The performance map

Choose your sport and see what matters in your event; then choose a starting point (a type of training, a supplement, a molecule…) and follow how it climbs, floor by floor, up to performance, with the grade of evidence for each step and the body tissue where it acts.

Choose your sportYour sport

Start with your sport: the map is weighted by what matters in your event.

Sport Event

How to view it

Pick your sport and your event: the building is weighted for it (what matters most, big and bright) and the paths that work against you there turn orange.

Quick examples:

How it works inside: the floor-by-floor path: which molecule changes, which mechanism it switches on, which body trait improves and which capacity it supports.

What effect has been measured: a claim going straight from the intervention (or the molecule) to the capacity: the effect has been measured in studies, even if the path inside is unknown. It is drawn as a direct jump, violet and dashed.

Pick a starting point above or try an example.

Floor 3 · Capacitiescapacities and metrics

Floor 2 · Physiological traitstissues, organs and systems

Floor 1 · Mechanismsreceptors, pathways, enzymes

Floor 0 · Moleculeshormones, metabolites, substrates

Lobby · Stimulitraining and environment

goes up
same floor
feedback (goes down)
relation declared in the entry
measured direct jump (no mechanism)
the chain breaks
strong / moderate / weak transmission
against you in the chosen event
size and brightness: how much it matters in your event

Arrow thickness is the transmission: strong, thick; moderate, medium; weak, thin; not classified, thin and dotted. The grade is on the label.

Lobby (below floor 0): the stimuli, training and environment (altitude, heat, cold, fasting), where training comes in. Supplements, drugs and other contexts come in from the side (in 3D, a cloud at the height of floor 0).

The path, step by step

How the paths are computed

Each arrow is a claim of the map with its grade (A counts 3, B 2, C 1 and D 0.5) or, thinner and dotted, a relation declared in the entries (receptors of a molecule, capacities supported by a trait or a system, molecules provided by an intervention; it counts 0.75). A path is as strong as its weakest step; with equal strength, paths with fewer declared relations, paths that avoid highly connected nodes (such as glucose or cortisol) and shorter paths come first. A path made only of graded claims can have up to seven steps up to floor 3; if it uses a declared relation or goes through a highly connected node (one at most), four at most (so absurd chains stay out). A claim going straight from the intervention or the molecule to a capacity is a measured direct jump: it counts as a complete path, even though it does not say how it works inside. The path ends at the capacity (floor 3, the top): the event is not a floor, it is the one you pick in “Your sport”, and the end of the path says how much that capacity weighs in it. A “no effect” step breaks the chain, and so does a floor with no arrow going up.

Training is neither a capacity nor a molecule: it is a stimulus. Training methods and environmental stimuli live in the lobby, below floor 0, and their arrows climb to molecules and mechanisms (AMPK, PGC-1α, mTOR, EPO…), to traits (mitochondria, muscle mass…) and, as a measured jump, to capacities.

Your map: with an event chosen, each capacity weighs what its profile says (weight / 10) and each trait what the event says, with the direction that pays off. Importance flows down the arrows: a node matters as much as the sum of what it reaches, times the grade of the arrow (A 1, B 0.67, C 0.33, D 0.17; a declared relation 0.25) and 0.6 for each floor down (and for each step within a floor). The sum has diminishing returns (the second arrow counts half, the third a quarter…) so highly connected nodes do not come out important in every event. On floors 0 and 1, the lobby and the side clouds, values are scaled to the most important one.