I assess peoples fitness and strength and advise on workouts and training routines for quite a few people. I use a mixture of theory and experience to do this. For example, if someone comes training with a certain injury, then theory and experience tells me that they should probably avoid certain moves while emphesise others to avoid making things worse and hopefully fix them.
And more often than not, I’m thankfully right (phew!)
But there are times when reality stubbornly refuses to match what my fancy theories suggest. For example, in theory, this move should be fine while that move should cause pain…but bloody hell! Why is the exact opposite happening??!!
I’ve heard horror stories of trainers refusing to believe the evidence of their own eyes and the crying sobs of their clients, and insist that the client must be wrong and they are right, “because the text book says so”. Then just carrying on with the same thing that isn’t working.
Well, I was educated as a scientist and I love a text book or study report or theory as much as the next geek. But I was also taught that reality is the ultimate judge. Any time a theory and reality come up different, it is the theory that loses. It is the theory that needs changing.
Every time.
Without exeption.
So I will continue using my theories and experience to set training programes, but I will quite happily dump then on the wayside and adapt if reality shows that they are not working.
“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy”