{"id":5674,"date":"2014-06-05T14:47:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T14:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inveske.co.uk\/motivate-warn-advise-teach-and-educate-very-different-things\/"},"modified":"2014-06-05T14:47:02","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T14:47:02","slug":"motivate-warn-advise-teach-and-educate-very-different-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/motivate-warn-advise-teach-and-educate-very-different-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivate, warn, advise, teach and educate: very different things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, the 25th<\/sup> of May, was a glorious day for some of my friends but it also provided frustration. It was the over 220lbs men\u2019s day at the IPL Nationals. We are a close bunch, some of us even work together on an educational project (MAD Powerlifting) and most of us have a background in physical education or other biological sciences. I watched as Hugo approached Andre and said something on the line of \u201cdon\u2019t be upset: I video-taped your deadlifts. It\u2019s easy to fix that\u201d.<\/p>\n

Andre was obviously upset. He is and has always been a great deadlifter. In fact deadlift was \u201chis\u201d lift: he started on powerlifting struggling with his squat, working on optimizing the bench press with his\u00a0long, ectomorph arms but the deadlift was his baby. Sunday, god knows why, he got all his three squats neat and even got a fourth record attempt good. His bench press was also pretty nice. But he failed both his second and third deadlift attempts. We all felt bad as our eyes followed a low head Andre out of the platform.<\/p>\n

I hugged him and said: \u201cbro, don\u2019t worry, powerlifting is just like that: sometimes things just don\u2019t come the way you expect them to.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Andre did his second and third attempts everyone who was not a referee screamed things like \u201cc\u2019mon, man, that\u2019s light weight\u201d (lie: it was very heavy), \u201ceasy, man, easy!\u201d (another lie: it was damn hard) or \u201cyou can do it, you know you can!\u201d (third lie: obviously he didn\u2019t know whether he could or not, that\u2019s why it\u2019s called a game).<\/p>\n

What everybody screamed is called \u201cpsyching up\u201d or \u201cmotivation\u201d. They are an important collective talk because they express emotional involvement, cheering and group dynamics. The objective is to raise the lifter\u2019s self-confidence and stamina.<\/p>\n

What I did is called \u201csupport\u201d. That\u2019s what friends do when they got little else to say at a certain point. It is not a lie but it doesn\u2019t contain any useful knowledge.<\/p>\n

What Hugo did is called \u201cadvice\u201d: it is a technical comment with the objective of solving a specific problem.<\/p>\n

When all this is over, we may use Andre\u2019s videos when we teach our classes about the deadlift since we have an even better illustration of the points we make every time. This is called \u201cteaching\u201d.<\/p>\n

Finally, we may find a way to help a very large number of lifters if we deduce universal models from this experience and connect them to the existing body of knowledge on strength training or even the execution of the deadlift. Writing or speaking about it and succeeding in reaching the audience is called \u201ceducation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The strength training blogosphere is cluttered with motivational material. Even the attacks on supposedly despicable behaviors out there (a favorite in digital strength coaches writing) are actually motivational content: the objective is to give the reader a sense of pride over his own righteous behavior and, of course, promote allegiance.<\/p>\n

What is usually presented as \u201ctraining advice\u201d is actually not advice at all: they are universal guidelines based on nothing except personal experience coupled with dangerously unsound technical claims. Let\u2019s take a look at some I found randomly on the internet:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should drink at least a gallon of milk every two days\u201d \u2013 not only wrong, but dangerous. I am a milk drinker. Not only I like it, but I belong to the tiny percentage of the human population that inherited the most \u201ccow-dependent\u201d genes. A genetic sub-set of the human population has actually co-evolved with cow cattle and its bowel function health may (or may not) be dependent on dairy products. But how about the other 80% of the human population who shows varying degrees of milk intolerance? Do the self-proclaimed digital strength coaches ever think they are writing publically and that generalizing milk prescription is wrong and potentially dangerous? Who cares about evolutionary biology or biochemistry, right? As a biologist with a M.Sc., in biochemistry (and a Ph.D. in sociology of science), I happen to care, so I wrote something about it<\/a> respecting both (evolutionary biology and biochemistry).<\/p>\n

\u201cAccessory work is unnecessary for powerlifting\u201d \u2013 Here we have the funniest of the situations. We have coaches publishing one extra accessory exercise to \u201cboost your deadlift\u201d per day and we have those that proclaim that the only way to become a real powerlifter is to restrict your training to the lifts, full movement,\u00a0and that\u2019s all. They may add a measure of intensity, but they\u2019re not keen on periodization, either. Both are obviously bullshit: accessory exercises were and are designed to address one specific item of each lift\u2019s execution. A coach may make good use of it when it is the appropriate moment to correct a deficiency or to improve the lift through an emphasis on that specific phase of the lift. Let\u2019s say your lifter has a problem on the raw bench liftoff from the chest. Deads should be a good choice of accessory exercise. But let\u2019s say your lifter is just great, one of those rare guys it is very hard to improve. Anyway, you two figure it\u2019s been a long time since he hasn\u2019t practiced the liftoff through deads and that may give that tiny extra edge to guarantee a historical record. Then you go for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo military press if you want to improve your benching\u201d \u2013 Right. And the next article will be: do rows to improve your benching. And the next one will be: do snatch deadlifts to improve your deadlift. It is all right, and all wrong. An almost infinite variety of exercises can and should be used to improve a lift. To promote one as the key to improvement is bullshit.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t be lean and strong at the same time\u201d \u2013 Yes you can. There is ample evidence of extremely high level powerlifters who managed to lose fat and gain strength\u00a0at the same time. This is not bodybuilding: this is powerlifting and the neural aspects count much more than in any other sport. It may be hard to explain the physiological basis of losing fat and gaining maximum strength at the same time, but it is not absurd (you don\u2019t need any supernatural concept for that) and the facts are out there.<\/p>\n

Bottom line is: it is perfectly ok to motivate; it is great to share training experience. It is not ok at all to prescribe things one is not trained for. To become a strength coach, I had to come all the way from a Ph.D. in sociology of science back to basics and get myself a certification in Physical Education. The immense majority of digital coaches have no idea what they are talking about.<\/p>\n

The internet was one of the greatest things that happened to knowledge socialization: millions of people previously excluded from the body of technical knowledge in any field are now one click away from it. The flip side of that is that anyone can post anything and the average user is lost in a sea of disorganized information, with no hierarchy or credibility seal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, the 25th of May, was a glorious day for some of my friends but it also provided frustration. It was the over 220lbs men\u2019s day at the IPL Nationals. We are a close bunch, some of us even work together on an educational project (MAD Powerlifting) and most of us have a background in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1200,238],"tags":[2836,2837,15,2838,2839,2840],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mariliacoutinho.com\/pt-br\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}