The 85% Rule
Run at 85 percent effort and you will beat the version of you that ran at 100.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 95%
Jackman picks the rule up through his trainer Beth Lewis, a former powerlifter and dancer, in the context of preparing for fight scenes — because fighting is dance, and there is more relaxation in a fight scene than there is strength. He generalises it: think about all the great athletes and you see relaxation, which is why every sprinter now pokes their tongue out and dances around with joy before running the hundred metres. The rule itself is that if you tell most type-A athletes to run at 85 percent of their capacity, they will run faster than if you tell them to run at 100, because it is more about relaxation and form and optimising the muscles in the right way. The origin is a sprint coach who spent a year studying Carl Lewis, unable to understand why a man routinely coming last or second-last at 40 metres — traditionally where sprints were won — would finish 10 yards clear. The received explanation was that he was a slow starter with a long stride. Then someone gave the coach a head-on shot, the camera angle invented for the Olympics, and watching it over and over he saw the answer: at the 50 and 60 metre marks Carl Lewis did nothing. His breathing was exactly the same, his form was exactly the same as it had been between metres 25 and 50. Everyone else started to push, faces scrunching, jaws tightening, fists clenching — and Lewis, unchanged, simply breezed past them. Tim immediately extends it: you could apply that to sitting down and writing, you could apply it to almost anything, because being tense is not your friend.
Origin
A sprint coach studied Carl Lewis for a year trying to understand how a habitually poor starter always won by 10 yards, and finally saw the answer in a head-on camera shot: Lewis did not change at all in the second half of the race. Jackman learned the rule from trainer Beth Lewis, a former powerlifter and dancer.
Core principles
- 01Above a certain point, added effort shows up as tension, and tension degrades form faster than the extra effort adds power.
- 02Told to run at 85 percent of capacity, most athletes run faster than when told to run at 100, because the 15 percent buys relaxation and form.
- 03The elite performer does not accelerate at the end — they refuse to change, and everyone else's deterioration looks like the elite performer pulling away.
- 04The visible signature of over-effort is physical: face scrunching, jaw tightening, fists clenching.
- 05Relaxation is not the absence of intensity; it is what allows the muscles to be optimised in the right way.
- 06The rule generalises beyond sport — it applies to writing, to speaking, to any task where being tense is not your friend.
- 07You can pre-load the relaxed state by imagining the activity already finished and having gone well, then entering it from that feeling.
How to run it
- 1
Recognise that relaxation is part of the output
Start from Jackman's observation that fighting is dance — there is more relaxation in a fight scene than there is strength, and the same is true for the great athletes generally.
Pro tip The sprinters poking their tongues out and dancing before a hundred metres are doing technique, not showboating.
- 2
Dial deliberately to 85 percent
Instruct yourself to work at roughly 85 percent of capacity rather than everything you have. The claim is empirical: type-A athletes told to run at 85 percent run faster than when told to run at 100.
Pro tip Set the number before you start, so the decision is not made under pressure.
Watch out Eighty-five percent is not a licence to coast — the reserved 15 percent is spent on form, not saved.
- 3
Watch for the tension tells
Use the physical markers the sprint coach identified in everyone who was not Carl Lewis: the face scrunching up, the jaw tightening, the fists starting to clench. Those are the signs that effort has crossed into tension.
Pro tip Jaw and hands are the earliest and easiest to check mid-task.
- 4
Refuse to change in the final stretch
The Carl Lewis mechanism is not acceleration but constancy: at 50 and 60 metres he did nothing, breathing and form exactly as they had been between metres 25 and 50, and the field came back to him.
Pro tip Your competitive advantage at the end is often simply not deteriorating.
Watch out Pushing at the end is the specific behaviour the rule exists to prevent.
- 5
Pre-load the finished feeling
Jackman mentally does this quite often during the day: just before an activity, he imagines that it is done, recalls the feeling he has when it is done and has gone well, and goes into it with that.
Pro tip He also prefers a Wednesday matinee six weeks into a run over an opening night — the trick is manufacturing that settled state on demand.
- 6
Breathe in as though breathing out
Jackman got this from his singing teacher: when he breathes in thinking about the big note, he tenses, his breathing goes up and his larynx rises. The great singers, the ones that make you melt, are relaxed as they breathe in — as if they are breathing out while preparing.
Pro tip Apply it in the seconds before any high-stakes start, not just before singing.
Watch out A tense inhale is already a compromised performance before you have produced a single note or word.
- 7
Coach yourself as an outside coach would
Jackman is explicit: if he were the coach and Hugh Jackman were on his team, he would not put more pressure on him or push him more or yell at him — he already has that motivation. He has had to work from a built-up insecurity that he is not good enough and must work extra hard.
Pro tip Ask what a good coach who knew you would actually say. It is usually not 'try harder'.
Watch out Insecurity-driven effort limits your ability to enjoy the work and, as he says, does not get the best out of you.
In the wild
A sprint coach spent a year trying to understand how Carl Lewis, routinely last or second-last at 40 metres — where sprints were traditionally won — would finish 10 yards clear. People said he was just a slow starter with a long stride. Then someone gave the coach one of the head-on shots invented for the Olympics, the angle where you watch the runners come straight at you, and he watched it over and over. What he realised was that at the 50 and 60 metre marks Carl Lewis did nothing: his breathing was exactly the same and his form exactly the same as it had been between metres 25 and 50, while everyone else started to push, faces scrunching, jaws tightening, fists clenching.
→ The coach invented the 85% rule from it — the finding that holding form constant beats trying harder at the end.
Jackman explains that for a role like Wolverine he cannot prepare as a bodybuilder because he cannot afford to get injured — he has to prepare as a jacked, ripped athlete-slash-dancer, because fighting is dance and there is more relaxation in a fight scene than there is strength. He points to the general pattern in elite sport: relaxation is in the movement, which is why every sprinter now pokes their tongue out and dances around with joy before running the hundred metres.
→ A training approach organised around relaxation and movement quality rather than raw strength, taught to him by trainer Beth Lewis.
Jackman says he does not like opening nights, where everyone tells you this is the big night and it is going to be the best, and he wants to tell the room to chill out. He would rather see a Wednesday matinee six weeks into a run — that is when you are going to see the best show. Tim agrees from his own experience that he has never performed best when whipping himself extra fast and extra hard.
→ A concrete illustration of the rule at the level of a whole production, and the practical question of how to reach that settled state deliberately.
Common mistakes
Pushing harder in the final stretch
This is precisely what everyone racing Carl Lewis did, and it is why he passed them. Added effort at the end arrives as tension in the face, jaw and hands, and tension costs more form than the effort buys.
Reading 85 percent as coasting
The reserved 15 percent is spent on relaxation, form and optimising the muscles in the right way. If you simply do less work with the same tension, you get a slower time and conclude the rule is wrong.
Motivating yourself from insecurity
Jackman describes having built from a sense of not being good enough — if I do everything perfectly and work my ass off then I will be okay. He says it certainly limits your ability to enjoy the work and, more damningly, it does not get the best out of you.
Tensing on the in-breath
Jackman's singing teacher caught him breathing in while thinking about the big note ahead, which raised his larynx and put him behind before he sang a word. The state you enter in is largely determined before the first output.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone whose default failure mode is over-trying — athletes, performers, writers and operators who whip themselves harder when the stakes rise.
Not ideal for
People who genuinely are not applying enough effort, or contexts where raw maximal output with no form component is the entire task.
From the transcript
“i think they call it the 85% rule if you tell a most sort of a type athletes to run at their 85% capacity they…”
“what he realized carl lewis did at the 50 meter mark 60 meter mark was that he did nothing his breathing was exactly the same”
“whereas carl lewis stayed exactly the same and then it would just breeze past him so that's where he invented the 85% rule”
“even if you practice simple thing to sit down and as you're breathing in imagine that you're breathing out”
From the episode
#444: Hugh Jackman on Best Decisions, Daily Routines, The 85% Rule, Favorite Exercises, Mind Training, and Much More