Lindy Effect
Back in 2014, I attended a seminar with Ian King, a world renowned athletic preparation coach. He's the most famous trainer you've never heard of, having worked with athletes from every sport, Pros, Olympians, and has a vast international network of "King" certified and trained coaches.
He's got one of the most brilliant minds I've ever encountered, a true scientist and skeptic that considers the Body to have more knowledge than what is known of the body. He has a disdain for theorists and those without experience, and he's been training since the 1980s.
I cannot emphasize enough how RARE it is to meet coaches who have been training people for longer than 10 years. There are simply very few people who stick with fitness for the long term.
In the entire world, there might be 1000 truly masterful, multi-decade experiential people.
King is one of them.
He had a term I liked, and that I've adopted since
"Tried and Proven".
Later on, I learned the term "Lindy Effect" from Taleb, which he himself got from a Mandelbrot (Mandelbrot is a real person), who himself got it from an Albert Goldman article in 1964, concerning the life cycle of Comedians.
What is the Lindy Effect though?
The Most absolutely simple definition that could be given
-The longer something has been around, the more likely it will continue to be around.
The mathematical version is a simple formula. Predicted life span is double the length of past life span-
L=2(P)
or
Y=2(X)
if you wanted to use X and Y
-If something has been around 1 year, it should be around 1 more year
-If something has been around 2 years, it should be around 2 more year
-If something has been around 3 years, it should be around 3 more years
-If something has been around 50 years, it should be around another 50
You can imagine how quickly something goes form 2-4-8-10-12, so on and so forth
To Note:
--This applies only to those things which remain in the original (or very close to it) iteration. Ie, things that dont change from the original form.
So example, something like BOOKS, which have not fundamentally changed in any way the past 500 years, we can presume they would be around another 500.
Or say something like the Barbell, which has been in popular use for about 100 years, we can presume another 100 years.
Or even with FOOD; pasta has been around thousands of years, pasta is very unlikely to "go away" anytime soon.
How to Predict Obsolescence and stay ahead of trends
Obsolescence: the process of becoming obsolete or outdated and no longer used.
"computers are infamous for their rapid obsolescence"
Taking Lindy effect into account, you can view the effects of technology from a broader and more informed perspective. The faster a technology changes, the more likely it is to:
-become obsolete
-be replaced
-create unintended third order effects (which can be negative or positive in their consequences)
You can also use this as a perspective to be skeptical of anything that claims to be a "new and improved" version of a previously Lindy Prove design.
Ie, the common gym persuasion tactic of, "Our new machines are STATE OF THE ART"
or
“A REVOLUTIONARY New system for fat loss”
Claims of revolution and being cutting edge should set of your BS detection
Why The Lindy Effect is Relevant
Within the current postmodernist historical revisionist ideological climate, there is a strong tendency to dismiss ANYTHING from "the past" as backwards.
Speaking solely to the fitness industry, this has led to some catastrophic health effects
-Abandonment of historical, seasonal diets (which kept people healthy for thousands of year)
-Demonization of healthy foods (natural fats, meat, breads), in favor of "new and improved foods" (processed foods)
-Promotion of unhealthy foods (processed foods and low fat), with no idea of long term effects (ie, the fucking horror that is vegetable oil/canola oil/soybean oil)
-Overlooking the polycasual factors that create long term health (socialization, activity, strong culture), and conflating metric factors without robust evidence (Salt is bad for you! Don't eat salt=bullshit)
-a massive obsession with data and a belief that metrics hold "answers" over experiential phenomenon (data tyranny is the tyranny of mono factor thinking applied to multifactor subjects)
-discarding proven strategies in favor of "cutting edge" ones in training and physical development (functional training that is anything but functional.
Lindy Models and the Way I Train People
Ive always been adverse to branding anything as a personal methodology or system, because I know there is no “one way” to accomplish any fitness goals. There are principles, there are models, there are systems, and there are methods.
This is not so good for marketing, but at least I can claim intellectual integrity.
Models requires holistic perspective, and you must learn "1st Order" knowledge, ie, learning the underlying principles/mechanisms that create a domain and that the domain operates within
Model thinking can also get you wandering off on rabbit holes, as some Models require vast amounts of learning to understand. (In some cases, you're better off following a "do as your told" system and not worrying about understanding something)
Lindy Training
How does this relate to working out and training though?
What I have found over the years is that "Lindy Strategies", ie, those ways of eating, training, take care of one's self, they positively affect and account for all the Principles that create a Model of Good health
Old-time strongmen and older training documents had NO DATA to measure the internal body with, they had to assess training off of displayed function and how long it WORKED over long periods of time.
They also often did not have standardized training implements either, so even assessing weight lifted could be a challenge.
This was also an era where "transformations" existed. And people were NOT overweight as they are today either. If they were, they were outliers, and their overconsumption was OBVIOUS
-Its amazing me how 100 years ago, everyone KNEW that overeating led to being fat, and that a diet of entirely processed food was inferior. Eugen Sandow wrote about this in the1910s. 110 years later, we are arguing about it still.
How did they train then?
-They followed 1st principles and paid attention to what was proven to work over long periods of time.
They couldn't even define the Principles in real scientific detail; no one in 1900 knew a fucking thing about muscle fiber type, or what muscle was precisely made from
But they could see that
-Robustly healthy people had phenomenal endurance and breathing power
-Truly athletic people were excellent at moving and possessed competence with low, middle, and high "reps". They could lift light things and heavy things both
-Muscle was characteristic of being strong. The more muscular you were, the better
-Physical development happened over long time frames, and required patience
-Overtraining, ie, training so much that you didnt adapt to training, this was NOT a good thing
-Whole food eating and diets high in meat and protein were what every "big and strong" culture universally ate
-Too much sugar and canned food and sweet foods were not good for dental health nor temperament
-Mindset and Body and Form were all expressive of each other, and mindpower was how one developed himself
If you were to read these texts, they're largely absent goals of any kind (they're surprisingly scant of anything like strength standards), and their "systems" they present are never hard and fast. Any "rules' are given cheekily.
There is nothing "new" in Health