Adaptability
Strong You: Notes on Adaptability
One useful way to think about strength is this:
strength is the ability to keep functioning as conditions change.
Not maximal output.
Not rigidity.
Not constant support.
Just capacity under variation — the ability to keep lifting, carrying, walking, working, and thinking clearly as load, heat, posture, and routine shift.
When you start from that definition, a number of familiar health patterns begin to look different — particularly the difference between compensation and adaptability.
Compensation and Adaptability
When living systems temporarily exceed their capacity, they compensate. It’s the short-term fix that keeps things moving when something isn’t quite right — the equivalent of “fixing it with fencewire.” Useful. Often necessary. Not reliably strong. Not something you would ever design a system around.
Adaptability reflects something deeper. It suggests that the system itself is working properly; working well enough to continue functioning as conditions change — without needing to be propped up.
That distinction shows up repeatedly in health, often in places we don’t immediately notice.
This isn’t about bad choices. It’s about the environments and assumptions we’ve been living in.
Body-Fuel as an Expression of Adaptability
Human metabolism is, by design, flexible. We can run on various fuels.
From a physiological standpoint, the body can generate usable energy from multiple sources: carbohydrates, fats, and, when required, even from protein. The brain, often said to “require” glucose, readily uses ketones and, in some contexts, appears to function with greater energetic stability when doing so.
This isn’t fad diet information or fringe physiology. It’s simply well recognised science being thoughtfully applied.
For most of human history food availability was variable - both by location and season. Some periods involved fruit or starch. Others relied more heavily on fat and protein. Periods of low intake were normal. Metabolic flexibility wasn’t a special strategy — it was ordinary, normal function.
What’s remarkable is that modern nutritional thinking has narrowed that flexibility. Continuous carbohydrate intake became the default (grains, fruit, sugars, in processed foods). Fat metabolism was framed as risky. Periods without food were treated as abnormal.
From a systems perspective, that looks less like optimisation and more like reliance on a metabolic fencewire-fix — effective in the short term, but narrowing capacity over time.
When a system can’t switch fuels comfortably, it compensates. Meals need to be frequent. Missed meals feel unsettling. Energy regulation becomes externally managed rather than internally adaptive.
A Parallel Pattern in Ergonomic Supports
A similar pattern appears in biomechanics.
Modern life is saturated with support products — arch supports, lumbar supports, neck supports, wrist braces, taping systems. The implicit message is rarely stated outright, but it’s hard to miss: the body cannot be trusted to support itself under ordinary conditions.
That assumption deserves examination.
It surprises many people to learn that many elite Kenyan distance runners — among the most efficient endurance athletes in the world — are flat-footed. That fact alone complicates the idea that arches must be externally propped in order to function well.
Lumbar supports offer another example. They’re commonly added to seating designs that mold a restricted posture. The support then compensates for the chair, not the body. Over time, tolerance to unsupported sitting can decrease — not because the spine is weak, but because adaptability has been replaced with a structural fencewire-fix.
Support reduces demand. Reduced demand reduces capacity. Capacity loss then justifies more support.
It’s a familiar loop.
Environment Shapes Capacity
It is striking how rarely we ask whether the environments themselves are part of the problem.
Shoes that immobilise the foot.
Chairs that lock posture.
Workspaces that assume stillness.
When environments undermine adaptability, compensation becomes normalised. Fencewire-fix solutions turn into permanent fixtures. Function quietly erodes. Degenerative bodily changes frequently follow.
Not to imply that this is intentional at all. Design priorities often favour uniformity, aesthetics, or ease of manufacture over human variability. Products scale more easily than adaptable bodies.
Adaptability as a Clinical Signal
In practice, adaptability is less something to chase and more something to notice.
Bodies that adapt well tend to tolerate variation — in fuel intake, posture, workload, and stress — without things wobbling. Bodies that rely heavily on compensation often show narrowing tolerance and increasing dependence on external management.
This isn’t a judgement.
It’s an observation.
Adaptability reflects reserve.
Returning to Strength
Seen this way, strength isn’t about pushing harder or adding more support. It’s about whether the system can keep functioning as conditions change — without needing to be held together with fencewire.
Fuel flexibility and biomechanical adaptability aren’t trends. They’re markers that underlying systems are still doing what they’re designed to do.
When adaptability is preserved, compensation remains occasional rather than structural. Health becomes less about management and more about resilience.
If this reads less like advice and more like a conversation you’ve wandered into, that’s intentional. These are ideas worth sitting with — especially if you’re interested in what strong actually means over the long term.
Written by Dr Keith Brown, Chiropractor, Nyuü Chiropractic, Bullsbrook WA.