Knowledge Is Not Wisdom

Dave Tate / elitefts

When I was younger, I had an answer for everything.

You could walk up to me with any problem in the weight room, and I'd have a fix inside of thirty seconds. Weak off the chest. Stalling out of the hole. Bar drifting. Can't lock out. I had the exercise, the sets, the reps, the rest periods, and I'd tell you exactly what you were doing wrong while I was at it.

The crazy part is that some of it worked.

Just not for the reasons I thought.

I was confident because I hadn't lived long enough to be proven wrong yet. I'd read everything I could get my hands on. I was training in the right rooms, around people doing it at the highest level in the world. That's a lot of information for a young lifter to be carrying around, and I was carrying it around like it was the same thing as being right.

Knowledge was never my problem.

Wisdom was.

It took me a couple of decades to understand that those are two different things.

Five Words People Use Like They Mean The Same Thing

Most arguments in this industry are not really arguments. There are two people using the same five words to mean five different things, then getting mad that the other guy won't agree.

That's not semantics. Getting these mixed up is how a lifter with real potential ends up following a guy who has read a lot and lifted nothing. It's also how a strong lifter with zero ability to explain himself gets written off by people who could have learned something from him.

Knowledge Is What You Have Learned

Books, courses, certifications, articles, podcasts, seminars. Anything that went in through your eyes and ears.

There are two levels of it. General knowledge is the base you need to survive. It's worthless when it comes to advancing in training or in business. General knowledge will get you through life, and you can see exactly how far it takes people if you go stand in line at any store in your town.

Specialized knowledge is what's needed to advance in any field. Advanced education, self-education, mentorship from people who are further down the road than you.

The trap shows up once somebody acquires a certain amount of it. They decide they're done. They graduated. They stop learning, and a few years later, the world has passed them by, and they don't even know it happened.

Worse are those who never stop accumulating specialized knowledge but never do anything with it. They know more than everyone they associate with, or at least they've convinced themselves they do, and they are outstanding at telling you all the things.

Knowledge with nothing built on top of it is trivia.

Intelligence Is What You Do With It

Intelligence is the wiring. It's the ability to take three things you learned in three different places and see how they connect.

The best athlete isn't the one with all the answers. The smartest athlete doesn't always know how to implement what he knows. This is the education-versus-experience argument that has followed me my entire life, and both sides are wrong when they plant their flags at the extremes.

I once watched a horse trainer, a guy considered one of the best in the state, roll his eyes at a woman explaining the science of why what he was doing wasn't optimal. She was probably right about the science. He was probably right about the horse.

Neither one of them learned anything that day.

Intelligence without experience gives you answers that are perfect on paper and useless under a bar.

Experience Is What You Have Actually Done

Done, observed, survived, repeated.

Here's the version of this I can't let go of. If I decided I wanted to be a golf coach, would you hire me?

I've never played in a tournament. I've dabbled at putt-putt. I have never hit a drive in my life. No mentors, no formal study, though I have taken some quality naps watching the PGA.

I also don't see the need to volunteer at a high school or work at the club level, because I don't believe in working without pay. The best experience is the real world anyway, so I'm offering half price to the first five who sign up for my online golf group.

That's a joke about golf. It is not a joke about this industry. That is the actual standard the market has accepted for online coaching. Under the bar, experience is not required. Competition experience is not required. Education is not required. Experience training others is not required in order to bill for the work.

Firsthand experience is the best education there is. The tuition is just high.

Thirty Years, Or The Same Year Thirty Times

Time in the gym is not the same as experience.

You can have thirty years under the bar, or you can have the same year thirty times. I've met plenty of both. The second guy ran one program, trained one way, coached one type of lifter, and never once had to explain why something failed. He's been doing it a long time. He hasn't been learning for a long time.

Everybody quotes the 10,000-hour thing. What gets left out is that the hours only count if you get better by the hour. Otherwise, you just clocked in.

The people I've watched genuinely excel at their craft have a few things in common. They're decisive. They know exactly where the edge of their knowledge is, and they don't pretend past it. Whatever they do know, they can explain to a fourth grader. They're always learning, but they're selective about it, focused on what they need right now or in the near future. They read outside their specialty. And they teach constantly, because teaching is the highest form of learning.

I'll take the person who worked hard and smart over a long stretch and ate three or four bad outcomes to get one great one. Those three or four failures are education. Show me somebody who found the fastest possible shortcut, and I'll show you a liability in three to five years.

So the honest question isn't how long you've been doing this.

It's how many of those years actually taught you something.

Wisdom Is Knowing What Matters Right Now

Wisdom is not more knowledge. It's knowing which piece of knowledge applies to this lifter, on this day, in this situation, and what should actually be done about it.

Time and experience did to me what they do to everybody. They humbled me.

I started noticing that everything I used to criticize in other people had a time and a place. Things I'd have sworn by stopped working. Lifters who didn't fit my model kept succeeding anyway, doing it their own way, and eventually I had to stop dismissing them and start asking why.

That's where it turns. When you quit hunting for the answer and start hunting for better questions.

Every training principle has context. Every rule has exceptions. What works for a twenty-two-year-old chasing his first elite total does not work for a forty-five-year-old trying to stay in the game and keep his hips attached. Same principles. Completely different application.

I used to think mastery meant having all the answers. Now I think it means understanding that the answers change.

Beginners speak in absolutes. Veterans speak in probabilities. I'm far more confident now than I was thirty years ago, and I'm less sure about almost everything.

Here's the part that stings. Wisdom can be offered. Humility can't be taught. Older lifters told me some of what I was doing was stupid, and looking back, they were right, but I don't think I could have understood it without going through it. You only earn humility when something forces you to slow down and look backward.

I prioritized strength over health for years. I thought pain meant progress. I paid for that, and nobody could have talked me out of it.

Bias Never Leaves, And Success Makes It Worse

Bias is the thumb on the scale you didn't know was there.

It's not the same as being wrong. Bias is what steers a decision before you're aware it's being made. Where were you trained? Who coached you? What worked on your body? What made you money? What did you get praised for?

And this is the part nobody wants to hear.

Success makes it worse.

Failure at least makes you go looking. Success hands you proof. It worked for me, so it works. My lifters got strong doing it, so that's how you get strong. Your results become your evidence, and the more results you stack up, the harder it gets to hear anything that contradicts them.

I learned an enormous amount from Louie Simmons and from training at Westside Barbell. That knowledge was real, it was earned, and I've built a lot on top of it. It also became a lens I had to learn to check, because when you have that kind of foundation, it's very easy to look at anybody doing it differently and assume they just don't know yet.

Some of them didn't.

Some of them knew something I didn't.

You don't get rid of bias. You can't scrub it out. What you can do is name it out loud. Put your background on the table so people can see where you're standing when you talk. That way, they can weigh what you're saying against where it came from, and so can you.

How The Five Work Together

All five are running at the same time, every time you make a call. The first four you can see working. The fifth one you usually can't, which is exactly why it's the dangerous one.

Which brings me to the whole point.

The smartest person in the room is not always the wisest.

Sometimes they're just the best at explaining why they believe they're right.

Who You Should Be Listening To

There used to be gatekeepers. Editors, publishers, and eventually website owners like me.

When we started elitefts in the early 2000s, I became one of them. I didn't want just anybody writing for the site. I wanted people who were elite in numbers, knowledge, experience, and integrity. We made mistakes, but most of those voices went on to shape a generation of lifters and coaches.

Then social media blew the gates off. Anyone could post, teach, or claim expertise.

It made me angry at first. I thought it would drown out everything we'd worked to protect. Over time, I came around, because it also gave a voice to people who never would have been heard in the old system. Lifters and coaches with real insight who just didn't fit the model.

The job didn't disappear. It moved.

The filtering is on you now. So use the same three filters I've always used.

Look at who has done it and still lives it. Look at who has coached it, meaning they've gotten results with people who aren't them. And look at where they learned it.

If somebody has lifted big weights, taught others to lift big weights, trained alongside people who lift big weights, or was coached by people who move big weights, the odds are good they can help you.

One more filter. Watch the certainty. Real experts ask more questions than they answer, because they've learned that the truth in this game is always under revision. The guy with zero doubt is usually the one to be careful with.

And when somebody criticizes what you're doing, don't dismiss it. Dissect it. Find out where it's coming from and why. If it's from someone trying to tear you down with nothing to build back up, walk away and get on with your life. If it's from someone who earned the right to say it, shut up and listen.

Most people crumble under criticism because they never learned to separate the personal from the practical. They take offense when they should be taking notes.

What To Do With This

Run yourself against the five.

Which do you actually have? Be honest about it. Most people have knowledge and call it wisdom. Some have experience and think that makes them right. Both are stuck in the same place for different reasons.

Then go find the case that shouldn't work. Find the lifter getting strong doing the thing you say doesn't work, and instead of arguing with him, ask him why. That question has taught me more than any book I've read.

Then teach what you know. Teaching is the highest form of learning, and it will expose every hole in your understanding within about ten minutes. You'll find out fast which parts you actually understand and which parts you just memorized from someone else.

And say the three words. I don't know. Out loud. Once this week.

Nothing bad happens. That's the part that surprised me.

Because the damage in this industry doesn't come from people who don't know something. It comes from people who don't know something and say it with total confidence to somebody who trusts them.

Knowledge is easy to get. Experience takes time. Wisdom takes both, plus enough humility to admit when the two don't line up.

Live, Learn, Pass On.

Dave Tate / elitefts

If you want the long-form version of these conversations, that's what the Table Talk Podcast is for.