ENTERTAINMENT: NOT EDUCATION

Suggestion of this blog post comes by way of my buddy Will, and it gives me full license to put on my old man hat and rage against modern society and the internet, so you know I’m on board.  I have written on several occasions about how much lifting social media I DON’T consume.  You’ll note that I’ve WRITTEN about this: that’s because that’s my preferred way to consume media.  Primarily because, after years of writing ALONG with the years of reading I did beforehand, I can read at a much faster rate than most people can speak information to me.  In addition, I tend to retain it better.  And along with all that, written media is very perfect for “pick up and play” stuff:  I can stop whenever I need to and start again at my leisure, and it’s super simple to “rewind” something if I missed it the first time.  I, however, do appear to be the minority in regards to this preferred style of media, as there are FAR more youtube, instagam, tik-tok, and other video platform channels out there than there are written blogs about training.  But you’re reading this, so thanks!  We may be kindred spirits.

Or probably just this

So now that I’m done patting myself on the back for writing about lifting things, allow me to speak to my issues with many of these video channels.  As I previously wrote: I like written media because I can consume it at the rate I wish to do so.  I can quickly blitz through it, or spend hours agonizing over the details.  Video channels try to operate in the opposite manner: THEY wish to dictate the rate at which information is presented.  Primarily because, the longer your eyes are glued to the channel, the more opportunities sponsors and advertisers have to grab your attention and get your money.  If I were to write an advertisement into this blog, not only would it be totally immersion breaking and work against my very message, but it would also be easy to “skip” compared to shoe-horning something into a video.  

This, in turn, means it behooves the content creator to take a LONG time to get to any sort of valuable/meaningful information, and its most often “hidden” somewhere within the video so you can’t just skip to it without seeing all that sweet, sweet advertising.  As my Grandpa used to call it, it’s a “long climb for a short slide”.  You get long-winded meandering videos with a bunch of jump-cut edits to appeal to our alarmingly short attention spans so that we stay tuned and watch the full 10 minutes for the 15 seconds of goodies.

While they promised you double stuffed...

Which, then, segues into the second (and more significant) issue: how do we keep making MORE content to attract a consistent viewership?  As I’ve written about before regarding there not being anything left to read about (of which, the irony did not escape me then, nor does it escape me now): there’s nothing really new, different or all that interesting about lifting weights.  Folks: Pat Casey figured out how to bench press 600lbs 60 years ago on a bench that you wouldn’t pick up for free on the side of the road, and he did it in a tank top. Why don’t you try to meet that mark FIRST before you start worrying about RIR and junk volume.  So what’s a fitness social media channel to do when there is so little to say and so much time to fill?

We turn to entertainment!  Because that’s what social media is!  Or, at least, what it has become.  We saw this same “evolution” with the news.  “The news” used to be a 1 hour segment on your local television broadcast that summed up the day’s activities (man, I bet some of you folks don’t even know about an era where the TV dictated when shows came on and you had a paper guide that told you what time and channel to watch…but I digress).  It was to the point, primarily because it HAD to be.  Now, with 24 hour news stations, news has become entertainment, and each channel has a specific demographic it is attempting to appeal to in order to retain its viewership.  Your favorite social media channels are doing the same thing!  Because it works!

When art imitates life

And before I go further into my tirade: folks, I don’t hate the player here.  I, of course, hate the game.  But it’s worth appreciating when you’re being played, so you can enjoy the game for the fun that it is instead of taking it too seriously.  No one likes that dude who flips over the Monopoly board.  It’s fake money: let it go.

What is the implication of this?  It means that these channels are NOT information sources; they are ENTERTAINMENT sources.  And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with using them as such.  I find myself with downtime at work and will navigate my way to Brian Shaw’s channel to watch him eat a prodigious amount of food, …and Geoff Esper for that matter.  I also really enjoyed Man vs Food.  I think I’m learning something about myself.  But in either case: whenever I want to shut off my brain and let youtube entertain me, I know I can go there.  

I don't even try to understand it

HOWEVER, the issue comes when people start to BELIEVE the kayfabe.  This is show business people: “reality TV” has writers; that should tell you all you need to know.  I constantly observe dudes who have never even BEEN to a strongman competition tell other trainees “Strongman eat 10,000 calories a day, EVERY DAY, and still keep their abs”.  No: that one strongman did that ONE time because it made for an entertaining video.  Note all the pomp and circumstance surrounding it?  Their daily lives can’t sustain that, because they have to actually go about LIVING.  Don’t try to live your life based off a meme. 

It’s the same with training.  These dudes aren’t setting PRs every time they train: they’re only releasing training footage WHERE they set PRs.  Why? Because that’s entertaining!  A regular training session is boring, primarily because boring training is what produces big and strong athletes.  The “sexy” stuff is what you earn AFTER the boring training.  I’ve written about this before using a DnD analogy: you grind levels so you can fight bosses.  You’re watching all the boss fights: you aren’t seeing ANY of the millions of fights against goblins.

Although sometimes all people want to watch is a bunch of one-sided fights

My most absolute BRUTAL and effective training blocks were ALL terribly boring.  Load up the bar, do 10x10 squats, die, come back to life, stagger inside, eat and repeat.  No one wants to watch that.  But I will upload the videos of me squatting a set of 50 where I collapse on the floor and convulse and it will get a TON of views and comments….and some folks will think it’s how I ALWAYS train.  Folks, I EARNED that squat set by all those awful workouts that led up to it.  And don’t get me started on the literal hundreds of thousands of reps of band pull aparts I’ve done: no one wants to see that, but it’s probably one of the biggest contributors to my success. 

There is so much GOOD information out there, ready for the picking, if your goal is to get bigger and stronger.  Read “Purposeful Primitive”, “Powerlifting Basics Texas Style”, “The Complete Keys to Progress”, “Super Squats”, “Brawn”, “5/3/1 Forever”, “The Metroflex Powerbuilding Basics Book”, or “Never Let Go”.  You’ll be SO far ahead and ready to take on any physical goal.  And there are definitely plenty of entertaining channels to watch.  But DON’T mix your entertainment and education together.  Take them for what they are.  “Edutainment” just took two good things and combined them into something less than: like a soup sandwich.  

The nutritional equivalent of mixing Westside with Deep Water

And if you’re not willing to do that: take video of your results and post them, so we can all be entertained.