DID YOU HAVE A QUESTION?

I am notorious for asking the question “did you have a question?” at a variety of locations online. I enjoying answering questions about training, part of it out of a love for helping others get situated (I get genuinely excited at the prospect of starting training from the beginning and all the adventure that comes from growth) and part of it is simply because it’s something that helps me pass time when things are going slow otherwise.  I will venture to locations online that are specifically dedicated for new individuals to ask questions so that experienced trainees can answer them.  Yet, frequently, I need to ask the question “did you have a question?”  Why?  We’ll let’s play a game at home and see if you can spot the issue with phrase such as these.

“I have a question.  I’m 6’5, 210lbs, and my TDEE is 2600 calories.  I’ve been eating 2200 calories a day for a week, but I’m not losing weight?”

“I have a question.  I want to get started on 5/3/1 Building the Monolith, but I just saw a youtube video that said that doing more than 1 set per bodypart is “junk volume?”

“I have a question.  I want to start squatting, but I train along and I’m worried about what happens if I fail a rep?”

You have no idea how often I have felt this response was necessary

Did you figure it out?  Even though these were sentences with question marks at the end, none of them were questions: they were simply statements.  And don’t mistake this for me just being crotchety talking about how the current generation is murdering the English language: I’m sure I’ve already done that rant before, and will do it again.  No, today I’m being crotchety about the passivity people employ in their dialogue, in an attempt to remove onus from themselves entirely.  People don’t even want to be the one responsible for asking the question in the first place: they simply want to put information out there in the universe, have OTHER people form their question for them and THEN answer the question that they made up.

Why is this?  Because it is HARD to admit ignorance, and especially so in this day and age, and especially so on the internet.  Believe me, I get it.  The internet has made cruelty incredibly easy to the point it’s practically the default setting of every human, to the point that no matter HOW much I try to make my communication as direct as possible online, it’s almost always interpreted as being sarcastic.  People are needlessly ruthless, and the instant someone shows any degree of ignorance on any topic, they are lambasted, typically by people whose sole advantage is that they wikipedia’d an article mere seconds before the other individual.  So yes, absolutely I understand that it IS hard to stand out in the public forum of the internet and declare “I don’t know.”

Believe me: even if you don't say it, people can tell

However, this admission of ignorance is necessary in order to begin the process of learning.  Socrates, love him or hate him (whole lotta folks went with the latter during his time), was essentially famous for being one of the first people to admit that he didn’t know ANYTHING.  It was because he was willing to operate off this initial premise that he was able to start unraveling a lot of presumed knowledge in the world and start getting down to the root of ideas, concepts, and the things that we all “knew”.  Once one operates off the premise that they don’t know anything, they’re very much able to fully learn and absorb brand new ideas, whereas trying to reconcile new information off previously established dogma most often runs into some manner of cognitive dissonance wherein that new information gets distorted to fit into the current paradigm, resulting in little value.

A fun story from my own youth comes from when I went to high school.  I was in public schools up until high school, at which point I was enrolled in a Catholic school.  I was raised without religion, and required to take Catholic education courses each semester for all 4 years.  I graduated high school as the top theology student of my graduating class, beating out kids that had attended Sunday school as children and received Catholic education courses in elementary and middle school.  What gives?  My theory is that you educate a pre-school student SUBSTANTIALLY different than you would a high school student on the Bible (such as maybe leaving out the bits on incest, concubines, genocide, and a whole lot of the new testament), and that previous education now has to reconcile with the “new” education given in high school.  Absent that previous “knowledge”, I was able to just start absorbing the information being given to me straight away.  My mind was clean: I was ignorant.

I gotta admit though: my initial image of priests resulted in disappointment when I met my first real one...

In turn, one must acknowledge the empowerment of ignorance: it is an admission that one does not know, and, in turn, they are ready to be filled with knowledge.  And think of how awesome that is: because if you made it THIS far knowing nothing, just imagine the damage you’ll do once you know something?  This, in turn, is why those that cling so desperately to the idea that they know something serve to damage their own egos in their attempts to protect them.  When you argue until you’re blue in the face that you DO in fact know something, it’s pretty goddamn embarrassing when someone looks at your results and says “So wait, you know what you’re doing and you STILL haven’t succeeded?  What the hell?”  Reference my “How Much Ya Bench” argument.  But when you’re willing to finally admit that you don’t know something, you’re now set up and primed for getting better. 

It also means that there’s no shame in not knowing, so long as one is willing to make such an admission.  The only shame is when one does not know something but refuses to admit it.  As much as I am notorious for asking “Did you have a question?”  I am also notorious for saying “I don’t know”.  People mistakenly believe that I have knowledge on all things training and training adjacent when, in fact, my scope is honestly pretty small.  I know how to make MYSELF bigger and stronger, and I tend to answer all questions with what I would do, rather than what an individual should do, but even then I will get asked questions about micronutrients, mobility exercises, Olympic lifts, specific diets, etc etc, and in all cases I am willing to say flat out “I don’t know.”  And not only do I unburden myself from having to answer that question, but I alleviate that individual asking that question from having to employ the drivel I would have spouted in an attempt to save internet face. 

See these people get it.  And sweet: TWO Futurama images

So please, if you have a question, ASK a question.  Be willing to fully admit to your ignorance, express that you don’t know something, that you would like to know more about it, and what specifically you would like to know.  Admit it to yourself and to your audience, and be willing and able to receive the new information without previous “knowledge” getting in the way.  You’ll find that the joy of growth will outweigh the minor sting of having to admit to being imperfect.

(EDIT: As I went to post this, I just realized my previous week’s work was about “Questions Strong People Don’t Ask”.  How about that?  Haha!)