Discovery Epidemic

There’s a phenomenon in the fitness industry, at least among people who don’t actually coach anyone, train anyone, or compete, that I’ll refer to here as the discovery epidemic. The discovery epidemic isn’t something the casual observer would ever know or give a shit about, but there are people reading this who know exactly what I’m talking about – so I’m addressing this to them. You have to be pretty far into this shit to know what I mean here.

When someone comes along with a great idea, or there’s a coach or trainer who gets results, it’s like a big race between all the “guys who are trying to become popular online” to see who can associate themselves with the idea (or the guy himself) first. Again, this is a rather obscure thing that the casual observer probably wouldn’t notice, but it happens.

So, who cares?

Well, nobody really. I definitely don’t, unless I’m personally involved, which I occasionally am. I’m not out to self-promote or sell myself as a “fitness personality,” so I generally don’t give two shits. The connections I made in the fitness industry are my actual friends. They’re people I trained with, competed against, coached with, did clinics with, consulted with, and even sent my athletes to. Sure, I have some people in this business that I’m partial to, but I’d rather talk to them on the phone for an hour to get some real information for my kids – or for myself – as opposed to “tweeting” with them and getting all bent out of shape when someone gives them some publicity before I do.

Which, incidentally, is how the situation that motivated this post actually went, contrary to unpopular belief.

Angry Comments

I’ll get some angry comments about shit I say on this log once in a while. I get that, but this is a specific situation I’m being intentionally vague about. I know pretty much everyone on this site in person, and all I’ve ever really wanted to do is coach my team, share information with people when I come across something useful, and get as strong as humanly possible for myself. I’m honestly too busy getting out there and actually coaching and training my athletes to give a shit about who gets credit for what.

This is especially the case when it comes to latching onto someone else’s information – which, I suppose, is what one has to do when one hasn’t ever done anything for oneself in terms of being an athlete, a coach, an advisor, a trainer, or anything else. The day I set up my own personal Q&A for Mark McLaughin and James Smith’s information is the day they’ll both come after me with baseball bats, and they’d be justified in doing so – especially if I never coached a football player in my entire life and had no idea if their methods actually worked. Sound familiar?

I get that part of it, though. It’s nearly impossible to come up with your own information when you’ve never actually been in the field doing any of this shit for yourself, and all you do all day is sit around watching YouTube videos of other people doing stuff.

Put in the Work

It really is a bitch when you realize that other people have put in the work that you haven’t, and it’s a hard road becoming an “expert” when you haven’t actually done any of this shit and you’re looking at 10 years of doing it for real before you have any credentials anyone thinks are worth a shit. That sucks, so your natural inclination is to hold on for dear life to other people’s work. That’s definitely one way to get yourself out there – by trying to ride other people’s coattails. I don’t blame people who do this, because it worked in the past.

For the record, though, it doesn’t mean you “discovered” that guy, as much as you’d like to revise history and cut him out of the equation. It’s like that old question about Christopher Columbus: Did he really “discover” America if there were already millions of people living there?

So, as enamored as you are with your hot new “girlfriend,” bear in mind that plenty of other guys you know have already “banged” her first. I commend you for being delusional enough to think this isn’t how it went – and to actually get mad about it – but the reality of the situation (in addition to the chronological record and the guy himself) says otherwise.