THINKING ABOUT THINKING

I’m going to be honest with you readers: I haven’t read a study on lifting since about 2005 or so.  Some of you may be aghast at such a statement, but some of you may also be in the same boat as me and not even realize it, because reading an abstract about lifting is NOT the same thing as reading a study about lifting.  I’ve already digressed from my main point, so getting back on track, the truth is, I genuinely don’t care about what any study has to say on the topic of lifting.  About the only exception to this is when Will Ruth over at r/strongman shares studies with me, but even then, he tends to do it with stuff that is more related to coaching than lifting, and we have many shared interests on the topic.  As for books on lifting, I haven’t read anything remotely academic on the topic since about 2008.  I greatly enjoyed Jim Wendler’s “5/3/1 Forever”, but that was more a tome on all things 5/3/1 rather than all things lifting.  Otherwise, the only book I read about lifting these days is an annual read through of Paul Kelso’s “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style”, as it’s an incredibly enjoyable and told as a story, rather than an academic text.  What I tend to gravitate towards reading, whenever I have the opportunity, is philosophy.  Why?  Because I’m not interested in learning how to think about lifting: I want to learn how to think about thinking.

Although not enough that I'm willing to kick a woman down a flight of stairs...

Allow me to inflict a multi-pronged assault on you here.  One of the biggest reasons I advise trainees NOT to read studies is due to the sheer, uncomfortable, stark, true reality that many individuals simply lack the ability to UNDERSTAND studies.  Folks, my undergrad and masters was in POLITICAL science, and even with that barely tangentially related “scientific” aspect to my education I can tell you that there is SO much that needs to be understood when it comes to studies that, as a layman, it’s best to not trust your own ability.  Do you have a necessary understanding on what makes a sample size relevant, or how to prevent biasing in the collection said sample sizes, or which method of measuring outcomes is free of bias AND accepted within its own community, or what is considered statistically significant when measuring outcomes, or etc etc etc.  Studies can be great for the people that are trained and educated to understand them, but for the vast majority of people, having access to them just confuses them, and when read with an intent to specifically prove or disprove a belief, they’re basically worthless.  Actually, not worthless: dangerous. 

The above paragraph is already going to chap a lot of folks, but if it does, ask yourself if you’re the exact kind of person I’m talking about when you get mad about it.  Then see if you can find an individual educated on the topic and see if they agree with me or agree with you.  After that, allow me to get into my other issue when it comes to the reading of studies: all this does is teach you something about lifting.  Isn’t that worthwhile if you want to get better at lifting?  Ya know, maybe it CAN be, but, alternatively, I find that all studies do is LIMIT an individual rather than enhance them.  When a trainee reads that “protein synthesis is maximized with 72 hours of training”, they just sigh with resignation and go “well I guess 3x a week full body training is the best and only way to train”, and eliminate for themselves a SIGNIFICANT amount of training programs and opportunities.  They read that the squat and the deadlift release a significant amount of growth hormones and, with defeat, resign themselves to HAVING to have squats and deadlifts in every single program they ever run.  It’s rarely a case of “now I have a secret weapon” and far more often “now I have an albatross around my neck”.  And, consequently, rarely do I ever have someone share a study with me to share with me that I’m right about something, but more to “prove” to me that I’m wrong about something because a study says it’s not possible.

Well good luck with all that

My interest, instead, is to learn how to think about thinking rather than how to think about lifting.  In the case of the latter, I rely on someone/something else to tell me WHAT to think when it comes to lifting, which is fundamentally just being an information bank, holding and dispensing words from studies (ideally CORRECTLY remembered, but often not).  With the advent of the internet and electronically stored memory, it honestly seems silly, for I can simply look up information as needed rather than have to memorize tomes of it.  Thinking, true thinking, is not simply memorizing information and recalling it when needed.  You can train a fish to do that trick.  Thinking is taking that information and being able to comprehend it, extrapolate it, apply it and, if necessary, totally reject it.  Going even further, thinking eventually reaches a point where no new information is needed in order to reach new conclusions but, instead, all one needs is new WAYS of thinking in order to reach new conclusions based off old information.

Yes, so many trainees feel that what is lacking in their lives is information when, in truth, what they lack is the ability to take what is already out there and think about it in a new way.  The human body has existed for millennia, making it work hard has existed for just as long, there’s genuinely not going to be anything new under the sun when it comes to making it get bigger and stronger: all that’s limiting us is how we THINK about approaching it.  I read philosophy because I want to learn about different ways to THINK about thinking, and I take that different way to think about thinking and use it to think about getting bigger and stronger.  And the more I learn how to think about thinking, the LESS limitations I find.  Whereas those that dedicate themselves to learning how to “think about lifting” tend to wind up only knowing one way to go about the process, I continue to find more and more ways to get bigger and stronger.

And ways to not do that

Instead of getting into study wars with people, where you go back and forth citing different studies and tearing apart the methods of your opposition, allow yourself to not CARE about what the studies say.  If someone quotes something at you “proving” that you’re wrong, allow yourself to be unaffected by this.  All this person is demonstrating to you is that they have given up on thinking and are putting all faith, trust and confidence in one source.  This information is all already out there, it’s been out there forever, it’s simply a question of how you want to think about it.  If you’ve already found a way to think that contradicts what in that study, it simply means the studies need to keep up with your thinking: NOT the other way around.  Continue to expand how you think about thinking and you will continue to find more ways to think about anything you want to think about and, in turn, more and more ways to succeed.