What do sports and UX have in common?

At the first sight might look like they do not share a lot, but professional sports is pretty much about solving problems, testing, researching and development according to the athlete.

I'm personally fascinated by endurance sports, mainly trail running.

What keeps a person running on mountains, full of hills, during dozens of hours and hundreds of kilometers?

For a person to be able to endure such high demand activity must be psychological, physical and physiologically extremely well prepared. Some might even say that "the burning fire inside of your soul" is also a vital part of the process.

It's a experience full of every emotion, from extreme excitement to extreme sufffering. There's even a term called "runner's high", which happens when the runner enters the flow state while running or after the running, when releasing endomorphins. Running becomes very pleasent, which is something most people won't associate with running.

Endurance running is problem solving while performing at the highest level.

Keep in mind that every endurance athlete will have in simulataneous, several systems interacting with each other that contribute to his performance.

Here are some of the most important systems that every athelete needs to control while performing:
- Heart rate
- Aerobic and anaerobic capacity
- Cadence
- Muscular endurance
- Muscular power
- Breathing
- Pace
- Internal temperature
- Food comsuption / digestion
- Hydration

Some systems, such as terrain condition, weather and so on, are also vital, but the runner can only adapt to it, not control it.

How do they do it?

Every person that run for a couple of minutes or even some hours will ask themselves 'how the f#ck' do they do that? How is it possible to run 100km? Even better, 500 miles races? With tons and tons of hills? This is where Design methodologies plays a role.

Every system mention above is researched and tested, to ensure the maximum efficiency and development for the athlete.

For example, scientist know that we can have a massive amount of energy deposit as fat, but a small amount of energy as carbohydrates. The problem is that physiological, when running at heart rate zones such as Zone 3+, you'll mainly burn carbohydrates. For a lot of runners and non runners, running a bit more faster, will immediately raise your heart rate to zone 3 or more. Which means that your fuel will be mainly carbohydrates.

What did the science found out?

They found out that if you train in lower heart rate zones, such as zone 1 or zone 2. Your body will adapt those zones, making it more efficient. In other words, you'll be able to run at zone 2 with a similar pace you did at zone 3, but with a big difference.

In these zones, your body will mainly burn fat, plus some carbohydrates. Your energy consumption has now gained a new type of fuel and luckily, this new deposit is much bigger than the other one. A fit athelete can have fat deposits of around 100.000kcal, while in terms of carbohydrates is around 2000kcal.

This is just a point that the athelete must develop, but to be even better, he must develop each system. Also, each system affects other systems. Let's say that your heart rate and pace is right, but you're not getting enough food or hidration. Soon enough, those systems will affect your heart rate capacity and your pace will slow much more, until you go to the 'bottom' and you won't be able to run anymore.

It's a multi-system that needs to be mastered, but mastering only one system, will not grant you any results. This is pretty much what modern design is doing, with approaches such as Design X.

The problems are more much complex, interconnected and require solutions that account for several systems, having humanity in mind.

In case of endurance sports, they've found out some pretty clever solutions, that keeps the whole multi-system running without crashing!

Runners do test

Even runners know they should test everything before a race. They have the UX mindset without even knowing UX exists. They'll test every aspect, such as which type of food works the best, drinks, running shoes, cloth... Pretty much of what you can think of, they'll test it! Doing a ultra race is already hard enough, so they do prepare themselves to control everything they can.

The downside of solving only one system's problem

Modern technology and mindset enabled us to see that problems are much more complex and interconnected than we tend to think. Specialization narrows our focus and knowledge. It might turn us into experts of a specific field, but it'll miss the underlying connection between fields. You cannot solve complex interconnected problems by being an expert in one single field. Actually, it's much better to understand several systems, gathering information by implementing / testing solutions and then conceive what seems to be as the best solution; than to deeply tackle only one system expecting it'll solve the other ones.

Like ultra endurance runners, being an expert at one system/field, is not enough. You'll need to have knowledge across different systems, in order to endure those hard runnings.

Does not matter if you have the right cadence or pace, but lack all the rest. It's a whole system, composed by several other systems. They do work together!

Take a look at Navy Seals Special Forces. They're not exactly experts at any specific field, but they do have a great knowledge and experience over several different fields. If you put them under a different unknown environment, they're trained to act very precise and fast according to the envrionment. They have a vast capacity to solve a lot of different problems, depending on the situation. They adapt and survive. They're very good at observing and collecting information.

If you put an expert of a field, in the same situation, it'll have a much more hard time dealing with it. His knowledge, although profund, it's limited to his field of expertise. He might miss simple connections that could be critical under certain situations.

Cross-discipline knowledge is better for complex interconnected problem solving, than specialized knowledge.