In the collective imagination, elite performance stems from perfect technique, peak conditioning (often mistakenly equated with strict symmetry), and repetition until mastery. But in reality, nothing ever unfolds exactly as planned. In that space between intention and execution lies an essential, often invisible skill: adaptability.
Far from being a secondary quality, adaptability is the foundation of long-term performance. It allows athletes to resist, adjust, and reinvent themselves in real time. It’s a matter of constant alignment, between available resources, the athlete’s intention, and the resulting action.
The body: a predictive but flexible system
Motor neuroscience has shown us that movement is neither random nor rigid. The brain plans action in advance by simulating its outcomes ("internal models") and adjusts on the fly based on sensory feedback. This framework, known as predictive optimal control (Todorov & Jordan, 2002), enables the body to select the most energy-efficient solution for a given task.
As Cambridge neurobiologist Daniel Wolpert puts it:
"The brain's primary purpose is not to think, but to produce movement."
But sometimes, this energy-saving logic breaks down. During the 2024 Tour de France, Tadej Pogacar averaged over 430 watts for 22 minutes on a brutal final climb. Physiologically, this is nearly unsustainable. The deciding factor? Not just efficiency but intent.
Neuroscience studies suggest that the brain can unconsciously initiate the preparation for a movement up to 7 seconds before we consciously decide to act (Soon et al., 2008). While this time window depends on the type of task, it underscores the deeply layered nature of motor decisions, where unconscious processes often set the stage before awareness catches up.
When purpose becomes stronger than pain, and context reshapes what’s possible, the body no longer just optimizes: it transcends. This can lead to greatness... or injury.
Motor synergies: Movement as a symphony
The body doesn’t operate in isolation. Every action results from a coordinated interaction between muscles, fascia, tendons, and neural systems, all working toward a specific goal.
These coordinated clusters, called motor synergies, allow complex movements without the need to consciously control each muscle. They’re shaped by an athlete’s motor profile, morphology, tone, and history.
As researcher Mark Latash states:
"Human movement is inherently redundant, and it’s precisely this redundancy that ensures stability in an unstable world."
Open-access research supports this view. For example, Latash, Scholz & Schöner (2007) and Frontiers in Bioengineering (2017) describe how synergies emerge from neural and biomechanical structures to produce functional redundancy and adaptability.
However, synergies can shift in response to fatigue, pain, or micro-compensations. These adjustments allow motion to persist, even when internal or external conditions change.
Understanding motor synergies means recognizing that the visible gesture is never just a form to imitate: it’s a dynamic, context-driven organization.
Variability: Functional adaptation or misguided chaos?
Since Nikolai Bernstein’s pioneering work, we’ve known that no two movements are ever identical. Natural variability is a strength—it helps the body fine-tune responses and avoid overuse. Differential learning (Schöllhorn) leverages this principle by intentionally introducing perturbations to foster adaptability.
But the concept has sometimes been distorted. Some tools (unstable surfaces, sliding mats, oscillating loads) claim to improve coordination or resilience. Yet they often disrupt the athlete’s motor intention more than they help.
When a hitter steps on an unstable mat, he’s no longer focused on hitting: he’s focused on not falling. This hijacks motor synergies, degrades ground interaction, and blurs the athlete’s true movement pattern.
Multiple open-access studies support these concerns:
- Behm & Anderson (2006) and Anderson & Behm (2004) show that force output drops and stabilizer muscles dominate during unstable training.
- A 2012 systematic review (PMCID: PMC3325639) and a 2016 PLoS ONE study confirm that such tools rarely transfer to sport-specific power or coordination.
That said, instability training may benefit certain goals (like sensory-motor rehab or injury prevention). But for explosive, precise, sport-specific performance, it may interfere more than it helps. Context and athlete reality matter!
As motor learning expert Karl Newell wisely notes:
"Motor learning is not about random variation, but about meaningful variation."
What shapes movement: Perception, prediction, or both?
Contemporary frameworks like ecological dynamics suggest that movement emerges from the interaction between environment, task, and individual (Gibson; Davids; Newell). According to this model, the body doesn’t "plan" movement: it perceives opportunities ("affordances") and reacts in context.
This perspective emphasizes exploration, perception-action coupling, and real-time adaptability. It’s a powerful tool to enrich practice design: especially in sports requiring fast decision-making or perceptual acuity.
However, modern neuroscience and computational modeling (e.g., Wolpert & Ghahramani, 2000, open access) demonstrate that internal models play a major role in skilled movement. The brain uses prior experience to simulate, anticipate, and adjust motor commands.
Thus, movement is not just emergent: it’s shaped by prediction and intention, grounded in both memory and context.
For coaches, the goal is to create environments that support this dual dynamic: encouraging perceptual responsiveness while honoring the athlete’s internal organization and motricity.
Motor Profiles, Ground Time, and Adaptive Strategies
Each athlete has a preferred motor profile, a natural way of organizing posture, coordination, and ground interaction. Research by Volodalen has shown that these profiles are often reflected in ''ground contact time and center-of-mass trajectorie'' (Gindre et al., 2016).
But the body doesn’t stay locked in one mode. Fatigue, stress, or pain may temporarily shift strategy, altering contact time or changing coordination. The athlete stays within the bounds of their profile but uses the "safer side" to protect themselves.
This can be seen in sprinting, throwing, or hitting. The body slides from ideal mechanics to fallback strategies, less efficient, but more stable (and it can allow the athlete to perform at ''minimum'' if it correlates with intention).
In elite sports, we sometimes see this adaptation across a career. NFL quarterback Tom Brady, for instance, adjusted his throwing mechanics in later years to preserve his shoulder, trading velocity for efficiency. This is intelligent adaptability: not a reinvention, but an evolution within profile.
The Reservoir of Tolerance: How Long Can the Body Endure the Inadequate?
One often overlooked concept is the reservoir of acceptance: the body’s capacity to tolerate suboptimal movement.
An athlete may throw, sprint, or lift with poor mechanics (or maybe not within his motricity) for weeks, months, even years. But every rep chips away at that reservoir. When it’s empty, the system fails: pain, injury, or sudden performance collapse.
This is why monitoring muscle fatigue, neuromuscular asymmetries, cognitive load, or recovery markers becomes essential, not only to avoid overtraining, but to detect when the body's compensatory strategies are nearing their limits.
For example, a pitcher may gradually change arm slot to avoid discomfort, or a runner may shift weight subtly to spare a fatigued hip. These are brilliant short-term adaptations, but long-term, they may wear down another joint or structure.
The body will adapt and compensate… until it no longer can.
Practical Application: Observe Before You Correct
Effective intervention starts with understanding. A proper athlete evaluation requires:
1. Doing an anamnesis to know who they are
2. Knowing their motor profile, morpho-profile...
2. Assessing current energy level and recovery state
3. Clarifying the athlete’s current goal and intention
4. Determining whether the observed action aligns with the above
That alignment between resources, intention, and action, is what supports fluid performance and injury resilience.
Before correcting a gesture, ask:
- What is the body trying to protect?
- Is this compensation a red flag, or a brilliant adaptation?
Sometimes, the smartest coaching move is to watch for one more day.
Final Thought
Adaptability isn’t just a quality: it’s the body’s master system.
It allows the athlete to survive, evolve, and sometimes transcend their limits. It’s a living intelligence, where nothing is fixed but nothing is random: Every gesture is a compromise: between what the body can do, what the context demands, and what the mind dares.
The best coaches understand this. They don’t overcorrect. They guide, align, and trust the body’s wisdom.
That’s the future of performance coaching.