Flip Flopping
Within the professional side of fitness, there is always a trend of sentimentalism and an insistence that training is too complicated today versus some mythical simpler time when training was more understandable.
Why people do this, it’s simply human nature. Ive seen many different kinds of professionals in different industries reminisce about the “good old days”.
If I were to start training today as a young person, I can say with certainty that the level of information and knowledge is far higher than two decades ago.
The internet has been a net positive for fitness. While there are always bad myths that propagate and people believe silly things, there has also been an explosion of scientific research, top notch educators, and good fitness influencers.
People train hard, use compound movements, eat high protein diets, and teach evidence and practice based information.
Despite this, there are still mistakes made, but thats human nature. Nothing is ever perfect.
What kind of mistakes are made today?
There is one that stands out most to me
Science and Evidence Based Training
This trend started over a decade ago. Exercise science research started to become more publicly available, and there arose a trend in the industry to categorize ones self as “science and evidence based”, specifically meaning that training should be informed by the formal scientific process and research that came out of higher education academia.
This not ill intentioned. We should want to train people in an effective manner. It has some major issues though
#1-The research and science do lag behind the field of practice
Theres a common refrain thats become a meme in fitness
'“Show me a study!”
The demand being to show evidence.
Again, not ill intentioned. But this overlooks the reality that for all of history, and right up into the 1950s
THERE WERE NO STUDIES.
Human beings have been physically training for thousands of years, and while the technology has become more sophisticated, concepts like progressive overload, training the entire body as a unit for performance, classifying and periodizing exercises
This has been throughout time
Before there were “studies”, there was the HARD evidence of what worked in practice. Today this is called anecdotal evidence
#2-Reality has always lead theory
As the “Science and evidence” trend became very popular, the derogatory term “Broscience” got created.
-The uniformed opinions of dumb jocks, aka Bros
A collective laugh was had, but this ivory tower academic bias conveniently overlooked the fact that Exercise science only existed in the first place because BROS WERE THE ONES EXERCISING AND TRAINING PEOPLE.
The number of bodybuilding practices that have been scientifically validated over the years is innumerable
-High protein diets
-Mind-muscle connection
-Doing your hardest exercises first
-Compound movements
-The usage of Isolation exercises
-Training a muscle from multiple angles
-the usage of Super sets
-low volume training
-High volume training
-Training intensity and percentage of 1RM
-nutrient timing
All of these concepts originated in GYMS, and then were later studied in formal experiments and discovered to work and be contextually effective
Does this mean Bros get EVERYTHING right?
Not at all. Lots of dumb ideas have existed as well. Coaches can have their own bias against academia.
But being a responsible “Broscientist” does not mean “screw SCIENCE!!”.
Rather, it means having a bias for real world practice and evidence, and assess the formal science accordingly as it appears, which leads to the next problem for the Science&Evidence Crowd
#3-The Evidence is always changing
In the 1980s there was no was scientific evidence that regional hypertrophy (the ability to mechanically increase tension on geographic regions of a muscle) was possible.
Had you “followed the science” at that time, you would never have bothered doing an incline press to emphasize the upper pectorals, or bothered with isolation work at all, because the muscles were already worked during a compound lift.
However, there was abundant REAL WORLD evidence that training a muscle along different lines of movements would increase the hypertrophic development of that muscle.
And it wasnt until the 2010s that this idea was validated.
In 2011 I attended a large conference where one presenter confidently stated that all that mattered for hypertrophy was neurological innervation and nothing else.
What about progressive overload, or working a muscle to failure, or rep range?
That was all secondary. What mattered was the activation you could measure in that muscle during the exercise. The higher the activation, the more muscle growth potential. That was what the “Science” showed at the time
Sounds good in THEORY.
In Reality-it was FALSE.
Mechanical tension is the driver of hypertrophy, muscle activation depends on the exercise, and the most reliable method for ensuring muscle growth is training to positive failure
A few years prior to that in the early 2000s, there was a BIG movement against training to positive failure
Training to failure is training to fail! Dont do it! Its does not even work
WRONG.
It 100% works, and 20 years later the scientific evidence is overwhelming that its a reliable strategy for muscle growth
But “Bros” have already known this for decades.
This is where Flipflop Effect comes into play
If you claimed to only “Follow the science” you’d be changing your mind and your training practices constantly
Here are 10 “Science and Evidence” Beliefs and Theories about Muscle Growth that were ALL proven false
1. You need to damage your muscles as much as possible for them to grow
2. Free weights build more muscle than machines
3. You can use short rest periods to increase growth hormone, and this will make muscles grow
4. Time under tension is what causes muscles growth
5. Heavy weights build more muscle than light weights
6. High reps dont build muscle, they only are far endurance
7. Exercises like squats and deadlifts boost your testosterone, which increases your muscle growth
8. Muscles can grow from metabolic fatigue and getting them tired as possible
9. Heavy lift overloads your Central Nervous System and can burn it out
10. You dont need to train arms, in fact training arms is not functional and a waste of time
All of the above beliefs are wrong. All of them at one time were considered scientific with articles written about they were correct
Is it any wonder that people become confused about training?
This leads to a question of “What is True?”
And then is why I have always been biased towards the Bro side of the industry. Those who learn by doing tend to naturally arrive at a First Principle approach to train.
You do not need to know the exact biochemical and material mechanisms of how training works to know WHAT works with training
When in doubt, what is tried and proven > New and Improved
The old practices of training to get consistently stronger over time, increasing weight as you are able to, increasing reps, following reasonable programs that allow for recovery…THEY WORK