The Toxic Mentality of Fitness Culture

I am going to be honest, it was hard enough for me not to just quote the entire book, so the following passages from Dr. Kelly Starrett's, "Becoming a supple leopard: The ultimate guide to resolving pain, preventing injury, and optimizing athletic performance", are the least that I could pull out to shed some light on an aspect of fitness culture that in some regards seems impossible to change; in almost all regards, needs to be systemically sought after and destroyed:

"The third problem with our current thinking is that it continues to be based on a model that prioritizes task completion above everything else."

"It's a one-or-zero, task-done-or-not, weight-lifted-or-not, distance-swam-or-not, mentality."

"It's like saying I deadlifted 500 pounds, but I herniated a disk, or I finished a marathon, but now I have plantar fasciitis and wore a big hole in my knee."

"Imagine this sort of ethic spilling over into the other aspects of your life: Hey, I made you some toast! But I burned down the house."

"Hang out at the end of any local marathon and you'll notice a significant number of finishers who are obviously suffering. They look as though they were hit by cars and stricken by disease."

"Yes, you say, but they finished. And this is true. Being task completion obsessed certainly has its place like in the Olympic finals, a world championship, the Super Bowl, or a military mission."

"But even then, there is a heavy price to pay."

"Couple this task-priority blindness with an overly simplified system of a pain indicators and it’s easy to understand how athletes can dig themselves into pretty deep holes."

"Many athletes go about their business this way for decades, spending their genetic inheritance, getting their daily workout done without pain, until one day it's game over."

"You can lift with a rounded back and sit in a chair in a slouched position, until one day you can't."

Dr. Kelly Starrett

Starrett, K., & Cordoza, G. (2013). Becoming a supple leopard: The ultimate guide to resolving pain, preventing injury, and optimizing athletic performance. Las Vegas: Victory Belt Pub.

Let's take a second to define the bolded terms above before we make some deeper connections here.

1. Task Completion:

It is a specific condition of a task, which matches certain “completion” criteria that is a special set of characteristics to recognize that a task was successfully accomplished.

Usually, a fact that a task was completed is identified by a special research which can be formalized by a procedure. Usually, the following components are to be investigated during the audit:

• Goals (measurable and controllable targets attained with the task).
• Constraints (compliance with the planned time, money, scope, quality, etc.).
• Requirements (specific regulations such as safety and certification).
• Results (what positive and negative effects were gained with the task).

In every case, the bullet points above should be used when completing a task that you want to meet the correct intent on, however, often, much gets sacrificed for the glory of time and hastiness.

In other words, we are talking about the 'checking the box' approach.

It doesn't matter how it gets finished, if we can do just enough to move down the list and complete the task, we win.

Quality? Doesn't matter.

Standards? Only matter if we get caught.

I don't know how many times I would be walking up to Soldiers asking them what they are doing for PT for the day, and they would answer, almost 5-days a week with,

"We are running"

What's your distance goal?

"Don't know"

What's your pace goal?

"Keep up with LT"

This is what task completion looks and sounds like.

• No details
• No intent
• No targets
• No ability groups
• No individual progressions

It's the 'I'm just here so I don't get fined approach'.

2. The "Weight-lifted-or-not" approach:

This approach only recognizes that either a task was completed, or it was not completed. The specific criterion of the task remains unfinished.

The issue here is that there is no room left for technical feedback of the specific execution of how the weight was lifted or not lifted.

This analysis and interaction between subject matter expert and athlete sparks the production of 'connecting the dots' both physically and psychologically for the athlete and SME.

Without this feedback there is no opportunity to identify what needs to change and/or what needs to be developed further for the task to be completed competently and with extreme quality.

This is difference between sending an athlete towards a life with pain, continued loss of physical and psychological genetic potential, and what’s worse? This athlete, never having been corrected or taught differently, now spreads this knowledge to others. The seed is planted. The cycle continues.

3. Task Completion Obsessed:

This obsession becomes just a part of what a toxic culture looks like and the main reason why is because within this reality, knowledge is not valued, and if knowledge is not valued, then progressing oneself psychologically, spiritually, and physically is not valued. End of story.

By any means necessary. That is what it means to be 'task completion obsessed'. Quality does not matter. Competency does not matter. Only just enough of both to be the first, the fastest, the strongest, and the illusion of being the smartest.

I can't stop but thinking about the Karate Kid when defining what a 'task completion obsessed' culture looks like. Mr. Miyagi ran his dojo the complete opposite way of his rivals over at Cobra Kai. Mr. Miyagi is a fictional karate master from Okinawa, Japan in The Karate Kid film series and Cobra Kai was his rival dojo.

Cobra Kai taught ruthlessness, no mercy, winning by any means, not fighting with honor, strike first, strike hard. Cobra Kai leadership taught karate by having its students do karate.

Mr. Miyagi taught patience, honor, progression, inner-strength, inner-peace, and balance above all else. Mr. Miyagi taught karate by having his students wax cars, paint fences, dig holes, stain floors, sand wood, and other monotonous property management tasks.

The task to be completed was to learn karate.

The students of Mr. Miyagi learned karate by progressing more basic foundational skills of human movement and not just practicing karate day in and day out.

Here is another example, go follow any squat based program to get your squat numbers up but while you are following the program, don't do accessory exercises, no trunk/midline (core) exercises, no warm-ups, no cool-downs, no uni-lateral (single-leg) training for like 6-8 months and let me know how your body feels.

In other words, Mr. Miyagi understood GPP (general physical preparedness).

He understood progression.

Minimal progressions equal minimal returns, every time.

4. Task Priority Blindness:

People don't know what they don't know and how can we blame them? Navigating fitness culture 'dos and don'ts' is like trying to figure out what Dark Matter is and what it does.

It's difficult.

The hardest battle that the civilian tactical strength and conditioning coaches have concerning the US Army's new H2F (Holistic Health and Fitness) Program, is that they are having to try to communicate with men and women that have been doing something one way for years (with movement dysfunction, movement compensation patterns, pain, and injury), that there is another healthier, smarter, and more time efficient way to go about it.

When you haven't been told otherwise or taught otherwise, this is a difficult pill to swallow. Wearing your scars, wear, and tear as a badge of achievement seems to be just one characteristic of how task priority blindness manifests itself within a fitness culture.

I remember being taken under the wing of my Uncle John (biker from PA) when I was about 12 years old. John fed me Flex magazines in the passenger seat of his companies painting van when I would work with him in the summers back home.

I was lifting weights regularly with him in the basement of his family’s home right next to their washer and dryer. Metallica running through room loud.

Memories I will cherish forever. When I think back to how we lifted back then and what I know now?

Blasphemy.

Eventually, we ended up getting memberships to a local gym in town where we lifted in the evenings.

One thing I started to notice after a few years, literally almost every single person (gym rat) over the age of 35 had gym scars from grinding away at their body for years.

Shoulder surgeries, knees, hips, elbows, biceps, fill in the blank.

The individuals that double wrap the knee wraps and elbow wraps prior to warming up.

I don't want to be in a pain.

I don't want shoulder surgeries.

How come some have gone through the meat grinder but some are totally fine?

I decided to find another path. There had to be a better way.

For some reason there is a drive to defend what you have put your body through. I witnessed this stubbornness firsthand many times.

This will challenge any professional to be professional.

Educate your tribe and they will educate you.

There is hope. It exists even in the darkest and deepest parts of the world.

I have received extreme gratitude by making the smallest of movement pattern adjustments on the 'saltiest of the salty dogs' in Soldier ranks.

When you take pain away from someone so they can enjoy what they love and is important to them, that is proof of hope and should do nothing less but light a bon-fire under your ass.

The smallest victories have the largest returns.

Stay the course and show your tribes that this is the way.

5. Genetic Inheritance:

Genetic inheritance is a basic principle of genetics and explains how characteristics are passed from one generation to the next.

Genetic inheritance occurs due to genetic material, in the form of DNA, being passed from parents to their offspring. When organisms reproduce, all the information for growth, survival, and reproduction for the next generation is found in the DNA passed down from the parent generation.

Much of our understanding of inheritance began with the work of a monk by the name of Gregor Mendel. His experiments and ‘Laws of Inheritance’ provide the foundations for modern genetics.

In sexual reproduction, the genetic material of two parents is combined and passed on to one individual. Although the offspring receives a combination of genetic material from two parents, certain genes from each parent will dominate the expression of different traits.

A little textbook definition for you above, of course, what we are looking at more specifically in terms of 'genetic inheritance' are the bio-mechanical traits and characteristics of individuals performing foundational or primal movement patterns correctly.

Movement compensations occur not just because of a lack of understanding of proper execution of the pattern in question, but also because of the lack of or unawareness of how someone's body should move based on how they are built, structured, and organized.

This is individual, specific, and delicate. Systems must be put into practice that identify these movement compensations and dysfunctions to provide athletes with the blueprint to how they need to move to express optimal ranges of motion, strength, power speed, stability, skill, coordination, aerobic and anaerobic energy system capacities.

Once dysfunctions and compensations are identified, then they can be treated with properly programmed progressions spread out over varying degrees of time (depending on training adaptations, training consistency, training quality, and recovery).

Can you get strong by just winging it and mimicking what you think is quality movement in the gym?

Yes, you can.

However, you will burn out just as quickly as you progressed.

Or you may survive for a very long time, to one day go to shovel snow from the driveway and blow your back out.

Training with my pain is a choice, your ego is preventing you from understanding that there is another option.

It is unfortunate that human beings are still deeply connected to the 'caveman mentality' of bowing down to someone who can physically do something that others can't.

Don't get me wrong!

I love seeing heavy shit be picked up and put back down just as much as anyone.

But as a tribe we must better.

We must educate more and explain the why.

If we ourselves don't understand the why, then we must stop what we are doing and become masters of the tools we have access too.

Changing culture starts with a grass roots approach that requires all of us as professionals to be a part of.

Our athletes, Soldiers, and clients deserve better.

Everyone deserves access to a life without pain.

A life that has access to movement quality, freedom, and understanding.

The major catalyst for these toxic environments come from those individuals that cease personal development because they believe that they have nothing else to learn.

Red flag!

Being satisfied with a mindset that developed within you 10-15 years ago that still drives your actions to this day, may require a bit of soul searching and slice of humble pie.

 Strength and honor,

Coach Ben