Dogma Revisited and the Price of Conformity - The Selling of Strength Training

Dare to be different. Why? You'll go viral, that's why. The world is awash in a sea of conformity. The internet even more so. Anybody who says something contrary to the mainstream will stand out. Regardless of the real value of his or her message. This creates a marketing potential for any idea that is primarily conceived to simply differ from that which is considered mainstream or dogma. I actually received a newsletter about an article that introduced the article by saying this:

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Fitness: All Encompassing Means Paralyzing?

So in the last post I presented the talk by Dr. Barry Schwartz regarding “The Paradox of Choice”. Also of late I have been speaking about having specific goals in our training and making specific choices about the direction our training should take.

If you read my piece on the concept of fitness you’ll see that I don’t think much of the word. Yes, I use it on occasion for brevity or convenience but depending on your perspective it’s either to vague or too all-encompassing.

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The Paradox of Choice by Dr. Barry Schwartz

Confession. I'm a real geek for Ted Talks. I particularly love this talk by Dr. Barry Schwartz. If you don’t relate to most of the things Schwartz talks about in this video then you may have already discovered the secret to happiness!

Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore and author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More". In the talk he makes a great case for how the abundance of choice in our affluent Western society is making us miserable. The story Dr. Schwartz relates about buying a new pair of jeans made me laugh because that is ME. I want that pair of jeans too…the kind that used to be the only kind.

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Self Control: Not all its Cracked Up To Be

More and more, everyone is learning that "diets" don't work. Sure, people drop weight on diets but they fail to make a lasting change. I don't need to go into this, you know all about yo-yo dieting. Despite this there are still plenty of judgmental folks (who probably wouldn't know a problem if it bit them in the tuchus) who will say stuff like, "jeez, what ever happened to old fashioned self-control?"

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Strength Performance Psychology Versus Physiology: It's All Mental

I've complained and I've complained about silly quantitative notions concerning the factors that determine success. It's 20% percent training, 80% nutrition and stuff like that. Complete and utter nonsense. Says nothing. Contributes nothing.

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Strength Training Motivation And Goal Setting

Why do you strength train? Are you even clear on the reasons? Do they change from week to week? With so much emphasis on goals perhaps we are missing something even more fundamental and vital. Motivation. What good are goals when you are not even clear what motivates you to do what you do?

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Strength Training and Nutrition Dogma

Modern strength training has, in recent times, aligned itself with science more than ever in the past. Unfortunately the majority of the industry has no clear knowledge of the scientific process and in fact, doesn't really know what science is. Most strength trainers who use science tend to point to science as if it is a thing. However, although we use the word as if it means a concrete thing it is rather a practice or system of acquiring knowledge. When we ask "what's the science on this?" what we really should be asking is "what is the state of knowledge on this?".

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Static Contraction (Isometrics) Transfers to Full Range Strength? A Post on Pseudoscience

This was several years back, but still a great example of the kind of thing that goes on in this industry, which is just as plagued with pseudoscience as any other. Did I just state the obvious? I think I did.

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Going to the Heart of Things: Break the "Advanced" Mess Down to Its Essence

I complained about the misuse of quotes in fitness articles in my first Bad Fitness Article post. While writing the last post in that series I was thinking about the mess of programs and so-called advanced training techniques and this caused me to go all philosophical. So I wanted to see if I could use quotes in a useful and legitimate way to illustrate some of my ideas in this area. I called on two of my favorites and went from Bruce Lee to Emerson.

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Muscle Dissatisfaction in Adult Young Men

Men are increasingly concerned about the way they look: a moderately or extremely muscular body is widely accepted as an ideal body shape for young men, creating discrepancy between the actual and desired body size and shape [1-5].

Young men who are dissatisfied with their body shape and musculature may be more likely to turn to bodybuilding, dietary supplements, and anabolic steroids to shape their bodies [6,7]. The pursuit of muscularity has been associated with significant behavioural and psychological problems [4]. However, it is also plausible that exercise, weight training, and even competitive bodybuilding may actually improve men's body image [8-10].

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Spotting Bad Fitness Articles: Dinosaurs Go Extinct

As you peruse the internet you will come across fitness and strength writers who have written a great many articles or at least whose opinions are freely available in some form. Chances are you'll find someone who was writing articles in the year 2000 and is still writing them today, in 2010. Pay attention to the dates. Pay attention to the evolution. Ten years is a long time. Heck even five years is a long time and for me one year is long enough to turn my thinking on a subject one hundred sixty degrees.

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Giving Legs to Restless Leg

Life can be hard. Sometimes you feel sad or distracted or anxious. Or maybe you feel a compelling urge to move your legs. But does that mean you are sick? Does it mean you need medication?

Maybe, maybe not. For some people, symptoms are severe enough to be disabling. But for many others with milder problems, these “symptoms” are just the transient experiences of everyday life. Helping sick people get treatment is a good thing. Convincing healthy people that they are sick is not. Sick people stand to benefit from treatment, but healthy people may only get hurt: they get labeled “sick,” may become anxious about their condition, and, if they are treated, may experience side effects that overwhelm any potential benefit.

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Spotting Bad Fitness Articles: Assumptions are Critical

Assumptions are a perfect subject for this third post in the series. The first two I think held no real surprises. For this one, I wanted to write about something that would challenge your assumptions so I decided to write about assumptions themselves.

A good fitness article must make assumptions. There, I'll bet that threw at least some of you. I mean, aren't the best fitness writers omniscient?

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Spotting Bad Fitness Articles: Unusual Words, Jargon, and Journalese

Bad fitness articles are a nickel a dozen. True, this is only my second post on how to spot bad articles but I have enough ideas to keep this going for a long time. You may be wondering where this guy gets off talking about bad writing. Well I am not talking about bad writing per se.

Although there is much overlap between these things and bad writing in general, the spots aim to uncover bad articles, not bad writing. My writing may not always be up to even my standards for instance but while I have written articles that I would consider poorly written not very often have I written something which I consider to be bad content.

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Spotting Bad Fitness Articles: Quotes

I am starting this series of blog posts as a tongue in cheek¹ way of helping you spot bullshit in fitness articles. You may know that I don't like the term fitness so I am using it purely out of convenience. These posts will be simple lists of 1 to 5 things that should signal BS to you. This does not mean the article in question is BS; only that you should be on BS alert as you consider it.

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