Trace a training rule back to its evidence before you build a programme on it

The short version

Your coach told you something their coach told them. Somewhere back down that line a person had a reason, and by the time it reached you it arrives as a rule with the reason stripped off. Ask where a rule came from and you get the reason back, and the reason is the thing you can actually programme with.

Key Takeaways

• A lot of programming advice gets passed down and repeated until it sounds like fact. It has names: call to authority, call to history, call to region, call to nature.
• Research is about finding the best question, and then the best fit group of evidence, to help you make a decision for your client.
• That skill can be short cut. The Fitness Programming Specialist exists to do exactly that.

The information viruses

It is tempting to call all the hand-me-down advice folklore, but it is more specific than that. It is call to authority: a famous coach said it, so it must be true. Call to history: it has always been done this way, so it must work. Call to region: the Bulgarian deadlift and other such bollocks, as if a squat gets better for having a passport. Call to nature: primal movement hits almost all of them at once, because any animal move is a bastard.

These are the information viruses that live in our industry, unchecked and left to fester in gurus who know no better. None of them are evidence. Every one of them is a story doing the job evidence should be doing.

The immunity is a research skill

Research is about finding the best question, and then the best fit group of evidence, to help you make a decision for your client. That is the whole job. Not drowning in journals, not pretending to be a scientist. Question first, evidence second, decision for the person in front of you.

And here is the pleasant surprise: taught by someone who would rather be training than reading papers, the research bit turns out to be enjoyable. It is detective work. A confident claim walks in, the question gets asked, and either the evidence stands it up or the claim leaves the building.

Where to build it

I short cut the time it takes to learn that by helping you find out what you need to know. That is what the Fitness Programming Specialist is: the questions worth asking, the evidence worth trusting, worked through together until the reasoning behind a programme is yours rather than inherited. The PT Manager runs alongside, so the reasoning goes straight into real programmes. Like everything at FASTER it can be read, watched, written or spoken aloud, whichever way it sticks.

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