The 80s was an incredible time to be alive.
Sure, it had its problems.
We were taught to hide under our desks to combat the constant fear of nuclear war. Airplane hijackings seemed to occur on a weekly basis. David Copperfield, of all people, took supermodel Claudia Schiffer off the market. And it turns out I had absolutely no shot with my first television crush, Valerie Bertenelli.
But the good outweighed the bad.
You had punk, new wave and hair metal. Neon sweatshirts, Camaros, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition arriving at your door every February (not that I was keeping track).
You had to be there.
To give you the greatest example of 80s dominance, in one Summer (1985) all these movies came out: Rambo, Back To The Future, The Goonies, Cocoon, Fletch, European Vacation, Mad Max, St. Elmo’s Fire, Beverly Hills Cop, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Weird Science.
These days, you’re lucky to get one Marvel movie and an announcement that Grand Theft Auto 6 is once again delayed.
We didn’t have constantly infringing technology. At 8 years old you were not only allowed but encouraged to disappear on your bike for the entire afternoon. And you were more likely to get your hydration from a garden hose than an organic bottle from Whole Foods.
I realize that everything looks a bit rosier in the rearview (and certainly people tend to regard their youth as the best of times) but I think this is one of the cases where the nostalgic memories might be as good as the reality.
Speaking of movies, one of my favorites from that time was called “Revenge of The Nerds”.
The basic premise of this comedy revolves around a group of intellectual college freshmen (the aforementioned “nerds”) portrayed as outcasts and bullied by the school’s jocks, who band together, form a fraternity, win the Greek Games, gain control of the Greek Council, rule the school and get the chicks.
It’s a really fun and funny movie that is also, admittedly, riddled with some problematic themes that wouldn’t fly in today’s more socially aware environment.
The nerds are clever and crafty and loveable and you end up rooting for them the entire movie. True underdogs who ultimately get the win.
Lately, there has been a revenge of the nerds in the fitness space.
This mostly comes in the form of “evidence-based” trainers, influencers and podcasters who break down research in order to tell you exactly how much protein your kidneys can process with each meal, the exact pennation angle of your muscles in order to gain maximal range of motion on your high-cable rows and exactly how much sunlight to get on your butthole to optimize your Vitamin D absorption.
Before I go any further, I think it’s important to clarify two main points here.
The first is that I consider myself an evidence-based trainer, to a degree. I follow and report on research, I make sure my programs follow the principles of exercise science and I tend to avoid things that are trendy and unproven.
Mainly I want to be a contrasting voice to the cacophony of deceptive information that riddles the fitness industry. I also feel like I have an obligation to give paying clients the most efficient and effective hours of training I can and I’m not going to risk that on some bullshit.
Secondly, to me, evidence-based does not solely mean scientific, research-based training and nutrition principles. Anecdotal evidence is still evidence. I’ve been training people for a long time and training myself for even longer. Having seen something work for 20 years is evidence.
In fact, science is based on observation and then forming controlled experimentation to confirm or learn about those observations. There are no shortage of situations where science concludes something that bodybuilders or track athletes discovered in training decades earlier.
And this is part of the problem with today’s evidence-based folk. Whether it’s well-intentioned and important scientists-turned-podcasters like Dr. Andrew Huberman or your pencil-necked TikToker who has the nerve to tell The Hulk he’s been training his traps wrong, the current crop of evidence-based crowd seems not to have room for actual training experience.
This is a mistake.
But I also understand why.
Training experience takes time. It takes many failures. It takes a growing understanding and a changing philosophy that cannot be short-cut.
Interpreting research or understanding biomechanics certainly also requires a skill set but can be accelerated to the limit of one’s tolerance to learn.
In other words, you can learn and regurgitate biohacking principles relatively quickly. Developing muscle and experiencing the reps required to get there takes time. And taking time leaves a lot of influence and clout and money on the table.
The other issue is that some people who are really passionate about training lack the genetics and, more often, the pain tolerance to make attention-getting progress. So they try to dazzle with their brains when their bodies do not impress.
And all of this is a lovely analysis by an industry insider (me!) that you probably don’t give a shit about. But if you’ve been patient enough to read this far, allow me to give you something applicable of value that will hopefully simplify what you should be paying attention to when it comes to your own training.
If you pay attention to nothing else and just follow this hierarchy of priorities you are likely to have more success than William Shatner at a Star Trek convention.
The first is that you must train hard. Uncomfortably hard. Close to failure hard. Extremely high heart-rate hard. Burning in your lungs and in your legs hard.
Physical changes - whether that’s how you look or how you perform - will only occur with a substantial stress to the system. So train as hard as you can while avoiding injury and allowing for recovery.
The nerds are going to concern themselves with vector angles. You concern yourself with going far enough to not be able to perform another good rep.
The second is consistency. Don’t be a stop-start-stop guy. Rather, be a death-and-taxes guy. Make your attendance in the gym so reliable that when you aren’t in the squat rack on a Wednesday night, the kid at the front desk calls your emergency contact to make sure you are okay.
You don’t need training breaks. You don’t need to deload every 4th week. You aren’t at risk of overtraining. Those can be appropriate strategies and legitimate concerns for a very small group of people. A group that you are likely not in.
If you only show up every time and train hard every time you will win. But if you want some good tips beyond that….
Keep track of what you are doing so you can make it harder over time. This is a concept called progressive overload and can refer to adding weight, adding reps, reducing rest, adding sets and a whole host of other things that simply make things more challenging over time.
Essentially progressive overload is a strategy to make sure that you are training hard.
Make sure your program has a foundation of compound lifts.
There are plenty of nerds who will tell you that the big compound lifts are unnecessary, potentially injurious and should be as avoided as a dozen donuts at a weight loss camp.
As I write this, there is a round table discussion of Dr. Peter Attilla and other fitness influencers fear mongering about the risk-reward of barbell back squats. And in all deference to Dr. Attila and his mult-degree earning committee, none of these people look like they’re exactly killing it in the gym.
Compound barbell movements allow for precise weight management, efficient strength building and axial loading which has proven to improve bone density, hormonal health and all the other actual benefits that strength training provides.
All your lifts don’t have to be compound, but avoiding them is a mistake.
The final thing that will actually move the needle on your training is to remember what you are doing it for.
If you want to look better in the mirror, don’t judge your progress by the weight on the bar or on the scale. Those can be good data points and inform your training, but judge your results based on what you are trying to accomplish.
And, lastly, try to have fun. This seems counterintuitive to our first principle - make sure training is hard - but just because something is painful it doesn’t mean you can’t find the joy in it. You must find the joy if you are going to be consistent.
I have an appreciation for people who are trying to move the industry forward. And I understand that controversial or atypical claims get attention. And attention is the world’s new currency.
But people have a hard enough time motivating themselves to get in the gym. And making it more complicated or encouraging every decision to be second guessed is doing more harm than good.
So get in there. Train remarkably hard. Keep going. Track what you are doing so you can keep making it more challenging. Don’t discount the compound lifts. They are a shortcut to success. Find some joy so you don’t give up.
It’s simple, but it works. And works is what you should be aiming for.
Because when it comes to the movie of your fitness life, it is you and not the nerds who should win.