is an intriguing question, though. Women have a lot to gain no matter what. The top women are superior to all but a few men. Outside of the men that are gifted and train seriously for the Phenomic Games, Airi is superior; she is more fit than billions of men by the true definition of fitness. Remember, Airi and Jōtara both beat Ivan last year and he is international-caliber athlete in Olympic lifting that qualified for Turin Worlds. Airi is truly an animal. One of the fittest land mammals alive given the 360-degree performance demands of the Games.
Dr. John Beasley: And Janu, the turbo Sherpa, barely beat Airi. So Airi, can you be top dog?
Airi Jokinen: I have to be realistic with a big factor being that I am 35 years old. I don’t let that get in my way at all but to have a real shot at winning it all I would need to be 16 or some age with many years of upside. I know I will improve a lot over the next two years but so will the entire field. Also, just imagine the new talent entering the sport. Say there are 10 more Jōtaras out there in their teens and early 20s. A woman may never win but the top women will command respect that so far has eluded women since ancient Greece or, really, since time immemorial. When women compete only against women or with different challenges than men, women will never command true respect for their capabilities. Just setting up competitions where men and women do not compete directly against each other sends the prejudiced signal loud and clear that women are less than, and this assumed inferiority affects lifelong behavior and pecking order not just in physical arenas but also in the classroom and boardroom and on payday.
What makes the Phenomic Games so amazing is that women compete on the same turf — head-to-head and pound-for-pound. That means no glass ceiling. No one can argue about the Phenomic Human Rank. It is what it is, a precise standard based on a multi-disciplinary approach to assessing crucial-value, intrinsic-fitness capabilities of Homo sapiens. It is the opportunity to compete heads-up that inspires me and because of that women and men are inspired by my performance and those of my challengers. It lifts everybody. I think it is a big reason that everyday, common people are attracted to the Phenomic Games; it isn’t just another sport, it speaks to what we really are and what we can become, what is possible as a human and not merely as a woman. It transcends sport by opening a window to our essence and frees us. It is the same feeling of clarity you get when you see great art — it creates an opening, an awareness of a spiritual wellspring that was previously shrouded by inner noise and outer minutiae.
John, when I compete out there in front of the world there is this overpowering feeling that I truly am an equal and that opens something up deep down inside and keeps me target-locked on experiencing my potential and reaching for perfection. It articulates and fuels meaning for my training and training is my life. Words cannot do justice to the realization of the ultimate freedom of dedicating one’s life to the pursuit of extending the boundaries of human limits into unknown realms while also receiving full recognition for the accomplishment. In my career, my value as a woman is not limited by my looks, it is unlimited by my actions. That should be the norm for every woman — regardless of walk of life — and should be instilled in every child at the dawn of learning language and social mores. My actions, and those of my peers, will be the catalyst to cause the universal extinction of the glass ceiling. Part of my Finnish Sisu heritage is about standing up and facing down all forms of social injustice. With me, gender inequality has a big, red fluorescent dot on its back. It needs to be exposed for the cancer that it is on the realization of women’s dreams and potential.
Dr. John Beasley: You truly are an amazing champion. I understand now your broad appeal that goes beyond the sports audience. You lead by example on your quest to perfectly-executed potential and that has captured people’s attention in one of those rare moments of astonishment; it somehow makes a reality of Plato’s definition of abstract Beauty which is beyond the grasp of the real world, but here you are. Your performance has the superpower to reveal and then sever our deep, ugly ties to our societal acceptance of mediocrity, tantamount to ancient Greece’s definition of anti-Beauty. You are the face of dedication and excellence, it is the Airi brand, iconic gürlpower. You just may be the one to slay the glass ceiling. When you win, everyone wins.
Airi Jokinen: Thanks for saying that. I appreciate it immensely.
Dr. John Beasley: There is no way I am leaving this island until I know how Finnish Sisu has influenced your life, Airi.
Airi Jokinen: How could you not? [smiling] Alright. Sisu principles are ingrained so deeply in me they are part of my operating system…I will do my best to translate Sisu into English concepts. When I was like 8 years old my grandfather took me out cross-country skiing. It was in the dead of winter, the wind was howling, and it was bone-chilling cold unless you were moving. He took me out pretty far, farther than I had ever been before. I was getting tired way before we turned around. My feet were sore, I just wanted to be home by the fire. I was afraid to say anything because Finns don’t get tired, we aren’t allowed to be tired and certainly can never show it. [she smiles] Well, I had to say something because I was really hurting. He looked at me and just his look said: “Airi, dig deeper because if you dig deep enough you will discover incredible inner strength that transcends the woes of bodily fragility.” I knew two things at that point for certain: I was really, really fatigued and he wasn’t going to slow down. I learned Sisu the only way it can be learned and that is having to face down adversity to the point you transcend struggling. Sisu cannot be understood by reading about it, it can only be experienced by sucking it up while feeling scared to death until you go deep enough inside that you come out the other side but now with the force of the entire universe at your back. Just sucking it up is not enough to know Sisu, to truly know Sisu you must face down death.
Sisu brings forth a stubborn form of courage that gives you the willpower to outlast any adversary including the elements. You become mind and connect to the land, to the universe…it is not about being tough and struggling, it is about transcending the illusion of the sensed world and becoming part of nature, a connection to what exists beyond the senses, beyond perceived limits. Sisu is truly mind over matter. You go deep inside, tap into nature and then project your will or die in the process. It is life or death; you have a choice. One choice is the easy way out and the other is the hard way out. Finns that take the hard way out are then qualified to tell others what Sisu is. Sisu is passed on to the next generation from the elders by experience such as the one I had. It is the only way to understand it, you must face seemingly overwhelming obstacles and then overcome them. You make an eternal connection that then is with you until your final breath.
Dr. John Beasley: Wow, we all thank you for that story. So Airi, how do you use Sisu for training now?
Airi Jokinen: I have learned that infinite determination is not enough to win Phenomics Games. It can take you far but not all the way. What I know now is hard effort and not giving up is necessary but not sufficient. Now I know that all effort must be focused, intelligent effort in the pursuit of mastery; to build a body capable of victory you have to first build a mind that can build the body. Once you attain this level, everything begins and ends with the mind. Only the body struggles, not the mind. The body is just a hitchhiker, a mere shadow of the mind once you fathom and then harness the depth and scale of the mind. It is impossible to build a phenomic body without a phenomic mind.
Dr. John Beasley: Sounds like you are well on your way to defending your title.
Airi Jokinen: What title? John, I never won any title. I finished 34th. I have a long way to go. I am going to break the stallions. Lake is the fittest man but my mission is to be the fittest human.
Dr. John Beasley: Touché! Love it! See you at Whistler!
<end transcript>
The World’s Fittest Humans ©2015 James Autio. All rights reserved.
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Ok, ready to take a tour of the inside of the endurance mind? Next stop, Ivan from Russia!
Now John is on his way to Mother Russia to pay a visit with Ivan, and yes, the same Ivan that collapsed on Nemesis last year. Why would a world-class strength athlete want to suffer so much punishment again? Turns out President Putin loves what Ivan is about and backs him with one of the most sophisticated teams in the world for building out the backend. Putin believes and Ivan believes and you will believe after you scope out Team Ivan and his Master Plan. So off you go to an endurance training camp just a short helicopter ride from Mt. Elbrus, the highest point in Europe. This is more than a redemption story, this is a one-way ticket on a inner-space voyage into the anatomy of the endurance mind. What does it mean to endure, Russian-style? Hint: not in any endurance training manuals you will ever see — that, my friend, is kid’s stuff. In this arena, the mental gloves come off.
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PHENOMIC GAMES and PHENOMIC 5 are trademarks of James Autio.
James Autio | doctorgo@gmail.com
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