Goldratt 1984, the theory of constraints (The Goal)

Eliyahu Goldratt’s management framework, set out in his 1984 book The Goal. Its core claim: a system’s total output is limited by its single biggest constraint (the bottleneck), so improving any non-constraint does not raise output until the constraint itself is addressed, “a chain is no stronger than its weakest link”. The remedy is a repeating loop: identify the constraint, exploit it, subordinate everything else to it, elevate it, then repeat on whatever becomes the next constraint. The origin of the “train your weakest link” idea applied on the running pages to endurance training.