Evidence Uncovers Options; Personal Preference Leads to Choices

A couple of years back, Stronger by Science did an exhaustive review of much of the literature out there regarding strength programs (talking strictly about force production here). Basically, they did a study of studies. Specifically, they were looking at set and rep ranges that led to strength gains. What they found is not that surprising if you've been coaching for a while, or if you've been part of the iron game for a while.

They found that folks can get strong across a number of rep ranges, even very high ones (20+). But they found the optimal set and rep range was 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps. This is pretty much a standard recommendation and has been done for as long as strength training has been around. 

The reason for the conclusion was twofold, and this is the key point of the entry. The first reason was that that rep range, and total volume, is a nice middle point between lower rep work (think 1-2 reps--primarily a neurological adaptation) and medium rep work (think 8-12 reps--primarily a muscular adaptation and a classic bodybuilding rep range). This comports well with what science tells us about rep ranges and is less surprising. But the second point was even more telling. They found that compliance was highest when folks do 4-6 sets of 4-6 reps. They postulated that this rep range wasn't too taxing neurologically or exhausting muscularly. It was a perfect middle ground and enabled folks to remain on this type of program longer.

I personally recommend 3-6 sets of 3-6 reps for most people when it comes to strength training as the base. Sets of 3 are too valuable to not include in your training. We can deviate from those rep ranges during certain phases for certain reasons, but this should be the go-to for most of your strength work (again, talking strictly about force production; many people throw around the term strength and sometimes mean something else).

The more general point here is that evidence will often point to many different options. But the deciding factor is almost always personal preference. For example, I know a few people who train sets of 10 throughout most of the year, and then throw in one or two strength cycles where they try and build to a max at the end of the cycle. And they make great progress year over year.

The most important factor here is choosing the rep range, and more generally, the training program, that will yield the most consistency. We all want to do the things we like. So if you can match an evidence-based protocol with a version that you really like (your personal preference), you're more likely to comply and stay consistent. The more consistent you are, the more training sessions you'll get in, which is where the magic happens.

And that magic will pay off in the long run. Choose wisely, trust the process, and stay consistent. It's not rocket science.

Another Nietzsche Quote

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Mix in this group-style madness with social media and you have the potential for disaster. The storming of the Capitol would be an obvious example of this type of situation. It definitely won't be the last time something like that happens. If you haven't seen The Social Dilemma yet, I highly recommend it.

Djokovic Has a Chance to Make History Twice

The US Open starts up tomorrow. The main storyline is Novak Djokovic, the greatest of all time. I make this claim and provide my argument for it here.

He's trying to become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win a calendar-year grand slam. In the history of the game, only two men (Don Budge and Rod Laver) and only three women (Maureen Connolly, Margaret Court, and Steffi Graf) have pulled this feat off, so it's extremely rare, to put it mildly.

But besides the calendar year grand slam, he's also trying to win his 21st grand slam. No other man in the history of the game has won that many. He's currently tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal with 20 grand slams.

So a chance to set two historical marks. There's a ton of pressure on him and media scrutiny will be intense. Should be exciting!

Practice Mindset

There have countless books and articles written about the growth mindset. Carol Dweck wrote a nice article about it back in 2016, but if you just google growth mindset, you'll find plenty of resources. To be sure, having a growth mindset is a good thing.

But I'd like to encourage folks to adopt a practice mindset. One of the toughest hurdles for many folks to get over when they're first starting a strength-and-conditioning program occurs after the first 1-2 months. They tend to be very enthusiastic about training when they're first starting out. Everything is so new and fun to learn, and with consistency, progress can often come quickly (depending on where we're starting from). But after the easy gains come and go and motivation starts to wear off, it can be a real challenge to get to the gym. While there can be many reasons for this, one of the most common ones is to be outcome-focused.

Now don't get me wrong. Having goals can be helpful, and in order to track where we are relative to our goals, we need to be aware of the outcome. But for things like long-term health and fitness, focusing too much on outcomes can quickly backfire. That's why it's much better--as early as possible--to develop a practice mindset. Commit to the process and the practice of movement and good things will happen. Don't worry about numbers in the short term, worry about getting reps in. Worry about practicing movement. Make consistency a habit.

After those initial gains, progress isn't a straight linear path. It zigs and zags. It's kind of like the stock market. If you check prices daily, you're bound to be in for a wild and often stressful ride. Much better to check in on your portfolio once a month (yes, this assumes a long-term buy-and-hold strategy, which is my bias).

Make movement the motivation. I have to credit Mark Bell with the following quote:

"You don't need to get motivated to move. You need to move to get motivated."

Precisely.

Your Fitness is Governed by the Laws of the Rosebush

This entry originally appeared on the CrossFit Oakland website. I wrote it during the heart of the pandemic in May 2020. Without further ado....

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to define fitness as the sum of one’s health and performance. In math terms:

Fitness = Health + Performance

And while I’m defining terms, let’s cover health and performance. I’ll define health as the overall quality of one’s physical, mental, and emotional state. I’ll define performance as one’s ability to complete a given task or set of tasks. Let’s be clear, there are many other much more expansive definitions of fitness, health, and performance out there, put together by some very smart people. One of my favorites is the CrossFit definition of fitness, which is well worth your time to read. These are just simple working definitions to get us through this post.

This post isn’t about the definition of fitness. It’s about what you can do to bring up your fitness, or at the very least, one way to think about bringing up your level of fitness. Although this post is relevant at any time, it’s particularly relevant now, because many of us are without the traditional tools of the gym (barbell, pull-up bar, etc.). That’s not a drawback, though. Instead, it’s a huge opportunity!

A word of warning before we get started: I’m sometimes referred to as the analogy guy. And we’re about to dive deep into an analogy.

A little background first: My wife and I inherited three rosebushes last fall when we moved into our new house. All three were dormant at the time. I was told by a trusted authority that they wouldn’t produce roses. A month or two before spring, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I used one rosebush as my control. I didn’t do anything to it and just left it as is. For the other two, though, I went to town and aggressively pruned them back. A lot! I pruned every little bit of dead matter from those two rosebushes I could find. They were little more than loosely connected sticks by the time I was done with them. I figured I had nothing to lose, since none of them would be producing roses, anyway. And before I forget, it should also be noted that all three rosebushes received the same amount of water and sunlight during the course of this experiment.

Fast forward to the spring (really, within the last couple of weeks) and my experiment has produced insight that I never would’ve had if I hadn’t conducted it in the first place. So what happened?

First, the control rosebush produced roses, which was a real surprise. I guess Mother Nature is fierce in her determination, it seems. The thing is, though, it’s only produced three to date. I do see a few more buds coming in, though, so there will be more. On the other hand, the two I pruned back have produced multiple dozens so far, and there are more buds on the way. It’s been a rousing success!

So what the heck does any of this have to do with fitness?!

Simple, we’re not that different from the rosebush. Yes, of course we need water and sunlight. But more relevant to our quest to be better at moving, to get fitter, and to improve our health and performance along the way, we need to regularly get rid of our dead matter as well. The dead matter in this case might be a bum knee that aches whenever you run, or squat heavy, or whatever. It might be that back pain that comes after deadlifting. Pay attention to these signs. These issues can be fixed. But the fix won’t be instant, in most cases. Even with the rosebushes, it took a couple of months for them to produce buds after being pruned back.

Use this time during the SIP order to fix those movement-related issues that might be present as well, even if they don’t produce pain. Do you shift to one side when squatting? Does your bar lean to one side when pressing or when doing an overhead squat? Or more simply, have you lost range of motion or skills that you once had? These are all areas ripe for some pruning. Remember, when we prune, not only are we creating an immediate fix (getting rid of dead matter that serves no purpose), we’re setting ourselves up for growth down the line. In fact, without pruning, we seriously stunt our growth. The dead matter weighs us down and doesn’t allow us to flourish.

If you take care of these matters now, when you aren’t distracted by things like a pull-up bar, a barbell, or a prowler, you might surprise yourself with the progress you make when you return to the gym.

And our coaches can help. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re here. So if you’re uncertain where to begin, or if you don’t know what kind of pruning will help with the issue you’re addressing, hit us up! We’re just an email away.

A Model Is Just a Model

I'm eventually going to follow up on my second entry on this blog, about complex systems and our inability to fully understand them, and in many sad cases in the financial markets, safeguard against outliers.

For now, though, I'm going to lead with a quote that I came across on the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) Wikipedia page. It makes the point I wanted to initially make in just a couple of sentences, as good quotes often do (I was taking way longer to get my point across so I scrapped that in favor of this quote). It has to do with models (in this case, financial models, but it really applies broadly to anyone who relies on models as a part of their practice--whatever that practice may be). Here's the quote:

"Economist Eugene Fama found in his research that stocks were bound to have extreme outliers. Furthermore, he believed that, because they are subject to discontinuous price changes, real-life markets are inherently more risky than models."

The case of LTCM should serve as a cautionary tale for failing to understand that you don't know what you don't know. Often times, very smart people are more susceptible to this failure of understanding, and the guys at LTCM were some of the smartest guys in the room--any room.

But this isn't just about financial modeling. 

When it comes to programming for strength and conditioning, the predicted results (based on what the model suggests) are often different than the actual results, sometimes on the downside and sometimes on the upside. This doesn't necessarily mean the program wasn't good. It just means the model wasn't robust and there were factors that either weren't accounted for (that should have been) or there were factors that couldn't have been known. 

But going down the rabbit hole of trying to find ever-more-robust models (or programs) is a fool's errand, in many cases. I see this all the time with newer coaches. They're obsessed with finding the perfect program and often make things needlessly complicated. The best programs match goals with processes, and are flexible enough to make adjustments along the way. You also have to be patient and let the program play out. Look for trends but don't make wholesale changes to the program hastily. And always keep long-term development in mind.

Never Sacrifice Development

I was watching some of the US Open qualifying tournament earlier today. This is the tournament before the tournament, so to speak. Sixteen slots for men and woman are left open in the US Open for qualifiers. They play a three-round tournament and the winners of those three rounds get into the main draw of the US Open. For these players, getting into the US Open can make them enough money to cover all of their expenses for a year (travel, coaching, etc.) and still leave a little money in the bank. By and large, the ones who are competing in the qualifying tournaments grind it out for most of the year in the equivalent of the minor leagues of tennis, hoping to make enough to keep the dream going.

There are generally two types of players who find themselves playing in qualifying tournaments: grizzled veterans trying to hang on and sustain their career and young players looking to get their first exposure to high-level competition. In many cases, the young players are still developing their game (see my entry on this topic and how forecasting isn't always rock-solid regarding junior players and their success at the senior level).

My favorite tennis analyst is Brad Gilbert (a former top-1o player in his own right, an author, and a great coach). He was asked about some of the younger players in the qualifying tournament, and he made an incredibly insightful comment that resonates deeply with me and my experiences as a coach. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that the juniors who go on to have the greatest professional careers never sacrifice development for winning at the junior level. The development he's talking about here is all about technique, mechanics, stroke production--whatever you want to call it. It's so easy at the junior level to mistake winning for development; it's a very short-term approach that so often puts a ceiling on a junior player's future.

But I see this all the time in the gym, too (and it happens in all types of endeavors--it's not just confined to physical culture). Folks get caught chasing numbers and sacrifice development. In particular, foundational skills and positions often get sacrificed in the name of hitting some number (doesn't matter if it's a strength number or a time on a conditioning piece). There are many drawbacks to this type of approach. First and foremost, it takes a hell of a lot of work to undo bad movement habits that get ingrained. It's so much simpler to start off correctly and slowly build from there. Another drawback is the increase in injury potential if mechanics get really sloppy and those poor mechanics are repeated over and over again. And finally, no matter how hard you try, higher-level movements will always remain out of reach (e.g., if you can't deadlift and overhead squat, there's no way you're snatching).

I have a long-term bias (see my CI and DCA entry for one aspect of my philosophy on training). Don't put the cart before the horse. Take your time and enjoy the process. It's something you'll be doing for the rest of your life so there's no rush.

Move the 3-Point Line Way Back in the NBA

I'm a huge NBA fan and loved watching the playoffs over the summer. I'm also a huge Warriors fan, and that team, more than any other team in the modern era, changed the way the game is played today. The problem is that the NBA is a copycat league and now every team, and nearly every player, is hoisting up three-pointers left and right. Yes, there are still players like Giannis who make a living scoring in the paint and at mid-range, but exceptions don't disprove the rule. Watch a Tuesday night game 40 games into the season with no real stakes involved. Go ahead, I dare you. It's unwatchable at times. Just a bunch of missed three-pointers.

Thank goodness there are guys like the one who did the video I'm reposting below. He's spot-on with his analysis and offers three very workable solutions. I really, really hope someone in the NBA office sees this video. For the record, I'm in favor of solution #2, where the 3-point line is extended out and it simply runs out of bounds, effectively eliminating the short corner three (I vote for 27 feet as a starting point and would be in favor of 28 feet if percentages are too high at 27 feet after one season). I could live with solution #3, where the corner three-pointers are only live during the final two minutes of the quarter. Solution #1 is absolutely a no-go for me, even though it's a step in the right direction. You'd still have two guys (one in each corner) camping out in the corner on every possession.

The three-point line is simply not enough of a challenge for halfway decent shooters these days. There's no way stretch-fours should be shooting the same kind of shot that Steph Curry does. Reward the truly great long-range shooters like Steph (the GOAT of long-distance shooters), Klay, Tre, and Dame by moving out the line to a distance they will still dominate but that others will have no chance. Then we'll see a resurgence in the variety that makes the NBA a beautiful game.

Strong is Strong (An Ode to Bodyweight Exercises and Dumbbells)

One of the most frequent questions I get is if one can get strong using bodyweight exercises or dumbbells. This is usually asked with a great level of concern (and in some cases, panic) when I program something for folks as strength work that isn't a barbell (I love barbell work, by the way).

I think there's a pretty common reason for the disconnect about strength development using different tools. And it's usually that folks who do bodyweight/dumbbell exercises usually do them for high reps. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're going beyond 5-6 reps for a set, you're not really getting stronger (yes, I'm aware of the studies that show you can get stronger across various rep ranges and I've seen it happen, but not all rep ranges are created equal when it comes to strength development). More often than not, you're improving your stamina when doing higher-rep work with bodyweight exercises or dumbbells. Guess what, you're also improving your stamina when you do higher-rep work with barbells.

So the disconnect occurs because in this situation, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Find that version of a bodyweight/dumbbell movement that can only be done for 3-6 reps and you'll get stronger (yes, singles and doubles work, too, but I think they're less effective for most folks and can explain why in a later entry). The body doesn't care whether you're holding onto a barbell or dumbbell, or whether you're just using your own bodyweight. If you're doing low-rep work, you'll get stronger.

Thoughts on Running

In this last year-and-a-half during the pandemic, I've had lots of time to think about various things. In some cases, my mind has changed on certain subjects. One of those subjects is running.

I used to think that with other fine options like using a rower, a bike, or a ski erg, that running wasn't necessary for general fitness, especially since you can match similar cardiorespiratory demands and many of the muscle groups are the same (even if the movement patterns are very different). But I've changed my mind. If you care about movement, you should be running.

Now let's clarify a few things: You can indeed be very healthy without ever running. But take note: I wrote if you care about movement, you should be running. Running is an essential movement pattern. Along with walking and carrying, it's one we've been doing for millennia. It predates any gym-based movements by multiple hundreds of years. I'm also not saying you need to do it a lot. You just need to be able to run, and to do it pain-free.

A couple ground rules:

1. If running causes you pain, walk, then progress to loaded carries, and if you can do it, seek out a running coach who can guide you in learning proper mechanics.

2. When you're finally able to run pain-free, pace or distance is absolutely not important when first starting out. Think microdoses. I coached someone back to running who came to me with two knee surgeries and lots of residual knee pain. It took a long time and we were never in a rush and running wasn't (and still isn't) a central part of his well-being. But we wanted him to regain full function, and running is a part of that. Our first major victory was to run back and forth across a parking lot (40 meters in total) three times during the course of a conditioning workout. We did that for weeks pain-free and progressed slowly from there.

The irony of all of this is that I don't even care for running that much. But it's so important if the goal is full function. Just to be clear, I'm referring specifically to running as a stand-alone activity. I'll run all day if I'm playing tennis, basketball, flag football, etc. I'll do it as part of mixed modal conditioning work. And I do two types of sprint work: max speed and conditioning. I alternate my sprint work and try and get in one sprint workout per week. So one week I'll do speed work and the following week I'll do conditioning work (the format and distances are not that different but the rest periods sure are).

It doesn't need to be complicated and it doesn't need to be a lot. It just needs to be done.

Words to Live By

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Thinking is difficult. That's why most people judge."

-- Carl Jung

The only point I'd make is that adults are just as corruptible as youth with respect to alike-vs.-different thinking. Beyond that, though, I don't have much to add regarding these quotes.

I have to reread these quotes constantly so that I don't fall prey to either shortcoming. It can be a harder road to travel (avoiding echo chambers and not falling into judgment) and takes a lot of continual practice, but it's so worth it. I'm not perfect, though. It still happens (especially the judgment one) and I need to acknowledge it when it happens, cut it off right then and there, and learn from it.

Compound Interest and Dollar Cost Averaging

If you've ever done any investing on your own, you're probably familiar with compound interest (CI) and dollar cost averaging (DCA). The two of them in combination can lead to remarkable gains over the long term for the small, retail investor (most of us out there). Without access to the large amounts of capital and information that institutional investors have, DCA is a great way to stay invested in assets through up markets and down markets.

What's interesting about CI and DCA is that the properties that make them so powerful can be applied to fitness with equally impressive results over the long term (just as with many other endeavors--gardening, education, etc.). Yes, with fitness, CI and DCA are figurative. But the principles are the same. Too many people think that you need really remarkable programming and workouts to achieve high levels of fitness. But you'll surprise yourself with what you can achieve with pretty average workouts over the long term. The combination of gains on gains (compound interest) coupled with consistent, regularly scheduled workouts (dollar cost averaging) is the secret sauce.

A like-clockwork physical practice with a long-term approach (think decades) is better than fits and starts with a smattering of workouts that are often too hard to recover from and stay consistent with. Don't get me wrong, if you have a short-term goal you need to hit, CI and DCA will probably not be sufficient. But if you're like me, and plan to use the gym to enhance your health for the rest of your life, what's the rush? 

Forecasting is Tricky. And Usually Wrong.

This is another entry that covers tennis, but it's not really about tennis. It's about our fallibility as forecasters when confronted with data sets that are limited.

Only close fans of the sport of tennis will be familiar with the name Gael Monfils. He had one of the greatest junior careers of any player in the history of the sport. In 2004, he had won the first three junior grand slam tournaments of the year and was attempting to join Stefan Edberg as the only junior male to ever win the junior grand slam in a calendar year. He ended up losing in the US Open, the final grand slam of the year. Even so, he put together one of best seasons in the history of junior tennis.

Surely he'd go on to be one of the greatest professional tennis players of all time as well, right?

Many analysts thought the answer to that questions was an undoubted yes. Turns out that such forecasts are shaky at best. It's usually only in hindsight that answers to such questions become obvious.

Gael went on to become one of the most dynamic players on tour, finishing in the top 50 in just his first year on tour (after starting in the high 200s). To this day, he is still one of the best shotmakers on tour and regularly finishes in the top 20 each year. He plays with a ton of creativity and panache. You never know what you're gonna get from him and he's a delight to watch for that very reason. But he never climbed to the heights analysts predicted. The highest ranking he ever achieved was #6 in the world, and that was just for a few months. His best grand slam result was a semifinal, and that has happened only twice in his 17-year career (still ongoing). To be sure, he's a better player than most people will ever be. But he was never able to achieve on the senior tour what he did on the junior tour. So what gives?

I'll offer up two explanations. One is more obvious and often applies to youth sports across the board. One is less obvious and is pretty tennis-specific.

The Obvious

The obvious reason has to do with junior sports in general. Often times, the best junior players are ones who are more physically mature and/or develop a skill set far in advance of their junior peers. In some cases, those early gains persist into the professional setting, but more often than not, the juniors that were behind the early ascender catch up and the gap in performance disappears. There are notable exceptions, of course. LeBron James comes to mind immediately as the exception to this rule. At 14, he was way more physically mature and way more skilled than any of his high school peers. His peers didn't catch up, though. Even his NBA peers didn't catch up. But for every LeBron James, there are a ton of Robert Swifts out there who never achieve success at the next level.

While Gael is no Robert Swift (he made it on the tour and has had a tremendously successful career), he appears to be one who matured quicker than his junior peers and took advantage of that skill gap, but the gap that was huge in the junior setting disappeared once he got on tour.

The Less Obvious

This is where data analysis becomes tricky. In cases like this, it's not what's in the data set (his track record in juniors tennis), it's what's not in the data set. Let me give you the names of Gael's professional peers: Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer (known nowadays as the Big Three). Let me also give you the age when each of those players turned professional: Djokovic (16), Nadal (15!), and Federer (16). You see, these three took a different route. They turned professional early, toiled in relative obscurity for a few years (Roger didn't win his first major until he was 21, even though he went on to win the most majors of all time--until Djokovic passes him), and learned a ton by getting beaten by men way older and more battle-hardened. The same thing happened in the previous generation with Pete Sampras (17) and Andre Agassi (16).

So while Gael was cleaning up in the juniors, these other three guys were getting an education in the school of hard knocks on the professional tour. Nobody can fault anyone for predicting great things for Gael and completely ignoring the Big Three. Nobody knew who they were at that time.

Forecasting is tricky business. If another great junior player comes along (and I mean great like winning multiple junior grand slams in a single year), I think it's safe to say that they'll have a great shot at earning a living playing the game they (hopefully) love. Gael has done quite nicely in that respect, earning almost $20 million dollars in prize money (and that doesn't even count endorsement deals, which often outstrip prize money by an order of magnitude).

But the more important take-away is more general: scrutinize the data you have, but beware of the data you don't have.

Djokovic is the GOAT

One of my passions is the game of tennis. I'll write about it on this blog. Tennis has waned in popularity in the US since the '80s, and has become, in my opinion, a niche sport (more on this at some point in the future), so this type of subject matter won't be interesting to many. I started playing when I was 10 years old, played in college, got burned out on the sport for a bit (as a player), and resumed playing the game competitively again in 2013. I love the game, and even when I wasn't playing it, I followed it closely, and still do to this day.

That's a long-winded introduction. The point is to establish my bona fides as a fan and analyst of the game. Onto the matter at hand....

Novak Djokovic recently tied Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal with 20 grand slam wins. I can now definitively say that he is the greatest of the three, and really the GOAT, even if he never wins another one, which I'm sure he will, and which will make the case I'm laying out irrelevant. There are three criteria I use for ranking players on the all-time list: total number of grand slam wins, depth of grand slam wins, and head-to-head record (where applicable, which is very applicable here because Djokovic, Federer, and Nadal have played each other a ton).

Let's dive into each one.

Total Number

Each has 20 grand slam wins. So they're all tied here. 1 point for each. This will change with the next major Djokovic wins.

Depth of Grand Slams

I'm not only concerned with the number of grand slam victories, but with the depth of the victories. Each of the 4 majors is played on a different surface with different playing characteristics. The Australian Open and US Open are played on hard courts, but each is slightly different (traditionally The Australian Open has been a slower court than the US Open, but that's changed in recent years). The French Open is played on clay. Wimbledon is played on grass. To win all four of these tournaments takes a tremendous amount of variety and skill in one's game. Those who do really well on grass are gonna have a much harder time on clay and vice-versa. That's why winning all four over the course of one's career is so hard. Most never do. Even some of the greatest have never done it.

In this criterion, Djokovic is the clear winner. Although Federer and Nadal have won all four, Nadal has won the Australian Open only once; and Federer has won the French Open only once. Djokovic has won each of the majors at least twice. This may seem like a trivial point, but great players can put together a once-in-a-lifetime run and come out on top for a single major. To do it more than once, though, that means something. 1 point for Djokovic.

Head-to-Head Record

Djokovic is the clear winner here. He has a winning record against both (Federer has a losing record against both and Nadal has a winning record against Federer, obviously). 1 point for Djokovic.

So the final scored is Djokovic 3, Federer 1, and Nadal 1. Soon this will be 3-0-0.

As a side note, I don't think weeks at #1, Masters Series tournament wins (the most important tournaments other than majors), total wins, win percentage, or any other metrics matter in a discussion of greatest of all time. It's all about the majors and head-to-head (when comparing players from the same era--it's a different story when comparing players from different eras).

Frequency, Intensity, and Volume

I'm gonna take a break from writing about fallacies related to complex systems, and touch on a topic everyone should be thinking about when it comes to programming (for yourself or others) for fitness, strength and conditioning, or whatever you want to call it.

Every program contains three factors that need to be taken into account: frequency, intensity, and volume.

Frequency refers to how often you're training. The most common way to do this is to look at how many training sessions you have in a week.

Intensity refers to the effort involved to do the work, and often relates to the impact on your nervous system and your ability to recover. In the strength world, this is often thought of as a percentage of one's one-rep max (1RM). Rate of perceived effort (RPE) can also be used. In the CrossFit world, work/time is most often used, especially when it comes conditioning pieces. In the endurance world, heart rate can be used, and in other situations like tempo work, you'll work off of a percentage of your best effort (e.g., repeat 400m efforts at 85% of your mile time) There are other ways to assign intensity, too, but the ones mentioned above are the most common. 

Volume refers to the total amount of work done in a training session. This is most commonly done by counting either total reps or in some cases (primarily barbell strength work), total tonnage (sets x reps x pounds). Most often you're only concerned with the working sets when figuring out volume or tonnage.

Each program will have a mix of these three factors (there are many other variables that come into play like exercise selection and training goal(s), just to name a couple, but those will be a topic for another day).

Each of the factors can be grouped into general buckets for ease of reference: high, medium, or low.

There are no rules written in stone regarding these three factors. Different people will respond better to different mixes. That's just how it goes. Much of it comes down to personal preferences, in my opinion. Some people like a certain mix, and because they're consistent with that mix, they do better. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is not one right answer for everyone, just the right answer for you (and it may change over time).

The one thing I can say with a fair amount of certainty is that at some point, unless you're young and have all your lifestyle factors dialed in, or you've been training for years, are at an elite level, and have built up to it, you will crash and burn on a high frequency, high intensity, high volume program. If you're lucky (and don't fall into either of the two categories above), you can use this approach for a very short duration (maybe a month) to bust through a plateau or reach a short-term training goal, but you better cycle off this approach or you'll end up regressing (and that's the best outcome).

For me personally, I've tried all kinds of mixes. Recently I've gone back to a high frequency, medium intensity, low volume program where I train the whole body every session. I'll share the exact program in another entry. I've written enough on this topic for now.

The Greatest Human Fallacy

Before I get into the meat of this entry (the title gives it away), I want to identify one of my biases. I'm a product of my modern environment and most of my thoughts and views are modern in nature. A couple hundred years from now, my views will probably seem quaint, and that's fine.

What does my relative modernity have to do with the tile of the post? Everything. Modern (western and/or industrialized) society has gotten extremely complex and my take on our greatest fallacy flows directly from that premise. If we were to identify a key human fallacy from a couple of hundred years ago (a simpler time, in theory), it would be very different than what I'm suggesting here today.

Our greatest fallacy is a multiple-choice problem where you get to fill in the blank.

Our greatest fallacy is that we believe we can _____________ complex systems. There are many answers to this fill-in-the-blank problem, but ones that immediately come to mind are manage, manipulate, control, or the worst possible answer: fully understand.

This is a fairly obvious take, especially for those who have read any of Taleb's works. What's different about my premise, and debatable, is that I think this false belief around understanding or accounting for complex systems is truly our greatest fallacy. There are certainly arguments for others. I'll lay out my case for this fallacy being our greatest one in later entries. But in my next entry on this subject, I'll provide two textbook examples of very smart people failing to account for complexity. 

And yes, this stuff ties into fitness and I'll explain how (eventually!).

Why?

I've created this blog to organize my thoughts. The topics will be all over the place but some common themes or principles will emerge. If someone happens to read any of these entries, even better. If there are folks who read these entries, I hope that at least some of them will disagree with things I write and let me know about it. 

I try and avoid echo chambers as much as I can (online and offline), although it's difficult in today's day and age, to be sure. Don't mistake a desire to avoid echo chambers as a desire to stand apart from others, though. I want to belong and be a part of conversations. Humans need to interact with one another. It's one of the keys to our being human. We're social animals.