So many fitness bloggers and professionals fail to understand survivorship bias. They
model their advice around what they see working best for a handful of
outliers with little regard to safety, recoverability or sustainability.
In their minds, willpower is the limiting factor and that any failures
rest with the individual and not their training protocol. They look for
successes as proof their training advice is solid and never question if a
safer path would have yielded the same or similar results.
Things get real confusing when some of these fitness professionals
demonstrate signs of brilliance with their understanding of nutrition or
other health topics. But when it comes to resistance training, they
fail to question the failures of conventional wisdom as anything more
than a failure of the individual.
Photo by Marco Crupi Visual Artist. My readers already know what I think of the “Must Squat” mentality.
How the mind of a fitness professional gets warped is understandable.
Those that get results stick around, those that don’t go away and are
replaced with new clients. Over time, the trainer sees more and more
successes, which they believe are in part a result of their expertise.
The failures are hidden. The successes are now financially supporting
the trainer. Those that can train more often and recover faster are the
best customers.
I could go on and on, but I think this is root of many problems in fitness. Fitness advice is geared towards survivors, not towards reducing the failure rate.
Instead of seeking the minimal sustainable dose, the industry pushes
recommendations to higher than necessary volumes of exercise. When you
question their recommendations, their defense is to point to a handful
of survivors as evidence their way works. Failures be damned.
