You know, I’m seeing sort of a weird trend in the land of intrawebz fitness gurus.  Or at least some of the up-and-coming, kinda sorta self-proclaimed ‘gurus’.  Or whatever they call themselves.

And that trend is to throw the baby out with the bath water.  (As the old saying goes.)

Lemme explain.  In fact, I’ll use an example.

There’s a guy I see doing a bit of writing in the strength & conditioning community – especially with regards to athletes – now.  This dude is a younger guy – probably mid-20s or so.  His main claim to (or is that ’15 Minutes Of’?) fame has been some of the weight room accomplishments he’s been able to achieve.  As an athlete, he trained under a pretty big name and ultra-successful strength and sports performance coach.

The guy himself was an athlete, eventually playing sports at a semi-pro level.  But pro athletics never really worked out for him (hey – not everybody was destined to play ball on TV…no slight there), so he’s turned his eye to training and preparing athletes.

Like anybody that take what they do seriously, he got a formal education in physical training, and has not only busted his own ass training, but has obviously done a lot of reading and interacted with other pro trainers in the industry, trying to glean anything he could in the effort to make himself more knowledgeable.

Ok, so right about now, I’m sure you’re asking – “Wiggy – dude…what’s wrong with all this?  Why are you busting the guy’s balls?  Sounds like he’s going about it the right way.”

And you’d be right – I think it’s totally cool the way he’s immersed himself in the culture and with information for the sake of being the best he can be.  But he didn’t take long to jump the shark with the whole deal.

As of late (recent weeks/months), this dude has done a bunch of writing about guys he’s communicating with and studying under.  He’s obviously impressed with these guys, and feels everybody in the game (especially those looking to break into the S&C racket) should read, study, and hang on every word these guys write or say.  But now is when you’ll really start to scratch your head…

See, this guy’s newfound gurus train in a manner that’s pretty much the total opposite of everything he’s done, or how he was originally trained as an athlete.  And that’s cool – as the saying goes, there’s ‘more than one way to skin a cat’.  This is especially true in S&C.  If you wanted to get stronger, I could give you 6 different programs that would all be totally different, but still all work.

Besides, this guy’s original coach and his new idols really train athletes in TOTALLY different surroundings, with different circumstances, and in totally different timeframes.  So it stands to reason that their programming/methodology would look radically different.  No big deal there.

The thing that boggles MY mind, though, is that this guy seems to be ready to totally abandon and dismiss virtually everything his original coach ever taught him.  I mean, he doesn’t come out and say it in so many words, but the implication is there – his old coach is dead wrong, and the way he does things isn’t the way they should be done.

But…wait…back when you were a competitive athlete…and got the notoriety on the intrawebz for the stuff you were able to accomplish in the weight room…didn’t you develop those abilities because of how your old coach trained you?  Yet now, you’re saying it’s the wrong way to train?

*is completely confused*

THAT is the trend I’m seeing that I just don’t get.  With the internet (and especially the proliferation of social media in recent years), information is READILY available.  And that’s great – we live in a day and age that you can educate yourself with damn near limitless amounts of information.  And we should all be striving to consistently be learning new things – in all areas of our life.

But just because you learn something new DOES NOT mean that everything else you ever learned or did is all of a sudden somehow invalid or useless!  The point of educating yourself shouldn’t be to go from being one kinda groupie to the next – it should be getting new information, keeping what works for what you’re doing, and discarding the rest.

Not discarding everything and starting over.

I’ve been studying and training for…jeez…around 20 years now.  In that time, I’ve read about, done, experimented with, and seen damn near everything – pyramid training, HIT, bodybuilding, whole-body workouts, split-bodypart routines, sandbags, kettlebells, conjugate periodization, linear periodization, bands, long slow distance roadwork, HIIT, complex training, 5×5, 5/3/1, Crossfit, high-rep bodyweight training, MFD roadwork, hill sprints, odd object training, DB only workouts, density training, Singles & Doubles, grease the groove, medicine ball training, isometrics…I could go on for a while.

And there’s never been ANYTHING that as I went along, said “This sucks, I’m never doing it again.  It was stupid and now I’m onto something different.”  Well…maybe Crossfit.  But that’s a whole other argument.

My point is, when you learn something new, don’t go forgetting or dismissing everything else you’ve ever done just because you think you’ve now found ‘all you need to know’.  Because in the S&C game, as I said, there are a lot of different ways to accomplish the same goals.  Nobody is totally ‘right’.

But at the same time, nobody is totally ‘wrong’, either.

Have a kickass weekend.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard-
Matt “Wiggy” Wiggins
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