Training and Complexity: Why Life Resists Optimization

The body is the wall where the mind is projected. Fatigue, anxiety, depression: they are not enemies, they are signals.” – Manuel Sola

We live in a world obsessed with optimization.

1. Optimize your work.

2. Optimize your health.

3. Optimize your training.

4. Optimize your sleep.

Every app, every podcast, every “expert” sells a formula for maximum performance.

• But life is not a spreadsheet.

• Training is not a machine.

• And the human body and mind cannot be reduced to one metric.

This is where Manuel Sola, for me, simply “Manu”, stands apart.

Almost born on a bike, raised in the trails of Spain, a lifetime athlete and coach, a thinker by vocation, he has lived the pain of chasing numbers, the seduction of data, and the emptiness of always doing more.

Manu’s path is not theory.

It comes from mistakes lived on his own skin: training too much, drowning in metrics, and feeling the void of “more.”

On the other side of that struggle, he discovered something deeper, more human, more enduring.

I see Manu as a teacher, a humble human, and a deep thinker. He has the rare humility not only to unlearn, but also to teach. And he does so openly — sharing instead of hiding, exposing himself with honesty and rigor to the tests of opinion, science, endurance, and nature.

What he found after years in the saddle and in reflection is simple but demanding:

Endurance is not about optimizing every variable. It is about listening, adapting, and embracing complexity. - Manu

His philosophy is not abstract.

It was built in training, forged in mistakes, and refined through science, experience, and coaching real athletes.

Manu’s story is one of unlearning dogmas, redefining failure and building a human-centered way of training in an era dominated by noise.

And his message is both liberating and demanding:

• Stop outsourcing your truth to averages.

• Listen to the signals only you can feel.

• Let failure shape you instead of break you.

• Train with life, not against it.

• Make peace with your own nature.

This is what we explore today: a philosophy of endurance that challenges optimization and invites us back to what is real: complexity, humanity and the courage to listen.

Breaking dogmas: from “more is better” to complexity

Manu admits his first big error: training like a professional while living the life of a student. University and a Master’s program filled his days, but he still forced himself to train as if recovery were infinite. Four hours on the bike, even on bad days. More watts always felt better than fewer.

The dogma was simple: more equals progress. And it broke him.

The frustration was double.

Data promised control. Training Stress Score (TSS), Chronic Training Load (CTL), all the graphs suggested that if he reached certain numbers, form would peak. Yet reality did not obey.

Sometimes more training meant worse performance.

Sometimes less meant better.

“I obsessed with measuring and controlling. But the data didn’t match reality. The more I chased it, the more it slipped away.” – Manu

This is the first rupture: realizing that linear models cannot explain living systems.

Progress is not predictable. Bodies are not machines.

And yet, this rupture was the foundation. From the failure of “more is better,” he began to see the world as complex: non-linear, unpredictable and deeply human.

What broke Manu was also what opened his eyes: progress is not about adding more, it is about learning to live with complexity

Success, failure and the paradox of suffering

Manu is direct: most cycling careers look like failure if judged only by money or results. Unless you are Pogacar, by that definition you give up your youth and almost never “win” in the usual sense.

But for him, that is exactly the paradox: the “suffering” is the gift.

Cycling forced him into discomfort, exposed him to stress and stripped away protection.

Without it, he says, he might have become “weak, victim-minded and fragile.”

“I don’t feel I renounced anything. It was hard, yes, but I wanted that life. The suffering shaped me: on the bike and far beyond it.” – Manu

He calls it a “double luck.”

First, that he lived cycling fully.

Second, that he transformed that obsession into his work.

Most don’t get that chance.

Here, failure and success stop being opposites.

They become two sides of the same path.

Endurance sports teach that losing is learning, and that meaning is forged in the long road, not the podium.

What Manu sees is that the real victory is not in winning races, but in being transformed by the road itself.

Complexity as a lens

Manu didn’t wake up one day and declare: “Now I think in complexity”

It was gradual.

The more knowledge he gained, the less reductionist explanations satisfied him.

• Why didn’t averages explain his experience?

• Why did similar inputs produce different outputs?

The turning point came when he discovered complexity science: systems with feedback loops, non-linearity, unpredictability. Suddenly, the chaos made sense.

“Most people already intuit complexity, even without naming it. My work has been to give language and structure to what many already feel.” – Manu

Complexity is not exotic. It’s natural.

You already live it: in your training, your stress and your relationships.

What Manu offers is clarity: to see training not as a machine to optimize, but as a living system to navigate.

Redefining performance

Ask Manu about “performance” and he makes a distinction.

• Performance (rendimiento, in Spanish): high fitness in one narrow function (example: cycling 200 km fast)

• Biological fitness: the broader ability to adapt, survive, reproduce and thrive as a human in a real ecological niche.

We confuse the two.

We tend to sacrifice biological health:

1. Sleep

2. Relationships

3. Hormones

All to chase narrow performance.

And often, that narrow peak comes at the expense of long-term resilience.

This is why Manu challenges the obsession with metrics like TSS. A single number cannot capture the richness of adaptation. When the metric becomes the goal, you lose sight of what truly matters.

Real performance is not a number on a screen, but the capacity to live, adapt and stay resilient: not just for a race, a season or a workout, but for a lifetime.

Data, noise and the lost art of listening

Today’s athletes drown in data. Watches, sensors, apps and in the last decade AI and ML. What was once a scarcity of information is now an overdose.

The risk, Manu says, is anesthesia: devices replacing perception.

Athletes no longer ask, how do I feel? They ask, what does the watch say?

“The problem is not data itself. The problem is when it becomes a prosthesis that silences the body’s voice.” – Manu

He argues for reordering the hierarchy: perception and context first, metrics second.

Data is a tool, not the truth.

The real skill is integrating numbers with sensations, history and context.

For Manu, the most complete metric is still RPE or Rate of Perceived Exertion.

It integrates what no device can: emotions, sleep, relationships and mood.

It may be “imprecise,” but it is global, deeply human and real.

In the end the best technology is still the body itself, if only we learn to listen again!!!

The human coach in the age of AI

Can algorithms replace coaches? Manu is clear: not all coaches: but some.

There are “coaches” who act like human algorithms. They copy recipes, paste generic plans and simulate AI without adding human judgment. For them, AI may very well take over.

“Recuenco reminds us all that AI will wipe out the “pseudo-intellectual” jobs, the copy-paste work built only on repetition and formulas” – Manu

But real coaching it is different.

The key difference is simple: AI does not understand. It does not know you. It only predicts what is most probable based on past data. But in the real world, there is no “average athlete” and never enough data, because nobody has your exact story, background, context or history.

That is why athletes who rely only on ChatGPT or AI-driven apps end up disappointed. At best, they get pseudo-individualization: a plan that looks personal but is still built on averages. It feels precise: but it is not.