THIS ISN’T QUANTUM PHYSICS: THERE IS NO OBSERVER EFFECT

This title is a mouthful and definitely me flexing my big brain that I got from episodes of Futurama and Clutch lyrics, but stick with me here.   The “observer effect” is summarized as “the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation”.  I know its poor form when defining a word to include the word within the definition, but if you need me to sum that up: it means that, when you look at something to try to obtain information from it, the thing you’re looking at changes because it’s being looked at.  We see this with humans all the time: tell people you’re going to observe their nutritional habits and suddenly it’s all salads and whole grains and no fast food, tell them you’re going to observe their fitness habits and that’s the day “couch to 5k” starts.  But, to the surprise of absolutely no one, I am once again going to rally against science and say that, for you, gentle reader, there IS no observer effect.

Yes, this is exactly where I learned about this

 

What am I getting at it?  I’m ultimately rallying against the overreliance of numbers and data and how often a trainee will try to employ the “reality” of data to refute the reality of…reality.  Examples?  Sure.  How often do we observe (hah!) the individual that claims that they’re ONLY eating 800 calories a day of lettuce and sadness and they STILL can’t lose weight!  They’re doing EVERYTHING right, they have the nutritional logs to prove it, multiple doctors have confirmed that they have no disorders, so they must just be a broken human in some way, shape or form.  But here’s the thing: none of that matters.  Reality is going to change just because you assigned a number to it.  The facts are facts: you aren’t losing weight.  Weight is lost by eating less food.  It doesn’t matter how much you are or are not eating: less food needs to be eaten.

 

The reverse holds true as well.  I am frequently spending time on forums and locations trying to help young trainees put on muscular size, and each and every time I’m greeted with the same story.   “I eat 9000 calories a day and I’m LOSING weight!  I have 14 big macs for breakfast each day and wash it down with a gallon of chocolate milkshakes.  I can’t get over 128lbs!”  Once again: your state of reality does not change simply because you’ve observed it and assigned a number to it.  It does not matter what that number is, it does not matter how that number relates to other numbers, your body will not suddenly start growing now that you’ve PROVEN that you’re eating 9000 calories a day.  It appears, gentle reader, you may need to consume 9000 and 1 calories a day in order to gain.

So, like, all this and a breathmint

 

And this is just discussing food, because that’s a fun topic to discuss, but we see it all the time with training too.  Hell, we really see the self-sabotage of it with training.  Trainees will be making tremendous success with a training method, breaking personal records, achieving goals, enjoying the outcome, but they read/hear/see somewhere that what they’re doing ISN’T optimal…so they change it.  And disaster follows.  The system was working, it wasn’t going to suddenly STOP working simply because information arrived saying as such.  The presence of other successful methods of training does not invalidate success PREVIOUSLY experienced with a successful method.

 

Oh boy does 5/3/1 get a LOT of that.  This is a great tangent to go off of.  SO many folks criticize Jim Wendler for having released multiple books on his training method.  “I got 5/3/1 Forever and I HATE the leaders and anchors.  Everything is reps of 5 now.  I miss the old way where we went for rep PRs every workout.”  You mean you miss the old way from 2009 that WORKED?!  If it worked in 2009, what’s to prevent it from STILL working?  Just because Jim has evolved the system DOESN’T mean that the previous editions no longer work: it simply means he found OTHER ways to make it work, and possibly even BETTER ways to do so, and he’s sharing them with you…but you don’t HAVE to do them.  You can use ANY of the successful methods.  Because they work.

"Why won't he make his simple system more complicated!"

 

No different from Super Squats.  Book came out in the 80s.  Worked then.  It’s based off an approach to training written about in the 60s and 70s: worked then.  And it comes from pioneers that were lifting in the 30s and 40s: worked then too.  Are there “better” ways to train now?  Maybe so: but we DEFNIITELY know that Super Squats worked, and, by extension, works.  We KNOW that a gallon of milk a day works.  We can take ALL this valuable, USABLE historical information and employ it to continue to succeed.  AND, if we decide we want to deviate from that and try ANOTHER method: that’s dandy too.  Maybe IT will also work.

 

And consequently, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing everything “right” if it’s NOT WORKING.  I’ve dealt with so many trainees that share ridiculously complex spreadsheets with me detailing down to the calf raise their precise amount of sets, reps, exercises, reps in reserve, rest times, frequency, etc etc, PROOVING that they are training EXACTLY right...and wondering why they’re not getting results.  They’re not getting results because their training ISN’T right: irrespective of how many times they prove that it is.  Reality is reality: you cannot change it by observing and measuring it.  If you are NOT getting results, what you are doing is NOT working.  Do something different.  What should it be?  ANYTHING.  Do ANYTHING other than what you’re doing.  What you’re doing isn’t working.

I mean...

 

Stop trying to codify chaos.  It’s such a human thing to try to wrestle control away from the cosmos and claim mastery of our fate, but the truth is that we’re all winging this as we go and are slaves to the outcomes of our actions.  At best, we can try to vector the flow of reality in a favorable way, but this necessitates having to bend TO reality when it bends us.  When we follow ALL the rules and get none of the results, it’s not reality that’s wrong: it’s the rules.  Somehow, someway, they do NOT apply to us, and it’s up to us to make our own rules and employ them to achieve our own results.  OTHER people will observe the outcomes, and them doing so won’t change reality: we are awesome.