HAVE YOU TRIED TRYING?

By: Abdurahmaan Saloojee
Abdurahmaan is a Pre-Script coach from Ottawa who loves reading, traveling, and training. 

“Have you tried trying?” 

This is a Muscle-Doc-ism that makes for a great Instagram caption, but let’s dig a little deeper and understand what this means. This is especially pertinent to many budding coaches getting started in the fitness space that are being confronted with the sheer landslide of information about training for the first time. 

Much of coaching and more specifically, effective programming, revolves around optimizing training. “How can I make this exercise more effective?” “How can I make this workout split better?” “How can I get this client to perform this exercise so they can achieve their goals faster?” As coaches progress through their intellectual journey, they may realize that more often than not, many kinds of optimization rest at the top of the tree: there are often many other lower hanging fruits that can be addressed that will have a greater impact on improving overall performance and results. One of these lower hanging fruits is… You guessed it… trying.

There is a reason that bodybuilders or powerlifters who may not have sophisticated programs are usually bigger and stronger than the people who hate on their training on the internet. No amount of optimization will ever beat raw effort. Two people of the same experience, one with an extremely refined program but low effort and the other with a very rudimentary program with high effort will achieve vastly different outcomes: the one that put in a lot of effort will almost assuredly see better results. This is an important point for many coaches to internalize, especially those who work with general population clients: understanding that they are not athletes is key, so there are no sport demands that will dictate their programming. There are no movements, however “optimal” or “functional”, that are necessary for their programs. The one thing that will expedite their results more than anything is raw effort, especially if their goals involve building muscle to any degree. Hard training is not something that should be exclusive to bodybuilders or powerlifters: a majority of people in North America and around the world could probably benefit from better body composition, stronger bones, better posture, etc.—all of those goals involve building muscle. For most people, biasing the lower middle iliac fibres of the lat with your 47th pulldown variation is not as important as getting them to train close to failure or to failure. 

This realization of the importance of effort should be actualized in programming. Exercises that address stability and injuries have their place, but outside of that, the goal for most people is to make it easier for them to “try”. Constrain them to positions and exercises that have a high return on investment and stabilize them so they can safely train to failure or just shy of failure while minimizing risk of injury. Obviously, there are exceptions, and some clients may need more or less, but this is an important heuristic to have that should give you an additional filter to use when constructing a program for new clients. Try trying yourself, or try trying more than before—the results may surprise you.