“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs–I was a man before I was a king.”
From Robert E. Howard’s 1932 short story “The Phoenix on the Sword”
This short poem–the third line in particular–from the first short story to ever feature Conan the Barbarian paints a common sentiment among athletes and even coaches toward armchair coaches, pencil-necked academics, and lesser-qualified athletes. That sentiment stems from the clashing of ideology in answering what is the best way to get better at the sport?
The athlete knows their body and their sport through their own intuition. They may not formally know anatomical names, planes of motion, periodization theory, or the specifics of motor learning, but damn if they’re not good at their sport.
The coach was usually an athlete once upon a time and thus possessed that intuition of the athlete in a bygone era when their track suit didn’t fit as tightly. Though the coach possesses a deeper, more formalized knowledge of the domains that contribute to sport performance, they know that they must communicate those ideas more simply to the athlete for transfer to performance to occur with less friction.
But the sophist? The sophist may be both athlete and coach, but their goal isn’t to win at sport. Rather, their goal is to win arguments through rhetoric and erudite knowledge to persuade by appealing to authority and scientism.
Though the sophist can look like a coach, advertise their services like a coach, even possess a roster of athletes befitting a respectable coach, they’re relatively easy to spot.
Ask yourself, does this sophist and in extension his roster of athletes possess a unifying system of sport, or is he simply resting on the laurels of his gifted athletes and justifying their scattered, piecemeal success post hoc with way too much convoluted jargon and the simple existence of the athletes themselves?
The athlete wants to get better at their sport. The coach wants to help the athlete get better at their sport. The sophist claims that blood flow restriction tempo leg extensions against bands are a lovely exercise for X, Y, and Z without relating that back to how the hell it will actually get them better at their sport better than practicing the competition lifts themselves.
This isn’t an argument for hyper-specificity nor a knock on BFR tempo leg extensions. Those are absolutely wonderful for patellar tendinopathy rehab. Rather, it’s an argument for remembering the underlying why of sport as differentiated from e.g. recreational resistance training for health. Athletes and coaches are here because they want to win.
I enjoy this about powerlifting especially as a person prone to analyzing and overanalyzing and over-optimizing. Theory must meet reality. If theory fails, it must be incomplete and thus warrants the accumulation of more knowledge but not simply for the sake of more knowledge.
The coach continuously accumulates knowledge to constantly update their working idea of what will work best for his athletes for the sake of driving performance as high as humanly possible and pushing the limits of their respective sport.
I hope you enjoyed this more informal entry. Thank you for reading along.