Specialization in any craft, skill, sport, or activity is almost inherently NOT worth it for most people. Paradoxically, this is precisely how most people collectively observe and thereby define excellence. The irony is that we’re simultaneously told to “get after it” and “manage our expectations”; to which I say, “bollocks.”
I was going to write this article about the well trodden paradox in modern sports, particularly the UFC, that we’ve never seen more impressive physical athletes per capita and yet the talent pool seems to have dropped off a cliff.
Then, the broader fitness-culture concept hit me. It’s not just a regression toward the mean, presumably to then raise it. It’s that that entire process inherently forces a pruning and purging of outliers. It shrinks the height we might otherwise aspire towards.
This forces a twofold disconnect. On one hand, there’s a pervasive expert creep in internet-land (i.e. social media). Once well meaning specialists fall into the trap of a content mill which inevitably dilutes their productions to rage bait and weekend benders on PubMed. Yet, the buzzwords of “elite and optimal” abound.
On the other hand the 20th anniversary CrossFit games just wrapped up and there are already posts flying around reminding people to lower their standards and “not train like professional athletes.” Likewise, this is well intentioned and not unfounded, but stifling none the less.
Single Serving Amateurs: The PubMed Aesthetic
I don’t have to name names. We all know who they are in the “health and fitness space”… the folks that started out with noble intentions and are now beholden to produce an endless conveyor belt of 3-hour podcasts; or worse, 8-second TikTok clips.
Inevitably, and obviously, they get stretched thin and well out over their skis. The result is a flimsy posture, something that’s blatantly apparent to anyone who’s still working on the ground floor.
It’s not that any particular person isn’t “allowed” to have an opinion on any particular topic. It’s that appeal to authority in one area of expertise is used as a cudgel for any other topic that will garner “likes” and “shares.”
It’s really easy to tell who has never cultivated change in anyone besides themselves. These people are incapable of nuance and insist on ramrodding their excitement for what is currently working for them onto everyone else’s every problem — plus or minus some evangelist arrogance and narcissism.
In case you haven’t noticed, a lack of information isn’t the problem — for most things in the world, but specifically health and fitness. It’s way easier to scour PubMed (or Reddit) to bolster your confirmation bias than it is to bleed and sweat for 100 days in a row to try to begin to understand something.
So long as these folks are beholden more to sponsorship revenue and their egos, they’ll only ever be keyboard warriors with citations. A lengthy bibliography doesn't make someone an expert, let alone an effective coach.
The Specialized Generalist: The CrossFit Effect
In 20 years of CrossFit Games, 13 of the individual men’s titles have gone to just 4 people (9 of them to 2 people). In the women’s individual category a single person has claimed 8 titles.
Those are beyond astonishingly impressive feats for the individuals referenced. However, it points out the obvious fact that such an event is anything but “unknown and unknowable.” It is, in fact, predictable and trainable as seen by winners who are not drawn out of the ether like a random hopper pool (*cough*).
If you’re going to call it a sport, then it is, by definition, requisite of specialized skills and is not general physical preparation.
With that said, I’m a little tired of the apologists floating around telling people to (essentially) dampen their expectations and stop trying to train like professional athletes.
I suspect that this generally comes from the perspective of injury prevention and longevity. Certainly, I saw (and succumbed to myself) this play out often in the climbing world. A magazine interviews a world-class athlete, distilled workout or training routine gets published, recreational normies adopt the routine, injuries ensue in less than 6 weeks.
Conversely, nobody watches the NFL/NBA/MLB on Sunday and then says, “Yeah, I’m gonna start training like those guys on Monday!” At the same time, this usually doesn’t stop the folks, who were inclined to anyway, from their regularly scheduled backyard pickup game next Friday.
So, why do coaches (or athletes) make this assumption with fitness? Because the message is “this is GPP”, it’s general so it’s not specialized. But, if it’s not specialized it can’t be a sport. If it’s not a sport, a false assumption grows that ease of accessibility is mistaken for availability of success.
What’s more, who are you to “rain on my parade” or tell me what to believe about myself, or that I must lower my expectations and aspirations because of your beliefs and limitations?
“The only reason for someone to tell you to stay in your lane is so they can get (or stay) ahead of you.”
~ Tim Grover
Is the entire purpose of a coach not to help me achieve those, or at minimum create a an attainable route to an endpoint that still adequately satiates the original desire?
The mixed message fails this objective. We cannot simultaneously tell people “grind and get after it” because we’re “forging elite fitness” while also anchoring anyone who doesn’t make the leader board with “just stop trying so you don’t hurt yourself.”
That creates a very caustic environment where obviously toxic personalities metastasize.
Excellence Requires Radical Exclusion: Real Recognizes Real
The power-lifter, international violinist, and chess grandmaster don’t shit on each other’s craft. In fact, their profound respect for each other is likely proportionate to their level of success in their respective field of play.
Anybody who has “been there” almost instantly notices the way someone else walks, talks, treats others, and approaches their work when they have also “been there.”
I used to say that “excellence is the standard.” But that’s not the way it works. You can raise the standard, but excellence will always imply exclusion. If you think this isn’t the case, consider every truly once-in-a-generation athlete you can think of. Then, count their championship rings/belts/etc. against their divorce decrees. It’s not unanimous, but you get the idea.
My point here is that elitism doesn’t need defending, but apparently our dreams do.
I’m not saying your next “win” has to cost you your marriage or that you should bet the house on your next training camp. I’m saying you will have to choose what you want to win at, because there is no such thing as not-choosing — even if that choice is in-action, which is the most costly of all.
You will also have to pay for your wins somehow, and the debt always comes due — usually with an unaffordable interest rate. So, pay with cash. Decide ahead of time “what is worth it” and what is not.
Do not negotiate your dreams. Do not compromise your integrity. Make choices. Make things happen. Accept the consequences. Savor the rewards.
The Collaborative Solution: From Surgery to Sports Ball
Podiatrists don’t try to tell you about your eyes. They refer out to an optometrist. The “internet guru” behaves in a way that’s exactly the opposite of real “elite” competitors — the aforementioned chess, weightlifting, and violin performers.
We don’t need more generalists shouting noise at each other about who’s marginally, rhetorically, or abstractly more correct. We need specialists and real experts who work together and celebrate each other.
Social media and podcasts have devolved into echo chambers seasoned with outrage and performative depth. In many ways, Substack isn’t an exception to this either. This fuels the scarcity mindset of the attention economy.
That has not been my experience in the past 15 years of healthcare and combat sports. There is no shortage of people who want to get more fit, stronger, healthier, and live more capable lives or perform better at their sports. Many people are willing to go to great lengths to do so, but are distracted by vast amounts of noise created by “experts” bickering.
Acknowledging the limits of your experience and expertise (as a coach or athlete) isn’t just professionally ethical, it reinforces your personal integrity and fulfillment by avoiding time and energy siphons with marginal returns.
If I’m a runner who wants to improve my deadlift because I think it’s lacking (a GPP perspective) then that’s great. So long as my identity is “a runner”, then I should not compare my deadlift to people who identify as deadlifters (the specificity of training and adaptation). If I want to change my identity from runner to deadlifter (or vice versa) that’s also cool.
The point, and the problem, is choice.
What a privilege it is to be exhausted by an ambition of your choosing.
The Integrated Fitness Problem [v1.0]
![The Integrated Fitness Problem [v1.0]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jLBX!,w_280,h_280,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F222dc620-af54-4649-92fb-720ba44f9c06_922x922.webp)
The fitness industry is broken. It cannot escape that it is part of a world where seemingly everything is a performative anesthetic, science is “settled”, and we are inundated with plagues of pop-spirituality.