Human Performance Foundations
Domain 1 - Human Performance Foundations
This domain tests whether you can treat performance as an integrated system rather than a single metric. Expect questions that ask you to interpret readiness, training load, and context together.
Core rules and concepts
- Performance is biopsychosocial: fitness, fatigue, sleep, stress, nutrition, confidence, and environment interact.
- Use the training-stress model: performance = fitness − fatigue. A taper improves performance by reducing fatigue faster than fitness decays.
- Monitor with multiple signals: session RPE × duration for load, sleep duration and quality, soreness, mood, HRV, and performance trends. A trend matters more than one day.
- Individualize by training age, chronological age, sport demands, injury history, and current life stress.
- Apply progressive overload, specificity, reversibility, and adequate recovery. Adaptation follows the demand placed on the system.
Worked example
An athlete reports HRV 15% below baseline, RPE 8/10 for an easy session, and 5 hours of sleep; resting heart rate is normal. Reasoning: two subjective or contextual flags and one recovery flag outweigh a single normal objective marker. Reduce intensity, investigate sleep and stress, and reassess before adding load. Do not assume the normal heart rate means the athlete is ready for a hard session.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating one wearable value as a diagnosis.
- Confusing fitness with freshness.
- Copying another athlete’s plan without matching sport demands and training age.
- Ignoring psychological readiness and non-sport stressors.
Exam takeaway
Ask four questions: what is the load, what is the recovery, what is the context, and what does the trend show?