Unified Marginal Gains (UMG)

Unified Marginal Gains is the SportsWorks book about performance and stability for real people, not laboratory conditions. It is written for athletes, coaches, parents, and staff who need a way to improve without turning their lives into a permanent experiment.

The core idea

Marginal gains only compound if life is stable enough for them to stick. UMG treats stability as a precondition, not an afterthought.

What UMG covers

• Baseline. Seeing the current reality clearly: sleep, environment, training load, stress, and constraint.
• Gains. Choosing a small number of changes that actually matter instead of chasing every new idea.
• Stability. Making those changes boring and repeatable rather than dramatic and fragile.
• Cycles. Working in short cycles so that people can adapt without burning out.

Who UMG is for

• Youth players and their parents trying to avoid panic cycles around selection and performance.
• Coaches who want a calmer way to build readiness in their squads.
• Adult amateurs who are tired of boom-and-bust training patterns.
• Support staff and analysts who need a simple shared language for “how ready are we, really?”

UMG can be used on its own or alongside Dashframe. Dashframe looks after the structure of a competition. UMG looks after the people trying to perform inside that structure.