Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 296
bad day coming on – and yet be astonished at event’s end with a personal best, or
even a world record ... their boundless joy causing them to dive into the crowded
seats where, frankly, fans would rather save their $14 beers than catch an athlete.
We will take the above as established fact. Also beyond argument, we know that
any number of factors, measurable or assumed, obvious or occult, will also figure
into our champion’s performance on any given day. This is why coaches and
trainers try to eliminate as many variables as possible in their athletes’ ramp-up to
competition day, sometimes even requiring draconian dietary restrictions. “No
soup for you!”
But what if there were a test that could be given multiple times in the final days
and hours before an athletic competition – a test that did not affect performance,
yet could predict it in broad terms, i.e., the score on that test could reliably predict
an athlete’s odds of achieving peak performance ... or tanking like a ruptured
submarine.
While it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze the negative effect a poor
score on such a test could have on an athlete’s fragile psyche, or even the positive
effect of a good score, it is obvious such a test could be very useful to improve
performance when the results come in with enough time to “fix” things before
competition.
We will leave such “fixing” to the trainers. Our concern in this paper is in
suggesting such a reliable performance prediction test – kind of like a Minority
Report precog for sports. “You will perform well today, Mr. Anderton.”
So, herein we focus on the ease of Bluetooth transmission through the human
body as a predictor of peak athletic performance.
“Say what now?”
Background
It might benefit the reader to understand the origin of our Bluetooth-toPerformance concept – which we will at times abbreviate as B2P, because, well, it
is just sexier.
The B2P concept first came into focus during a less-than-peak jogging
performance (the concept-inciting event) by author one – and some days after a
conversation (the conversation) between our authors.
The conversation concerned author one’s recent experiences with a wrist-mounted
Bluetooth music transmitter and its corresponding Bluetooth receiving earbuds. He
had noted that during some athletic performances (jogs) the system had worked
nearly flawlessly, while during others the connection between transmitter and
receiver was continually breaking up, requiring him to bring the wrist device into
closer proximity with the earbud device, i.e., bend his arm closer to his ear.3 While
this arm-bending was actually a natural position when jogging, it was not so
