"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams
The above quote is one that I came across about a year ago, and remains one of my favourites to this day. Recently, I have had the opportunity to apply this to my life a couple of times and it saved me some serious headaches. This also applies greatly to training both as a coach AND as an athlete.
First, a quick story. Last night, my girlfriend and I booked a trip to Memphis to go to the Beale Street Music Festival in May. Admittedly, I've been talking about going since April of last year, and if it weren't for her, I don't know that I'd have had it in me to finally just book it and go! Anyways, I've been to Memphis before for a baseball tournament and had a great time. We played great, and finished well in a national showcase tournament, but one of the things we didn't prepare for was the area. One of our vans (and a bunch of other vehicles there) were broken into during a game and we lost wallets, gloves, all kinds of things. So when we were looking at hotels last night, I said to her a few times that I'd rather pick somewhere that she and I could feel safe. I knew that if we were going to drive 15 hours to get there, we wouldn't want anything else to worry about, and especially if we were going to be carrying passports, cash etc. So we booked a place with no cancellation fees so we could at least have a backup plan, and no penalty if we changed our minds later.
Of course, the internet is both a blessing and a curse, it just depends how you use it. When we searched the hotel, obviously the people who are trying to sell it to you will have nothing but the best things to say about it. Additionally, any affiliate websites will do the same - they will make a percentage for promoting if you choose to pay them. The trouble with this is you will find what you search for. The information you usually can benefit from is from places you don't search for. Like the 0/5 star review you might find buried in the last part of the advertising website. (I don't think people searching for travel advice to Memphis will find my story here as quickly as they'd find a Super 8 in a bad part of town.) So, heeding the advice given at the start of this post, I decided to search for poor reviews, things WRONG with the place we're going. Luckily, I haven't found anything yet, but will continue to search until I feel that I've exhausted resources.
So, what's all this got to do with training? Well, those who know me are aware that I'm not the biggest advocate of "strictly cardio," CrossFit, and a host of other modalities, but for the sake of brevity, I'll stop at those two. Whether a trainer/coach or an athlete is searching for something to commit to or try for the first time, your search will probably produce a myriad of results that claim Training System _______ is the best of the best. No question about it. But an experienced coach or athlete knows all too well that for an industry that seems so black and white, there is an awful lot of gray area. Here's a great article that got me going on this subject. If you search CrossFit or Cardio Training or something like that, you'll likely get 50 results that praise it for every 1 that bashes it. Instead, like my lesson from travelling, why not search for what's wrong with it, and THEN make a decision?
I also bought a new cellphone recently. I'm not the type to make investments like this without researching, so I scoured forums that compared the phone I liked to other ones that came out around the same time. As I mentioned above, you'll almost always find what you want to hear, and read things the way you want them to sound (if you read at all.) Ironically, even after all that, I ended up having to get the charging port replaced about a week later - once I searched for ways to fix it on my own, it seemed like everyone and their mother with the same phone were having similar issues. 20/20 hindsight is a bitch.
So again, how does this apply to training? If you seek out answers based on certain criteria, you will likely hear things the way you want them to sound. People come in to our facility sometimes and ask if we do "CrossFit" type training. I could easily say yea we do, sign up today! But I don't, A) because it's not true, and B) because I hate that stuff. If people want to do that, I would rather not have them in my gym anyways. Instead, if I have the time, I ask them a couple questions about their athletic/training/injury history and give them a bit of a caveat that if you're just trying to lose a few pounds, that might not be the safest choice. In two cases that I can recall explicitly (due to moral victory,) people have actually said, wow thanks for the advice, I think I'd like to start with you guys instead.
Granted, I've sold two memberships on that premise vs. mass marketing that we do crossfit everybody come in... NOW! But if you're serious about what you do, this feels a hell of a lot better than the alternative. It sure makes my job more comfortable as well, I'd rather do what I know will work with certain populations, than try to teach a 30 year old pregnant woman how to do powercleans to failure. I think it's in one of the related videos here. Additionally, I like having people know exactly what they can expect working with me, than have them go and badmouth my work to other people and say I tricked them.
So whether this helps you make a decision about your training or some other aspect of your life, I hope you found it useful. At least give everything a healthy dose of skepticism and see what it boils down to afterwards.
-Alex
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