Something I have noticed is a growing contingent who treat studies by exercise scientists as Holy Writ.
Hence, they won’t even consider, much less try something that doesn’t have at least half a dozen studies to back it up – apparently ignorant to the gaping flaws inherent to this approach.
Flaws such as…
* Exercise science being a woefully underfunded field, resulting in much of the literature consisting of studies performed by students on their peers (this is why a typical sample is something along the lines of “10 untrained males”),
* The stuff that is well funded almost exclusively deals with performance in elite athletes (so is basically irrelevant to the general population for more reasons than I can be bothered to list),
* Agenda pushing by ALL sides in the exercise science world is frighteningly common (far worse than even what we saw with the pokey-poke back in 2021),
* Anyone who can string a sentence together and front up a grand or two for the qualification can become a personal trainer, meaning there are many scientifically illiterate folk skimming abstracts on PubMed and regurgitating their “findings” to give their bizarre methods an air of authority (because they’re too chicken to sell the basics),
* Despite record numbers of people participating in what I would call serious training, backed “more” and “better” science, the typical trainee is fatter and weaker than he has ever been (a decline I have witnessed first hand over the last fifteen years),
More:
Stuff I have done personally and with clients (for example, my twice weekly lifting schedule) flies in the face of what The Science™ says “should” work, yet is far and away more productive than what I am told is optimal.
In fact, some of the least effective programmes I have ever seen in terms of the results they produce for ordinary working people are ones that are backed by a strong evidence base.
Obviously the factors I have just listed (particularly those pertaining to the quality of studies) play a large part in that. But I also think the trainees themselves shoulder much of the blame.
How so?
Every honest person will admit we already know what is worth knowing about how to construct an efficient, effective, safe, and sustainable training programme.
They would also admit that the reason they don’t get the results they want is that they don’t work hard enough for long enough, have limitations on what they can achieve due to bad decisions made years (sometimes many years) in the past, or, in most cases, some combination of the two.
Certainly not comfortable thoughts to sit with.
Which is why they flee into the comforting confines of the Church of Exercise Science, where the priestly class of academics are waiting to tell them what to think and what to do because it gives them someone else to blame when things inevitably don’t go their way.
All right, enough of this.
For a historical rather than scientific approach to training, I recommend my short, yellow, and inexpensive book:
“The Muscle and Strength Building Manual for the Natural Trainee”
It is available from Amazon via the below link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Muscle-Strength-Building-Natural-Trainee-ebook/dp/B0DL4G6C1B
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman
P.S. The book has just one review, so if you are worried about spending a small amount of money on a book you might not like please give it a miss.
On the other hand, if you do purchase a copy, please leave your honest star rating and, if you are feeling particularly generous, a few sentences about what you liked and/or did not like about it.