THERE is a predictable format to many arguments on the interwebs and elsewhere these days. Roughly thus:
Person A: “Most people should [generally sound statement of well-intended advice] in most cases; exceptions exist.”
person B: “Well, [famous outlier] didn’t do that, so therefore your generalization is invalid, and I will imitate [famous outlier].”
There are obvious problems with person B’s argument, not the least of which is the fact that the existence of outliers doesn’t invalidate the rest of the bell curve.
Let’s play with an example from the gym. Since I like to deadlift (it’s my favorite lift), we’ll use a deadlift example.
Someone with decent deadlift experience might advise one of their gym buddies: “You shouldn’t round your back whilst deadlifting. It increases your risk of injury. Let’s work on building the components of the lift so you can get stronger and also not get injured.” To which the over-eager gym buddy might reply, “Yeah, well Konstantinov rounded his back on deadlifts, and he was way stronger than you.”
*not the author.
For those who might not be familiar, Konstantin Konstantinovs was once the world-record holder in the deadlift with a lift of 939 pounds. He famously deadlifted without a belt (usually not recommended) and rounded his upper back during the lift (also not recommended). Here’s photo of him pulling about 405KG (892 lbs.) in training:
*also, not the author.
To our young gymbro, who is seeking ways to lift more weight today, even at increased risk of injury, we might be tempted to respond: “Well, neither of us is Konstantinovs.” This statement is undeniably accurate in the specific, but also just as accurate if we generalize a bit. Konstantinovs was a huge outlier (pun intended). World record holders by definition are outliers. For an idea of just how much of an outlier he was, one of his world records lasted for 12 years. For another perspective, if you walk into the average gym in the US, and someone is deadlifting half his record lift, you will notice a large number of the gymbros stopping to watch the “strong guy.”
How else is our gymbro different from Konstantinovs? Almost certainly, he isn’t gifted with top 0.1% genetics for developing strength. His anatomical proportions are different, which will have a large effect on his optimal technique. And he hasn’t spent 20+ years training his body to be effective and safe at the deadlift with Konstantinovs’ technique.
Another thing that we don’t know: we don’t know whether Konstantinovs’ was using optimal technique for Konstantinovs! We only know that it worked well enough for him to be better than everyone else.
When consider all of these differences (and there are many more that we could discuss), we are left with a handful of possible outcomes for our confident, but inexperienced, gymbro (in rough order of frequency):
- he quits the gym (or the deadlift) when his progress stalls; or
- he eventually gets strong enough to injure himself; or
- over years in the gym practicing solid conventional deadlift technique, he eventually acquires the wisdom to intelligently evaluate whether he is the type of outlier that might benefit from departing from the general technical and kinesiological wisdom of how to deadlift effectively without injury.
World-class outliers in their domains don’t invalidate sound general statements about those domains. And if you were a world-class outlier, you would already know it.