I'M NO EXPERT

If you are starting a sentence with “I’m no expert”, just stop.  All you have done is effectively prefaced your statement with “do not listen to the following”.  If you have to clarify that the input you are about to provide is uniformed and derived from a lack of experience, I question why you even feel that such a contribution would be relevant, helpful, or worthwhile.  Are you contributing, or are you simply filling silence with sound?  Is what you are about to say worthwhile, or is it simply you exercising your ability to express an opinion?

At least this guy committed to something

Why do people say “I’m no expert”?  It’s to provide themselves with some manner of verbal conversation insurance.  It’s a statement that absolves one of all liability and fallibility, for they preemptively outed themselves as incompetent.  The intent is so that, when called out for the lacking value in their statement, one can default back to their preface and say “I already said I wasn’t an expert”.

There is no insurance, there is no protection, there is simply reality.  If you lack the confidence in your knowledge and experience to be able to say a statement without prefacing that you aren’t actually qualified to contribute, then you are simply unqualified to contribute.  Have some integrity, own up to your thoughts and feelings, and express your ideas as they are.  If you are assisting someone, provide them with assistance.  If you lack the tools to effectively assist someone, stand down, you are not helping here.  To coincide with David Wong’s analogy in the amazing article of 6 Hash Truths That Will Make You A Better Person, the patient is dying here, and no one cares if you are a good person, only if you can save their life.  Your intentions are meaningless here, only the outcome matters, and if your contribution cannot assist, do not provide it.

If you aren't sacking the QB, you're just in the way

I bring this up due to the massive amount of misinformation, myth, conjecture, rumor, and bullshit that is spread on a daily basis about lifting, whether it be on forums or through conversation.  Everyone feels so eager to contribute their opinion, prefacing their thoughts with the fact that they are “no expert”.  All this does is prevent real, relevant and accurate information from reaching a target audience, for a new trainee with no ability to discern reality from fantasy must sort through an enormous amount of false information to be able to gain even a small nugget of truth.  For every 1 person expounding the value of heavy squatting, there are a thousand talking about how, they are no expert but they heard squats hurt your knees/back/liver/soul, or how too much protein causes cancer, or how muscle confusion is the key to success.

You don’t need to clarify that you are “no expert”, for your results show.  If you have had no success, do not advise others on how to achieve it.  Instead, study what others who have found success have done, compare it to what you are currently doing, find out where the gaps are, and close them.  The fat person giving advice on weight loss and the weak person giving advice on lifting are simply muddying the waters, and every time they clarify how they are “no expert” it is simply laughable.  Advise only on those areas where it is painfully obvious that you are qualified to contribute.  Be an expert, and give expert advice.  Do not simply parrot the experts, or what you heard from those who have heard from the experts, or what you’re pretty sure you remember reading from somewhere from the experts.

Become an expert, such that you can start your sentences with “I am an expert”.