Opinions are everywhere.
Between the internet giving everyone a voice, and the general need for people to correct other folk, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose track of what it is you're trying to achieve.
I mean, should you believe:
Knees shouldn’t pass your toes when you squat?
Or Knees are supposed to pass your knees, it's natural movement
Hip Flexors are tight and need stretching
Or
Hip Flexors are tight because they simply don’t get the stimulus to go long
Core Stability is king?
Or
The Big lifts give the core plenty of stimulation
You should stretch
Or
You shouldn’t stretch
It’s a confusing world.
And the more information you consume, the more confusing it can seem to be.
And you know something? If you go far enough back in this very blog, you’ll see contradictions between what I write now compared to what I wrote back in the day.
So how do you know what is right?
Quite simply, you are your own experiment. You are an N=1 study.
Our job as trainers, coaches “experts” is to offer you the chance and the guidance to help you figure out you.
If you really want to find out the right answer to the questions above, you need to dig into them. You need to ask questions and try out the answers.
If I tell you something, the last thing I expect from you is that you blindly follow my advice.
So, should your knees pass your toes in a squat?
Yes, they should.
But should YOUR knees? Well we don’t know until we try.Your knees may not like it.
Should you stretch your hip flexors? Maybe. Maybe when the feet get stronger and move better the hips will open up? Maybe our WG-Fit predisposition towards doing lots and lots of kettlebell swings, ie hip hinges, ie hamstring and glute activations, ie dynamic hip extensions, well, that just might help the hip flexors feel at home…
The thing is, we don’t know.
Everybody that has ever stepped on our floor has been unique in some way. Which is why in WG-Fit we approach our programming, our technique instruction and coaching as Templates.
The template for a Kettlebell Swing or a Push Up is fairly standard, but very quickly we see how you move and where that template needs adjusted to your uniqueness.
As I like to say “Coaching is a conversation” So you are as involved in things as us, the so called “experts”
We give you something, you report back, we make it better for you, you report back and in time we find the answers to questions you never even knew you had.
Confusion drops away.
The next time someone says “Oh, you shouldn’t do it that way, you should do it this way” you can hold your head up high and politely tell them to Fuck off, because you know what you’re doing, you are your own N=1 experiment and you are getting the results.
Regards
Dave Hedges