SSP 26. Learning in a Crowded Fitness Industry - a podcast by Scott Abel, Mike Forest

An “experts” will tell you to listen to them, and tune everyone else out. the only problem is every expert says this, including the ones who disagree. So: how do you deal with this? How do you know who to listen to? How do you learn? (Or… “learn to learn”?) How do you separate out the wheat from the chaff? The wisdom and science from the pseudoscience and nonsense?



We addressed this first about personal learning, and then in terms of hiring a coach.



? THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF ?



Scott and Kevin both emphasized that things have changed a lot since they were coming up. Online information overload is nothing like it was. This, obviously, has both benefits and drawbacks.



There is also a preponderance of online coaches/gurus who have the “look” of expertise (i.e. marketers) but not the education to really back it up.



Scott noted that this not the information age, but the “post-information” age.



Mike also mentioned how it’s kind of insane how much power is at our finger tips, via things like search engines and so on, and we constantly, constantly don’t take advantage of it. Yes, there are issues with not always getting the best results, but often times it’s not a deep topic — there is a clearcut, definitive answer, and it would take us 10 seconds tops to get it. And yet… we don’t.



Scott mentioned the phrase “Conspiracy against the laity,” which is a phrase popularized by Warren Buffett, but comes originally from George Bernard Shaw. (Lookit that. Five seconds on Google.)



Mike quoted Oscar Wilde saying “All education is self-education.” That might have been Isaac Asimov (the sci fi author) or Louis L’amour (the Western author). Scott followed up with the quote, “It takes an education before you can become self-taught.”



This blog post makes some nice points regarding the idea and play between a “formal” education and a self-taught one.



Scott brought up the fact that the fitness industry is mostly lead by marketers. Kevin also brought up the fact that there plenty of “no names” who have lots to contribute but you will never ever hear about them online. But, at the same time — Mike acknowledged — in order to be heard from online, those people need to contribute something in a form that, say, a search engine can understand. Also, most of them don’t care about being found online. They’re too busy.



Mike’s opinion of “intelligence” is that it’s 99% hard work, on both a macro level (learning, digging in, following up on who’s writing about what, say, “Hm, I still don’t understand this, I need to read more,” etc.) and on a micro level (holding two competing thoughts in your head, i.e. tolerating ambiguity even though it’s not that pleasant).



“Take What is useful, discard everything else.” Aristotle? Bruce Lee?



Mike came up with 3 (4?) weirdo personal rules for learning:



MIKE’S THREE WEIRDO RULES:



1. Be stupid (i.e., Just open your mind, assume you don’t know, be willing to not know)



2. a. Disrespect those whom you think deserves respect. (This doesn’t mean be a jerk; it means don’t put gurus, authors, or whomever on a special pedestal. Everyone is flawed. Smart people make mistakes.)



2. b. Respect those whom you might think don’t deserve respect. (Stop. Wait. Before you dismiss something, truly entertain the other perspective. Everyone “says” they do this. Then…. they don’t. We don’t argue against the other position. We argue against stupid strawmen version of the other position.)



3. Shut up for a bit. Criticism and questioning is all good. But it’s also very, very useful to be able to simply absorb.



Kevin talked about his work before he was a coach, which involved a lot of manual labor. there’s nothing worse than someone who was new to the job,

Further episodes of The Smarter Sculpted Physique: Training | Nutrition | Muscle Gain | Fat Loss

Further podcasts by Scott Abel, Mike Forest

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