THE
FUNDAMENTALS
Why Tiny Changes Make a Big
Difference
T
1
The Surprising Power of Atomic Habits
HE FATE OF
British Cycling changed one day in 2003. The
organization, which was the governing body for professional
cycling in Great Britain, had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its
new performance director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great
Britain had endured nearly one hundred years of mediocrity. Since
1908, British riders had won just a single gold medal at the Olympic
Games, and they had fared even worse in cycling’s biggest race, the
Tour de France. In 110 years, no British cyclist had ever won the
event.
In fact, the performance of British riders had been so
underwhelming that one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe
refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it
would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their
gear.
Brailsford had been hired to put British Cycling on a new
trajectory. What made him different from previous coaches was his
relentless commitment to a strategy that he referred to as “the
aggregation of marginal gains,” which was the philosophy of
searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything you do.
Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you
broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a
bike, and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant
increase when you put them all together.”
Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments
you might expect from a professional cycling team. They redesigned
the bike seats to make them more comfortable and rubbed alcohol
on the tires for a better grip. They asked riders to wear electrically
heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature while
riding and used biofeedback sensors to monitor how each athlete
responded to a particular workout. The team tested various fabrics
in a wind tunnel and had their outdoor riders switch to indoor
racing suits, which proved to be lighter and more aerodynamic.
But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to
find 1 percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas.
They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to
the fastest muscle recovery. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider
the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a
cold. They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the
best night’s sleep for each rider. They even painted the inside of the
team truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that
would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the
performance of the finely tuned bikes.
As these and hundreds of other small improvements
accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have
imagined.
Just five years after Brailsford took over, the British Cycling team
dominated the road and track cycling events at the 2008 Olympic
Games in Beijing, where they won an astounding 60 percent of the
gold medals available. Four years later, when the Olympic Games
came to London, the Brits raised the bar as they set nine Olympic
records and seven world records.
That same year, Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist
to win the Tour de France. The next year, his teammate Chris
Froome won the race, and he would go on to win again in 2015,
2016, and 2017, giving the British team five Tour de France victories
in six years.
During the ten-year span from 2007 to 2017, British cyclists won
178 world championships and sixty-six Olympic or Paralympic gold
medals and captured five Tour de France victories in what is widely
regarded as the most successful run in cycling history.
*
How does this happen? How does a team of previously ordinary
athletes transform into world champions with tiny changes that, at
first glance, would seem to make a modest difference at best? Why
do small improvements accumulate into such remarkable results,
and how can you replicate this approach in your own life?
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