The technology employed by Whittaker, an elite fighter in the UFC arena, is beguilingly simple. The lifelong gamer finds stress relief in the sprawling digital worlds of his favorite video games, and stockpiles data about his training and conditioning in Microsoft Excel.
A team of five coaches rely on the same program used by number crunchers everywhere to hoard information on Whittaker, which they then use to fine-tune his body into the perfect fighting machine.
"The only predictor of future behavior is past behavior," says Fabricio Itte, one of Whittaker's coaches.
For the past five years, Itte has collected mountains of data about the fighter: weight, calorie intake, macronutrient split (finding the right balance of protein, carbohydrates and fat), resting heart rate, rate of perceived exhaustion, training volume. Whittaker can't take a step without it being recorded.
Nearly his entire training regimen revolves around collecting and analyzing the numbers.
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