Programming for Point B Takes Care of High Performance

How programming concurrent treatment and training for Point B positions the athlete to generate high performance at the level of competition.

Bill Walsh was undefeated in Super Bowls. Source

Process > Outcome

The Score Takes Care of Itself is a must-read book written by Bill Walsh, the architect of the West Coast Offense. Walsh innovated the strategy while simultaneously winning three Super Bowls as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. A key element of his philosophy emphasizes focusing on the process over the outcome—meaning that if you execute the process correctly, the outcome (the score) takes care of itself.

We’ve embedded that same logic into our conjugate strategy. At Absolute, treatment and training are programmed in true conjugation to move the athlete toward Point B. And when that process is executed, high performance takes care of itself.

Levels, Work & The Ultimate Feedback Loop

One layer of complexity in this strategy is levels—which is why we differentiate between the level of adaptation and the level of competition. As strength practitioners, we operate at the level of adaptation. That’s where we coach. That’s where we program.

Levels of Coaching: Defined & Explained

From a physics perspective this programming work must constrain the athlete to perform specific treatment and training work—work¹ that releases energy into a few degrees of biology and neurology in conjugation that is stimulating. This controlled release of specific energy,² executed through our Point B lens, propagates adaptation in a way that directionally oscillates the athlete closer to an optimal state for their level of competition.

At Absolute, we do not coach at the level of competition. That doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant—far from it. The level of competition is the ultimate Point A feedback loop. It produces data. It generates the bits of information we need to understand where Point B is—and what standards must be met through treatment and training.

With a Point B conjugate strategy, the question isn’t if the athlete will get there—it’s when.

Performance at the level of competition determines rankings, contracts, and opportunities. It is the most valuable feedback loop in high performance. But following Walsh’s logic, the level of competition takes care of itself once the athlete is at Point B.

Programming for Point B takes care of high performance.

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen—Not Enough Leadership

There are too many cooks in the high-performance kitchen—and not all of them are making dishes that complement ours. We get to have an opinion here and if we are honest—some of it is shit. For example, we might be working to stimulate the bottom-up elements of reactive strength using the Bulgarian strategy, while another cook tells the athlete: "No, just lie there while I poke where it is ‘tight’ with needles."³

Laugh, but take this seriously: you and your work are competing with needles, Theraguns, and whatever is trending on Instagram. Welcome to 2025—enjoy the entertainment, but recognize the propagators of stagnation for what they are. Passive modalities like poking tightness with a needle or buzzing it with a theragun is not work that propagates the athlete closer to Point B. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its place, but the reality is these modalities don’t push the athlete to Point B.

Want a real life case study? Look at Tyrese Haliburton. The reactive strength injury that cost him his Achilles, his season, and the Pacers a shot at the Finals wasn’t bad luck—it was load mismanagement. This just happened. Welcome to 2025. Welcome to the Reactive Strength Paradigm. It’s an inflection point.

Too many cooks mean no leader—just a lot of wandering around in the valley of death. To get out of the valley, we need to take the lead define Point B and communicate it clearly to the athlete.

Our incentives and strategy must align: Get to Point B.⁴

Specificity: Optimal Load, Effort & Intent

Once we identify what of Point B is missing, we compress the absolute conjugate strategy to aggressively stimulate the development of the limiting element (or its subcomponents).

The optimal load, effort, and intent—given time— is the roadmap that allows us to escape out of the valley of death and move towards Point B. As one of our athletes put it last week: “We don’t want to be a three-legged wolf hunting.” And this was a professional tennis player. The level of competition is violent—even there…

Defining Point B, Milo of Corna + the Tooth Fairy = Linear-Based Periodization

To compress our conjugate strategy, we first need to identify the target. Find the number one limiting constraint—the target, via Point A, compress the strategy to program work to acquire.

But what if an athlete is missing both reactive strength and joint function?

Yeah, we get it—we work with athletes every day. They’re often missing multiple elements of Point B. This isn’t new information for us at Absolute. It’s the reality we’ve been living in and communicating to our subscribers about since inception. At this point, it’s not even a question anymore—it’s just reality, sadly.

The real question is: Which missing element gives you the biggest return on your programming investment with return being Point B?