Rational Decision Making & Communication In Personal Training
KEY POINTS:
Rational thinking and decision making is an ethical requirement.
Rational thought processes and communication build credibility and engender trust.
Rationality is in keeping with our brand. Sensationalist and irrational thinking is “off brand”.
Just making stuff up is ubiquitous in the fitness industry (”muscle confusion”, “muscle balance”, “myofascial release” etcetera). We CANNOT be like this.
Instead, we need to embody empirical reasoning.
We DO NOT need empirical answers for every question. But when risk is high, or a emphatic statement is being made, we DO need to be able to produce empirical verification.
We ought to make decisions rationally. Thoughtfully. We should have solid reasons for doing what we do and saying what we say.
Here are some reasons why.
First of all it’s correct.
When we follow disciplined and structured thought processes we get to the right answers. The right answer cuts through BS and gets us to our destination via the fastest route. That serves people.
When we bear in mind we can be self-deceived very easily and blinded by commercial or ego-driven incentives, we apprehend reality more clearly. This brings clarity to our clients and our selves. Honestly, clarity’s half the battle.
Secondly, it’s right. In a moral sense.
Trying our best to think clearly is one of the ways we show we value people. If someone can see you care about the truth, and not simply your own interests, they rightly understand you can be trusted. After all, you’re actually invested in them and their progress.
Lastly, it aligns with the Extension Fitness brand.
We are pitching to an intelligent, older and wealthier client base.
They have likely been around the traps for a bit and have probably been burned either by charlatans or practitioners who overpromise and under-deliver.
They may have spent years seeking help to no avail from a professional who was dogmatically wedded to an unproven framework or treatment system - setting fire to thousands of dollars and wasting hours upon hours in the process.
And now, when they hear a trainer say “EVERYONE needs to squat and deadlift!!!”, “you need to confuse your muscles by constant variation” or “women MUST train in perfect synchronicity with their menstrual cycle”, their allergic reaction is totally justified.
When we present irrational information (overhyped fads, unsupported theories, silver bullets, unsubstantiated exercise paradigms - like muscle balance fundamentalism) we sound tawdry, silly and cheap. Like a late-night infomercial. Definitely not like a solid, reliable and trustworthy expert.
Our clients want to feel like they are in a safe pair of hands. Thinking and communicating irrationally undermines that sense of safety.
How To Think And Communicate Rationally - When It Comes To Health & Fitness
Okay, here’s some words on how it’s done. On how to think and communicate rationally when it comes to health and fitness.
1/ We should be slow to adopt new trends, and sceptical about claims of impressive results.
2/ We need to embody a respect for ideas and methods that have stood the test of time, having been vindicated by empirical, scientific scrutiny and years of real-world implementation.
3/ We have to understand that in the messy realm of health, empirical enquiry is absolutely crucial. We need to rely on empirical results to guide our understanding of “what works”.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Empirical means information, knowledge, or evidence that is based on observation, experience, or scientific experimentation rather than on theory, logic, or pure reasoning. It describes something that can be measured, tested, and verified in the physical world.
More On Empirical Reasoning
Empirical reasoning is absolutely key in health and fitness.
Here’s how that plays out.
Say you’re excited about foam rolling as a modality to reduce post exercise muscle soreness. How do you find out if it actually works?
The empirical approach is to find direct evidence from randomised controlled trials (RCTs).
(Aside: An RCT is a scientific experiment where an intervention is compared to a control and a placebo to evaluate effectiveness. It employs unbiased methods to get to the bottom of the question - “does it work?”)
Does that excruciating foam rolling session actually reduce muscle soreness when compared to nothing at all (control group)?
And does the trial include a placebo group to account for the possibility of a placebo effect?
Were the methods used to evaluate muscle soreness rock solid measurement techniques?
Was the study conducted well and is it published in a trustworthy journal?
If all those boxes can be ticked, then go ahead and spruik the benefits of foam rolling.
Here’s how you don’t find out how it works. This is how you reason non-empirically. And how you use irrational and illogical thought processes.
Number 1: You say, “it ought to work therefore it works”. That’s illogical.
Just because you’re convinced fascial adhesions are present and driving the soreness (which, by the way, you need to actually verify and can’t just assume), and in your mind foam rolling ought to bust it up (which is QUITE the leap of faith if you’ve ever seen fascia), it doesn’t follow that you know it works.
The mere fact you think it should work, does not mean is does work.
Number 2: You make illogical inferences based on surrogate outcomes.
Let’s use another example - low carb diets – to draw out another common thinking error: making incorrect inferences based on surrogate outcome measures.
A friend has lost a lot of weight following a low carb diet. They say the insulin response to carbohydrates is THE THING driving modern obesity. They show you a graph.
Wow! You can see on the graph that when insulin is elevated in the blood right after a high carb meal, fat burning goes down. The insulin is the cause of the obesity epidemic, right?!
Not so fast.
Maybe insulin really is the baddie. But this is a great example of reasoning based on a surrogate outcome measure.
What’s that?
A surrogate outcome measure stands in (as a surrogate) for the thing you actually care about. Insulin quantity in the blood after a meal is assumed to be causally connected to long term obesity. Your friend is proposing the insulin spike is the culprit. Now, that may or may not be the case. Surrogate outcome measures have their place, but you can’t abandon measuring the actual outcome you’re concerned about.
To properly understand whether the insulin response to high carb diets is THE THING driving the obesity epidemic, you need to refer to randomised controlled trials of different diets and see what effect they have on weight gain or weight loss. Yes, insulin should be measured, but so should the thing you care about - fat gain or fat loss. And measurement needs to occur over an appropriate time frame. Seeing as your interest is probably in long term fat loss, you need to take long term measurements.
Do low carb diets lead to more weight loss than high carb diets when calories are matched? Is it possible to still achieve significant weight loss with a high carb diet? Is there some other explanation for why low carb diets may yield better results (like the fact that protein is more satiating)?
I’m agnostic about the specific answer to these questions. The point I’m making is extrapolations based off surrogate outcomes do not demonstrate that some approach “works”.
You can’t just point to that graph showing the insulin response and say, “low carb diets are the solution!”.
Sadly, these sorts of errors in thinking (reasoning from logic alone, mechanistic theories alone, or surrogate outcomes) is ubiquitous in fitness and in rehab professions like Physio, Chiro and Osteo.
Don’t get sucked in and don’t perpetuate the sloppy thinking.
Before you state with confidence that an approach, technique or training program is superior to alternatives, ask yourself “can I back this up with real world empirical evidence?”.
Before you give extremely emphatic reasons for your programming choices (or dunk on other styles of training), think about whether you can prove your point with real world data, as opposed to surrogate outcomes.
Just being convinced that it makes sense is not enough. Biological systems are extremely complex and we often are blind to our own ignorance. This is why empirical methods are so important.
So how do you think and behave empirically in the real world of personal training?
Here’s one of the best ways to think rationally yourself, communicate rationally with clients, and to anchor your decision making to empirical/real-world data: track measurements as part of the training process and make reasonable inferences based on these.
Now, working 1-1 with someone is never a truly scientific experiment because it’s not controlled enough, but often it is reasonable to infer that positive progress in the thing we care about is being affected by targeted training.
Let me spell it out why with an example.
You’re working with an older adult on building strength, fitness, balance and bone density - because this person has been told by their GP that they have Osteopenia.
After a year, you can see that they can objectively lift heavier weights and move faster in some measures of fitness. And, they are performing better on balance tests.
Recently, they’ve done a repeat bone scan and report to you that their bones are lots more dense now and their GP is happy.
In this situation, it is very reasonable to assume the training has contributed substantially to that result.
Why?
Well, to begin with, it is a well-established scientific fact that resistance training improves bone density. And, based on your knowledge that the person has gained a lot of strength, you can reasonably infer that a very productive level of healthy stress has been imparted to their skeleton.
You can confidently say to them, “This training has really helped your bones”.
What’s more, if you work with several people like this, and you observe the same phenomenon, you can know with a good deal of confidence that - “our training improves bone density in people who have Osteopenia”.
It is never water-tight, but it is a reasonable assumption based on solid, direct, empirical evidence.
Matching Your Level Of Expressed Confidence To The Level Of Evidence
The key to getting this right is expressing appropriate degrees on confidence about our knowledge. And matching it to risk.
When risk is high (the matter we’re involved with contains potential for harm), there’s a higher need for rigorous empirical data to support decision making.
Example: With medicines that have the potential to harm you, a Doctor can’t just say, “Give it a try! What could go wrong?!” because death is what could go wrong.
When risk is low, the need for rock solid empirical knowledge is reduced (although it is always preferable).
Example: With various recovery modalities which can’t harm you, it’s fine to say, “Try it and see if you think it works for you!”.
It’s important to realise you don’t need to have ALL THE ANSWERS and you don’t need to pretend as though you do.
Fortunately, because we work in exercise, which is almost always beneficial and rarely harmful, it is quite rare that programming decisions are going to make things drastically worse or much, much better very quickly.
Normally, our task is to fine tune things over time based on the results an individual client is experiencing.
It’s not as though we are choosing between cancer drugs, or deciding if a certain Psychological approach should or shouldn’t receive government funding.
When communicating with clients, you are empowered to express uncertainty. It is totally fine to be unsure about the answer to many questions. The truly ignorant attitude is to pretend you know everything.
You’re also empowered to express an opinion - “If I skip the cool down after a run and get straight into my car, I tend to get a sore back. That’s why I recommend it. I may be wrong, but there’s certainly no harm in doing a cool down if you can spare the time.”
But when it comes to a strong claim, like “every runner should do calf raises to avoid injury and you’d be absolutely bonkers to leave them out”, we need to be able to substantiate it. You SHOULD be able to point to empirical research, if that is the way you ‘re speaking.
The same fundamental view can be expressed in a manner that gives appropriate nuance to most real-world situations: “It’s ideal to do calf raises if at all possible to reduce injury risk and maximise performance. But if you don’t have time, it may be OK to skip them. And when you’re a few weeks out from a big event, weight training should take a back seat anyway.”
The claim here is less forceful and therefore requires less backing.
Moreover, it speaks to the complexities of the real world situations we work in.
Answering Objections To This Approach
“Are you saying I should be able to cite studies to support absolutely everything I do? That sounds impractical.”
No. At the end of the day, we are NOT scientists. We are applying science to messy real-world problems among wildly varied people.
“Are you saying that randomised controlled trials are impervious to error, or that anecdotal evidence is totally irrelevant?”
No, scientific studies can certainly contain errors or be affected by bias.
But they are the only reliable way of using empirical methods to answer our questions. And they are indispensable because empirical methods are always needed to answer the question, “does it work?”
Summary
Rational thinking is a key part of our brand. It sets us apart as trustworthy and coolheaded in a market that’s cluttered with wild, sensationalist claims and a well deserved reputation for bulldust.
If you do your best to be as empirical as you can, it is hard to go wrong.