Banksy is in NYC doing some graffiti all around the New York boroughs. While I’m not an artsy or graffiti guy, I can appreciate some of his work. This one in particular stuck out because in the fitness field, personal trainers and coaches like to (mis)use quotes from “Fitness Gurus” and research studies to sounds intelligent or attempt to back up there statements.
Russian, Chinese, Eastern Block texts
What’s been popular over the last few years is trying to back up arguments or articles via stating well the “Russians do this…”. The mere statement of using terms like, “the Soviet system”, suddenly empowers the statement or article, without any merit.
Before you flip a lid, there are great experts that have thoroughly discussed some of the soviet systems such as Prof. Verkhosansky’s translated articles and books. While there are great information out there for you to read, the issue I take is the misuse of statements and the attempt to “boost” your articles or credit by merely stating the Russians, Chinese, eastern european etc…
Some young trainers will quote russian translated text and state this is the DEFINITIVE way to do it…why? Because the RUSSIANS do it or this is the CHINESE method etc… 1) I hate definitive statements like this, how can attempt to tie a WHOLE country to ONLY one method because you read a few books or watched a youtube video on it. 2) you fail to take into consideration the population, training age, country’s motivation, sport clubs restrictions, etc…
*From my understanding, most countries have a classification system for the athlete and coaches. Within each region the coaches will have different approaches but the classification system remains.
Fitness Research Abstracts
I’m all for personal trainers progressing themselves by staying up to date on current research projects. The issue I have is when personal trainers only look into the abstracts but fail to take into consideration the application, focus, and translation of X research project.
A few research project come to mind:
“Squatting below parallel is bad for your knees”
This is based off of Dr. Karl Kleins research which ending up being completely flawed. I don’t want to go into a long drawn out write up about this, if you’d like you can read it about it more indepth here: Deep Squats
“You can only ingest 20g of protein, therefore you shouldn’t eat any more than that”
While I believe the research is generally true, the application is the issue here. If you limit yourself to eat no more than 20g of protein per meal, than what can potentially happen? The potential to not be full and reach for that dessert menu is probably at a higher risk…John Berardi has a really great write up on it HERE
Final Thoughts
In the end my point isn’t to knock anyone for continuing their fitness education to develop their personal training career. The problem is the misuse (sometimes purposeful) of quotes and research to sound as if you’re an expert. This mentality waters down the fitness field, as young trainers become influenced by crappy information.
Stay strong,
Team Fusion Trained