The Six Sigma Fitness™ Methodology Applied

The health industry has set standards for optimal health values and risk markers for disease and dysfunction that applies across a broad spectrum of the general population. Similarities in methodologies can be found in the application of acceptable standards of error rates in production vs. nutritional compliance in health.

In the case of Six Sigma for Business, the practitioner strives to drive down defects or errors to an acceptable value proposition that optimizes product or service quality, and thus income, for their particular product or process. Similarly, Six Sigma Fitness™ strives to reduce poor health and fitness habits, and thus reduce the potential for mistakes or errors from a personal health perspective and optimizing the potential for positive health outcomes.

Much like Six Sigma for Business, you might think of a person as an equivalent to a manufacturing line or business process that may not be functioning at optimal efficiency and thus, producing poor results.  In business this is often measured as a defect, but in a person this could be a symptom like obesity, blood pressure, fatigue or some other health risk marker, malady or inefficient health outcome.  We may term these as human “defects” in the manufacturing process that signal potential areas in which changes or improvements can be made to improve the outcome.

The human body acts like a production line, in which we develop errors and throw off defects, such as eating poorly and gaining weight or feeling fatigued and slowing down. An unhealthy meal is the equivalent of a root cause, much like a poorly engineered part in a manufacturing process causes errors or defects. To reach optimal goals and standards of success, (i.e., weight loss, lower LDL, faster sprint times), only a limited amount of defects are acceptable.

For example, say that to become trim and fit requires 3-4 sessions in the gym per week and 80% compliance with a good nutritional program. Only so many sessions or meals can be missed or performed poorly—otherwise, the results will be suboptimal.  In other words, you may be able to accept a few unhealthy meals or missed workouts (defects) and still make progress towards an optimal standard of body weight or composition or a performance metric such as a bench press, but too many of these defects and your goals will not be realized. Thus variation in compliance becomes the impediment to success. Reducing variation in the process reduces defects and improves results. The most accurate way to quantify variation is by using standard deviation. Standard deviation is a method of measuring the degree of variation in any process by measuring the spread around the mean (average).  Setting a defect target such as 6 sigma allows you to measure how you are performing on the relative scale for a successful outcome.  By applying these highly statistical methodologies of normative comparisons against the actual data performance of an individual we can standardize and obtain a baseline to compare to and an optimal value set for goal setting.

The first step is to identify these “defects” and determine a process to gather data to evaluate and analyze potential sources of the health problems. The difference between Six Sigma Fitness™️ and Six Sigma for business is in the analytical data gathering tests and optimal outcomes, which have already been established in the health and fitness industry.

Every human being may have the same optimal blood pressure level or temperature range, but optimal BMI, weight or other biomarker may differ based on other variables such as height, gender, age... None the less there are standards to compute healthy optimal biomarkers for most physiological functions.  Similarly, every manufacturing line has a different optimal output based on product, volume, and other factors but the optimal output is known or predictable under perfect conditions. Formulas to evaluate how your body should perform to the norms are well-established and published in the scientific literature. 

In humans we are not yet able to adequately monitor processes that happen millions of times like we can a manufacturing line that creates 1 million widgets.  For the most part we sample data like heart rate, blood pressure, time on a 1-mile run, weight lifted or the results of a blood test and expect that it fairly represents the larger population of data that is happening every second of every minute in our body.  Science has shown this to be an accurate way to collect data in humans and report variances from acceptable norms.

As Six Sigma was originally created as a standardized way of looking at error rates in a high volume environment (errors per million parts or transactions), it needs to be modified for the individual who would be considered a low volume data environment.  Humans make a lot of data but we can only sample smaller amounts and extrapolate out to the norms. The modifications required come in the form of a change in the methodologies applied within the DMAIC model, which is accepted Six Sigma practice in low volume environments.

Through significant data gathering and scientific analysis of both healthy and unhealthy populations, the health industry has already identified a quantifiable and established set of standardized defects that the human body produces, such as high blood pressure, low blood or muscle oxygen saturation, poor neuromuscular signaling, high LDL’s, poor body composition or high BMI, just to name a few. We find these defects by measuring various aspects of the client/athlete and comparing them to a large body of optimal standards such as weight, BMI, body composition, heart rate, blood pressure, blood panels, VO2max, movement patterns, and heart rate variability (HRV). This is akin to every business process being similar and having an optimal outcome or goal with a preset standard of evaluation and norms.

Years of scientific research in labs and universities have given us well-documented statistical testing procedures including many types of linear regression analysis of population data, formulas for analyzing results and projection of both current health states, as well as known or forecasted improvements in health states. With the proprietary Six Sigma Fitness™ cloud based platform, the Coach/Practitioner does not need to worry about researching, tracking and  analyzing data against norms as we do the heavy lifting allowing the Coach/Practitioner to focus on implementation of the solutions. We automate this analysis and the variations from optimal norms, create a plan for improvement and then chart a path to control the changes in order to maintain the results long-term.