Just 5 years ago the internet was a very different place. Today you can find any information you want, on any subject that you desire, especially fitness. Whatever your fitness goals, you can find methods of achieving them on the online.
Want safe steroid advice? The internet has it. Stuck at a 300 pound bench and not sure how to get it higher? The internet has the answer. Want advice about a new, trendy, yet inefficient new strength activity/sport? The internet has that too. The internet and especially youtube has enabled us to find a wealth of knowledge about any topic we wish.
Unfortunately there is no filter on the internet. There is also no “stop” button. It seems as though new studies are giving us new information every single day. Every day it seems as though the accepted knowledge is being challenged and new answers are being put forth. This seems to be happening in the fitness industry more then most.
Is brown rice better then white rice today? Should I do a linear progression plan or a periodized progression plan? What about squats? Are they good for the knees today or bad? High carb or low carb diet? Gluten free? What the hell is a paleo diet? With so much information available how does anyone know where to begin? Unfortunately this is exactly the problem.
Many people never begin.
They are constantly searching for the perfect information, the best plan, the best diet, and they put off achieving their goals until they find this elusive “perfect plan.” Another name for this is Analysis Paralysis. There is simply so much information available that you don’t know where to begin.
This can happen to anyone; it even happened to me.
About a year ago I got the competition bug. I decided to enter a few small powerlifting competitions being held at my local gym. I entered two push/pull competitions and one full competition that had bench, squat and deadlift. Due to my advanced training age, I thought i was in need of a lot of advanced lifting techniques. I spent a year doing all kinds of crazy things, chains, partial reps, paused reps, heavy singles, deadlift every day, bench press every day, extended range of motion exercises, partial range of motion exercises, explosive variations of exercises, and all sorts of other “advanced techniques” that I had read about online. Every day I was learning about some new method to “strengthen my weak point”, and implementing it into my training.
My results were less then stellar. In general after a year of such techniques and intense reading my results were not impressive.
At one point I realized that I myself had turned into one of those “program hoppers” and I had over estimated my response to training, and as a result I made much less progress then I would have made on a much simpler intermediate program, or honestly, any actual program.
Beginning in 2016 I decided I was going to pick a proven plan and just stick to it. I tried out the Madcow Advanced 5×5 and I’ve never looked back. After running that for it’s entire 9 weeks I chose an even simpler intermediate program because I felt like my recovery abilities could support it and I’ve been extremely pleased. My progress has been astounding but almost as important as that was another unexpected side effect….
I had freed my mind!
Suddenly now that I was on a proven, effective program based around a simple linear progression of adding 5 pounds per week, I no longer felt the need or desire to constantly read the bodybuilding and powerlifting blogs every single day. I simply did not feel required to know every single trick in the book, I was already making effective progress with the tricks i was currently using. This allowed me to concentrate more on my work, and my side business and it really made training more fun and easier to do. All the trouble shooting and constant “improvement” was over. It almost felt like my training was on autopilot. And without having to read all the weightlifting blogs every morning I was able to use that time for more productive things.
I had realized that I had found that elusive perfect plan. The unicorn of the fitness world.
The only problem is that there is no such plan. There is no unicorn. No plan works forever. But the best part is, so what? So what if every plan will stop working someday? Why not just run the plan until that happens? There’s the answer. There is no need to fix something that isn’t broken. Wait till it breaks, then fix it. Once your program stops, assess what has happened and find a new program that will take you forward again. Every lifter goes thru these various phases throughout their training career. These are natural cycles.
The problem with the internet is that it provides new information at a pace that far exceeds our ability to fully assess and vet that very information. There is no need to suddenly change an effective program that is working simply because some new article got posted today, or some guy on Youtube has a new bench press variation “guaranteed to bust your plateau.” Hell, most of us, myself included, are not even strong enough yet to be at a real plateau.
The basic proven principles of building strength haven’t changed much in 50 years, I doubt tomorrow’s new blog post will revolutionize the weight training world with some amazing new techniques or methods. One thing that was true 100 years ago and is still true today, internet or no internet, is that no one ever got strong just by reading a book, or watching a youtube video, or reading a blog post. Action is the single most important thing, without action nothing will ever happen. The only way books alone are going to make you stronger is if you hang them off the ends of the barbell and start squatting them.
Strength is built in the gym. Take Action; find a good plan, then turn off the internet and start lifting!
