Don't Be A Pundit Who Can't Perform
Cheers to you if you’re sticking to your guns and haven’t yet abandoned your New Year’s resolution. What is the difference between compromising your ideals, giving up, pivoting when necessary, and being all enthusiastic bark without actualized bite?
I’m tormented. Constantly, by trying to decipher which field has more charlatans and cheap talking “influencers”:
- Fitness,
- Nutrition, or
- Psychology / Counseling
Well intended or not, many of these types of people are hung up on their own inspiration — I was. Like a school child who learns a new word and can’t stop spewing it everywhere regardless of contextual or factual accuracy. We assume that if something is helpful for us, it must be helpful for everyone; and this is amplified by our rightful desire to want to share our joy and success with the world. Yet, we all know what the road to hell is paved with.
Then there are the pundits, the trolls, and the “fact checkers.” There are those that regurgitate the talking points and opinions of “authority figures” or experts who scour PubMed until they find something to support their hypothesis. So called (top-down) “science” is rife with biases (publication) and logical fallacies (to authority and emotion).
The internet and social media run amok with cheap one-line answers — “just do or don’t do X” — that are almost as prevalent and cheap as the dopamine hits from 3 second cut scenes and double-tapped hearts. Maybe I’m just bitter because I’ve paid my dues in flesh more than a reasonable man should.
A lifelong friend of mine has a similar disdain for “hobby farmers.” There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your food sovereignty or resilience. So, my friend’s resentment is somewhat misplaced. While we chatted over dinner, what it came down to was that for my friend weeding bean fields and birthing cows at 4:00 am wasn’t an option or a “project.”
What we really got to though was the bountiful number of internet commenters, who of course know what’s best because “the experts say…” or “they’ve done their research.” Do you think Bill Gates has ever had cow shit on his shoes? Recall that “world leaders” took 118 private jets to a conference decide to tell you to drive less and eat less meat — for everyone’s safety (ref.).
Interestingly, I get almost as much fan-mail (hateful comments) for posting a picture of honey with #carnivore as I do for anti-vegan fact checks. People make no hesitation to remind me that coffee is riddled with mold and pesticides or that honey will give me NAFLD. Just like Mr. Gates’ shoes, how many of these commenters have pushed hard enough on an Echo Bike to literally shit themselves? Not to brag, but I’ve done it at least twice.
We can’t get people to walk 10,000 steps in a day, how many of them have even come close to 1,000 calories / hour — that’s work output, not metabolic total.
Stan “Rhino” Efferding - CSCS on Instagram: “We’re still at it!! Almost 2 years since our last deadlift showdown. Happy 57th birthday @shawnbaker1967 🎂”
January 10, 2024
Similarly, how many people in Stan or Shawn’s comments (above) are going to see a 500lb deadlift in their lifetime, let alone in their 50s? To that end, let’s take things a step further. Charlatans and zealots may be able to perform — Liver King for instance — but how many of them are “closers”? Even fewer among them are true “cleaners”? (ref.)
We see this same type of behavior in all sorts of political and social avenues as well. How many people in congress talk of equality, poverty, inflation, etc. from the comfort of their private jets, multi-million-dollar homes, and don’t even pump their own gas? Or perhaps I can make a million dollars selling you an e-book titled “How to make a million dollars selling e-books!” for the low price of $19.99.
Even within the “Ancestral Health” space there’s a nauseating overuse of language like “cheat code”, “biohack”, “superhuman”, “optimal”, etc… Once educational and informative posters now sound like a generic Weight Watchers ad regardless if they’re factually more correct or not.
A healthy diet won’t make you “superhuman”, das ubermensch. It is the foundation, not the exception. The start, not the pinnacle. People have become so weak, comfortable, and placid that this nomenclature has infected even the most enthusiastic and noble-intended among us.
Does that sound “elitist”, “exclusionary”, good. It ought to. The Planet Fitness mantra of “a judgment free zone” is precisely the problem. Not that people deserve to be shamed, but they deserve the consequences they work for and to be held accountable.
While traveling over the winter holidays I stopped to lift at a hole-in-the-wall gym. It was dirty and perfect. On the wall there hung a chalk board of their members with the 5 heaviest 1RM squat, deadlift, and bench as well as the 5 record holders of the most reps for each at 225 lbs., 315 lbs., and 405 lbs.
Judgment. Consequences.
Re-evaluating or admitting you failed and need to re-assess and re-organize in June is a lot less sexy than spraying your optimism and motivation all over social media in January.
To grow, you need the awareness that something is wrong, or that it is not as it should or as it is capable of being. That is, we cannot let the fear of failure (judgment) rob us of the lessons (consequences) that that failure offers to teach us (growth).
What are the raw materials you’re working with? What kind of time, energy, and effort can you actually afford? Since hope is not a plan, you will need an honest inventory of where you’re at and what you’re capable of if you want to get someplace different.
Talk is increasingly cheap, so choose to be different. Choose to be a do-er, not a talker, not a “nuisance influencer.” We can also do a lot of “doing” in the wrong direction and needlessly wear ourselves thin — e.g “majoring in the minors” or “getting buried in the details”, “missing the forest for the trees.”
Thus, intention and evaluation are perennially required for success.
At the gym I visited above I heard a gentleman say to one of his friends (after discussing their steroid cycles) “Who cares how I got 20” arms, all I know is that I got ‘em and you don’t!” A fair point, I thought. I looked over in time to see this gentleman, weighing 190-200 lbs. miss a 285 lbs. bench press — on gear. Clearly, he’s not one of the record holders on one of the aforementioned judgment boards.
#whatworkspersists #defendanalog
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