The Best Educated Guess

Live, Learn, Pass On.

Forty-plus years under the bar and around it, and I'll tell you the thing most people in this industry won't say out loud.

Most of it is a guess.

An educated guess. An experienced guest. A guess built on decades of training, coaching, reading, failing, and being flat wrong more times than I can count. But a guess.

The best answer for that person, in that body, at that point in their training life, on that specific day.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

And it runs straight against the story that a lot of people are selling. The people who have the right answer for every lifter, every situation, every time. The ones with the program that works for everybody. The ones who never say "I don't know."

They don't have it figured out. Nobody does.

Why "It Depends" Doesn't Sell

Certainty sells. "It depends" doesn't.

"It depends" doesn't fill a seminar room. It doesn't move a program. It doesn't rack up followers. So the industry keeps producing people who speak in absolutes because absolutes are easier to buy.

We've entered the age of the over-educated, under-trained coach. This new breed studies everything they can find. They read every study, every article, every method. And somewhere in all that reading, they fry their own ability to think.

I've had it happen to me at seminars. A hand goes up in the front row, and I get hit with something like, "What are your thoughts on the inverse bio-sequential process?" Followed by, "Have you ever used imbalanced adductocentric patterns?"

My head spins. I have no idea what this guy is talking about.

Then it hits me. He's done his homework. He's more educated than I am on paper. But at what cost?

His program still sucks.

Because knowing the words is not the same as knowing what to do with the body in front of you. There's a huge difference between book smart and gym smart. I've heard it said about brilliant people my whole life. "Smart as hell, high IQ, no common sense." Coaching is the same. "Really knows his stuff, worst technique I've ever seen."

Education matters. I'll be the first to say it. But education without the ability to think for yourself just makes you good at repeating other people's absolutes.

Even science isn't Absolute

Here's where it gets uncomfortable for the certainty crowd.

Most training science is built on the super-compensation model. There are thousands of studies backing it. It's supposed to be a given. An absolute.

Except it works differently depending on your aerobic base, your anaerobic base, your training history, your hormones, your mental state, and your vital signs. Then stack on your sleep, your stress, what's happening at your job, and what's happening at home.

That's the whole training process right there. Learning how to use and influence a model that refuses to behave the same way twice.

And this is one of the more solid things we have to work with. Now ask yourself. Do we know anything in this game with 100 percent certainty? How many "proven" absolutes have been flipped on their head over the years?

A lot. More than that, actually.

If the science that's supposed to be settled still bends around the individual, what does that tell you about the guy promising his cookie-cutter program will work for you?

The Crystal Ball Problem

Let me walk you through what actually goes into building a program for one person. I'll use an example I've used before. Call him Billy, a football player.

You sit down and analyze him. You find he needs to work on explosiveness, mobility, flexibility, general conditioning, triceps strength, shoulder balance, exercise technique, general football skills, and VO2 max.

Now rank that list in order of importance.

First problem. Half of those items depend on each other, so ranking them cleanly is already a challenge.

Second problem. There are hundreds of protocols that could address any one of them. You have to pick the best ones for Billy.

Third problem. There are thousands of movements inside those protocols. You have to pick the right exercises.

And I forgot one thing. To do all of this correctly, on paper, before Billy ever touches a bar, you also need the ability to predict the future. You need a top-notch crystal ball to see exactly how each stimulus will affect his body over the coming weeks.

There are coaches out there who will tell you they have that crystal ball. That their program works for anyone.

They're dead wrong. Nobody can see the future.

Training is a process taken day to day. You need a basic plan to work from, yes. But there are so many variables changing at so many different rates that you have to be willing to adapt as you go.

Take one of Billy's weak points. Mobility. That might get fixed with one exercise or it might take fifteen. It might come around in a week, or it might take months. You don't know until you're in it, watching, tracking, and adjusting.

A general program produces general results. And if general results are all you're after, fine. But most of us who stay in this game aren't chasing general. We want to be the absolute best we can be. That only happens when the plan bends to the person, not the other way around.

Not All Guesses Are Equal

Now, I need to be clear about something, because this is where people take "it's all a guess" and run somewhere stupid with it.

Not all guesses carry the same weight.

Some people's guess is garbage. It's built on two variables, and whatever they heard on a podcast last week. They read one thing, they liked it, and now it's gospel for everyone who asks them a question.

Other people have spent their lives under the bar. Countless hours of coaching. Reading the actual research. Sitting down with coaches who know more than they do and being willing to admit it and learn.

Same word. Completely different weight behind it.

So when someone starts handing out training advice, I run it through a filter before deciding how much to take in.

That's how you separate a good guess from a bad one. The quality of the guess is the entire game. Improving the quality of yours is the whole job.

Every Lifter Is a Puzzle

Here's something that took me a while to fully understand. The guess isn't only about the programming. A huge part of it is reading the actual human standing in front of you.

You have to look at every lifter first as a puzzle and second as a person. You have to figure out what goes where.

I was teaching someone to squat at a seminar once. I gave her the standard cues. Sit back, chest up, knees out. It wasn't working. Nothing was landing.

So I stopped talking and started watching. And I noticed that every time I gave a command, she looked at herself. I'd say "knees out," and she'd drop her head and look at her knees. The cue was breaking her position every single time.

She was a visual person. So I changed one word. Instead of "knees out," I said, "picture your knees out."

Her head stayed up. She used her mind's eye instead of her actual eyes. Fixed instantly.

If I hadn't picked up on that, I might still be standing there trying to teach her to squat.

That's not rocket science. But it's the part most people skip. Everyone pours their hours into the training side, the sets, the reps, the exercises. And then the message never transfers to the person, and it doesn't matter how much you know.

Coaching and training is nothing more than communicating training to the person you're working with. The best program on paper is worthless if it can't get from your head into their body. Reading that gap and adjusting for it in real time is part of the guess, too.

The Real Credential

Every coach I know and respect, when you get them alone and away from the cameras, says the same thing.

The best program is the one that works for you. Your needs, your goals, your situation, your strengths, your weaknesses.

At the novice and intermediate level, a lot of things work. You've got room to be sloppy and still make progress. The higher you climb, the more specific it has to become, and the smaller the margin gets. The advanced lifter can't get away with what the beginner can.

The coaches who won't say "it depends," who insist they've got the one answer for everyone, are telling you something. Usually, they care more about being right than about getting you strong.

The most important question you will ever ask yourself is simple. Is this working for me?

Not "is this the program so-and-so used?" Not "is this what's trending?" Is this actually moving me toward my goals or away from them? And how you answer that honestly matters even more than the question.

Experience doesn't make you immune to being wrong. I want to be dead clear on that. All experience gives you is a longer highlight reel of the times you were wrong, and, hopefully, the humility to admit it sooner.

The real credential in this game isn't the certainty. It's the opposite.

It's being able to look at a lifter, a problem, a plan, and say, "I don't know yet, let's find out" without feeling threatened by it.

That's the whole thing. Make the best educated guess you can, based on everything you've earned the right to know. Watch what happens. Adjust. Guess again, better this time.

That's not a weakness in the process.

That is the process.