How to Properly Read Scientific Research

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Like most coaches, And I hate I don't want anybody to get offended. I mean, I really don't care. But my business is suffering. I mean, I must be honest. Most coaches have a very poor base of knowledge. They're too busy focusing on their Instagram account and their marketing and their sales. They don't spend enough time reading textbooks, reading research. And like, you know, we talked about that earlier with people like reading research, depending on what field you're in, can be really difficult to understand the research or really easy. nutritional research and exercise science is not that difficult like yeah like if you you've got to have a hopefully have a some semblance of like statistics and understanding and but a lot of it is just reading it what i'll usually do is i'll tell it read the abstract read the conclusion then go read the limitations and that's the one thing people never read like yeah if there's 12 limitations and then and then read through the whole study and make your notes but coaches aren't doing that. It's like, and then don't take one study. You got to take as many studies you can find on this and a cross-reference what they're cross-referencing in the appendix, like read all that stuff. And then, and then match that with your experiences or what you're hearing from other people. And then you'll form a really good thought process, but they don't do it. They're like, what's the best book on this? And they'll want to do some bodybuilder bro book. And I'm like, no, no, just get yourself a physiology textbook and go through the textbook or just get anatomy me in physiology for dummies, biochemistry for dummies, learn it that way, and then go to a textbook, right? But they don't spend enough time studying because they're too busy fucking working out and spending too much time on social media. That's the biggest gripe I have with my own students is they don't, they don't a lot enough time to learn why the stuff they're doing, how it works, and then how to, what to do when it doesn't work. And then I'll talk to them. And I'm like, guys, you have to understand, like, you got a car. I don't expect you to be able to work on the engine, but I expect you to know how to change the gas. Yeah. I expect you to know when to take it in to rotate your tires, when you need an oil change. You have to know that. Like, you don't need to know how the engine actually works. Yeah. Realistically, when we're dealing with people's bodies, we kind of have to know how some of that stuff works at at least a basic enough level. so number one you know what to do more importantly you know what not to do and then the third thing is you're going to understand when somebody's talking out of their ass and they're full of shit on the line yeah right so but they they look at they look at this knowledge stuff as it's too difficult or it's hard or you know or the psychological aspect of i'm just not a good reader i just don't study well well you know how you get better at that practice just practice when you start the training and then you train more and you got better training spend the time it's okay to feel like you're ignorant it's not okay to lean into that and use that as a crutch so just focus on your studies if you're going to work with people that like one of the things that really gripes me in the sort of like a post about evidence-based versus research-based coaching uh sorry science-based versus research-based coaching and one of the things we all grew up with is is a lot of people will confirm the bias they want to find their training protocols because this 10-man study with newbies that had never stimulus in their life and no protein diet history and then all of a sudden they found a 0.5 percent marginal growth in the bicep and it was like the significance it's like a power of two i was like cool this is really actually not that important at all but someone's found hey the this lengthened partial movement here it redefined how we train the bicep and you actually look at the study it's like a it's not it was significant i would be it was a population of eight fucking people that never trained before so literally anything they could have taken a piss and then it got stimulus for fucking their bicep drinking a beer gives them a fucking bite stimulus in their bicep but then it becomes their entire identity as a coach is like length and partials is it or fucking stretch hypertrophy is it or this new feed protocol is it's like you've got caught up in the trap of thinking all research is equal all research is valid because you don't know how to read research don't know how to read data and then you're trying to put that on every single client and instead of going what what evidence do what do i understand what do i know but also how does this apply to the people i work with and is this relevant to my population and is it relevant to the person i'm giving it to because in amongst that there are obviously outliers when you do enough of a population sample you'll start to get outliers there's the very real possibility the person you're working with might be the outlier of that study might not even fit that demographic you had Like the stuff they leave out of the abstract or the concept when they discussing it might be like these are 45 to 70 year old females who had never trained before and they had a single increase in leg extensions at the most lengthened position with the chair back 45 degrees rec fed increase was 0.25 millimeters on this board it's like no this woman's never trained in her life as a psychopath and basically had no muscle mass ever and you've given her some protein and exercise and all of a sudden she grew tissue that's not that doesn't apply for your people that doesn't mean you now base your entire identity as a coach on that thing yeah i get a real gripe within our industry is how evidence-based approaches has become like anything any researcher says is now fact and yeah and your entire body of coaching to that it's become like a religion it's become like a religion a badge of honor and it's like but guys come on man like 13 people in a study 13 subjects that is not enough to really create any great conclusions Then it's like, okay, we took 13 people and we classified them as trained or untrained. Untrained was less than 12 months of training. Trained, well-trained was over 12 months. I don't know anybody that's been training a year that's fucking well-trained. That is like my next drop in fucking research. We can't even definitively criteria what trained means. I've seen studies that are like, oh, they're four years trained. I'm like, I spent five years training for different things, and I'm still getting better at my training. Like I'm six years competing and I'm still getting better at my training proficiency. I'm still adapting and getting better understanding of mechanics, limiting factors, exhaustion points, fatigue, proximity to failure. If I'm still getting better at that, how the fuck is 12 months classified as trained? Any stimulus with next to no control is fucking going to have a result. They'll say advanced, advanced subjects. And I'm looking at it going, all right, I don't consider anybody advanced until they've got at least three to four years of solid training. like 48 weeks of the year under supervision or knowledge base. Like you are not, if you look at it, you look at the, they'll say advance. And then I'll look at what they're lifting, like how much load they're lifting. And I'm like, that's not advanced. That's, that's first year gains. Like, that's not like, what the fuck? And then when they'll try to apply, they'll get like gen pop clients who have never lifted before. And they want to take the research and supply that to their client. Like your client, would grow muscle on the step mill your client would grow muscle just from showing up at the gym like you don't need to get that fucking technical just use basic but like pumpkin spice latte basic bitch exercises that we've done forever like pick a horizontal push-pull movement a vertical push-pull movement a knee extension knee flexion movement pick a triple flexion triple extension movement an elbow flexion elbow extension movement and maybe a shoulder abduction movement you're pretty fucking good with that like you don't like the first three years five years you could just do that and they would fucking grow yeah you don't need to pull out your protractor you know you don't fucking a 55 degree angle of a slightly lean with lateral flexion to get the most out of my lap pull down on one arm lord like and here's the thing some of that stuff like getting really pedantic about training i see the value in that when you're really advanced yes and you're trying to eliminate a weak point in your physique right yeah so like you might have somebody with really good like anterior and lateral delt and there might be just one little one little divot right there between lateral and posterior and like okay cool let's get that the right angle to match that with the resistance profile cool yes nobody has been training just a couple years no one needs that kind of shit that's that's one of the things that really gets me especially like the coaching industry that's really taking off now is like guys that aren't even in the necessary realm to have this conversation are spending so much time having that conversation that they're wasting time on their clients like if you think your client debbie is coming to you for a 45 minute session three times a week who could probably benefit from a push pull legs or full body three times a week and then go home have sex and eat the protein is needing to have a specific lateral head chest supported supernated lat pull down that takes 45 minutes to set up yeah like the inverse inverted you starts to come in where it's like beneficial beneficial beneficial takes too long to set up the other training yes bro Debbie can barely walk and chew gum at the same time put her on a fucking leg press I just don't understand why Debbie can't front squat I'm like Debbie Debbie is a soccer mom she doesn't need a front to put her on a fucking leg extension a leg press machine versus freeway debate that somehow respark itself I don't know how that came back up but that's apparently a thing right if you if people saw my program and they'd be like man that's really basic i'm like yeah it's really fundamental basic shit because it works and the only time it ever gets any fancier is if we've got an injury we're trying to fix or work around or i need to do something complex to make it work the most frustrating

The thing to me is I literally give away like how on the Matter Institute, we have a 90-minute lecture that I wrote because it was frustrating me so much and I was going to charge for it. I was like, fuck it, just have it. But it literally goes through how we map out exercise selection, order of execution, and basically proximity of intensity, going from complexity to simplicity, and going from internal to external stability, and going from complex joints to singular joint movements, and basically letting fatigue dictate how your exercise selection varies. basically a squat pattern something's gonna drive a lot of intensity it's not gonna require a little follow like you get fucking strong in it the team sets in you end up finishing with a leg extension yes that's fucking it's like in between that you fill the gaps and what you're trying to do obviously in a volume of blah blah whatever but the point being is like it's so simple most of my program based on my workouts don't exceed six to seven exercises and if they do someone has a high ratio of volume I need to hit but usually it's like inside six exercises and then they're done they're like oh and usually you get met with oh it was really boring the session wasn't that hard i'm like you're taking every set to two rar i guarantee you it wasn't boring oh no i get it then you get a training video and the training's like a dog shit you're like okay we're gonna do a face-to-face session and really train and that's now your new proximity to failure and that's what you're gonna use yeah it's hard yeah we'll use typically will teach speed failure and technical failure so like when when one rep doesn't feel like the other ones stop there for now until we learn how to control that that instability under fatigue or we'll say look when what i think speed is a good one too it's like all right when you feel the first rep that feels slower than the others good you're probably like a three rar when you feel two that's slower right you're about a two when you feel one slower you probably have one more really janky rep your technical affair I don't want you to do that one but we're close enough right but consider this like I train I don't train I do train Jim Pop people think that we don't train Jim Pop we do train a majority of coaches like they don't even understand how hard they need to train I look at videos and I'm like bro I know I give you a 10 to 12 rep range but your 12th rep look like the first rep just next time keep doing it until you can only do a half a rep and that'll give me a better idea of like how to load you and tell you what to do but they'll just they'll do like they're just cruising through it's like they're doing fucking cardio for the biceps and they'll go like 11 12 that was hard i'm like bro you had probably eight more reps in there one of the things we do for onboarding is because i was literally getting as a online i was finding especially even like people want to compete that was such a problem i was like one of the onboarding uh exercises that sent me is like i just go through movement mechanics i want to see some baseline movements and see fundamentally how your body responds how you move sorry but then i was like pick any machine pick any machine that you can think of that you understand how it moves aim for a weight that you think you'll finish at 12 to 15 reps on and then go until you see i'm not going to say stop go until you can't do another rep of that weight don't second guess it don't try and think what i want you to see pick the weight go from there and the amount of people that overshoot the rep range like they'll say at 12 and i get a video with 20 and i'm like yeah okay cool you have no proximity of understanding the failure here we're going to start teaching you to go to failure because you don't even like people get so caught up in like oh you're gonna be too back from failure when 90 percent of people don't understand what failure looks like so you're teaching too back from not even being back far enough from failure already so what might have already been a five rei you're teaching someone fucking seven that's what makes it where we are yeah i'd say uh like i have a planet fitness membership and i know a lot of people are going to go ooh boo planet fitness but it's summertime here it's hot as fuck and not a lot of gyms have aircon so yeah yeah really nice cold aircon in there and the machines are well well maintained if you're just doing bodybuilder bullshit like i'm doing now it's perfect because you got fucking multiple machines for everything but i'll i'll train in there and i must look like a fucking psychopath because i i'm i'm on a machine and I'm just like I can't grunt but I'm close to it like I'm going like I'm this vein looks like it's going to pop my head starting to purple and I'm squeezing out that last rib and people are walking by me going what the fuck but then you look at everybody else and they're just like just doing whatever I'm like bro why even show up at the gym like you're not even like I know it's making you feel better but you're not actually doing anything you ticked a box but you missed about seven other boxes but we're going to wrap up soon because we'll fucking talk all day and i absolutely know that we've already covered fucking 17 different topics but the