Austin, Jordan, Leah, and the rest of the BBM team,
I have several questions on programming in terms of assessment, what is going on under the hood, as well as the how and why you’ve arrived at your current programming recommendations. I get that this is a contentious topic as of late and I’m not here to troll but rather hope your team would be willing to educate me on this topic rather than give jargon heavy non-answers.
1.) Do you plan to release data or summary of results in a white paper type format? In general, peer reviewed journals are moving towards releasing reviewer comments (still anonymized) and I’m not sure how much different that would be than if you released a white paper and a different website writes a (likely negative) review? As in peer review, you would then spend time crafting a response systematically addressing legitimate points and defending why your results and conclusion are still of great significance to a wide audience. All that seems to be missing are positive reviews from referees. I get that I may be in the minority on this topic and that resources such as a white paper may be too niche. However, I’ve found it hard to navigate the nuances of a programming discussion when appeals to experience/observation are made. I fully get the role of the expert is to better inform the non-experts, yet I don’t have thousands of client hours to draw from and tend to rely more on unrelated metrics like “He/She seams like a reasonable man/woman” when making choices.
2.) I will assert that NLP substantially improves strength in regards to the standard barbell lifts. What is actually happening? As someone who isn’t a coach it seems like there are two main categories: weight loss or weight gain. Jordan has said that in weight loss scenarios one does not appreciably gain muscle mass. In that case are the strength GainzZz coming from just practice and skill honing? I.e. are you simply training your body to display the maximal amount of innate strength available and after 3 or 4 months you’ve essentially reached the pinnacle of one’s ability to display strength? If not then what is going on? In the weight gain, some muscle and some fat, is it now practice + more muscle = more strength?
3.) What metrics do you use to assess the progress of a client on a given program? Jordan has pointed out that only apples to apples comparisons really count to assess strength and that the vast majority of times intra and inter programming uses apples vs some other fruit. Over an 8-12 week period that seems difficult to assess even from a purely strength perspective. From an aesthetic perspective, how is that assessed? Also, how reasonable of a time frame is a duration of 8 to 12 weeks? I’m trying to anchor myself and I fully get no one wants to look back and say, “I wasted a year of my life on _____”
4.) How do you arrive at whether or not a training program is optimal? When I read those statements I struggle because in what sense is it optimal? I would think this is strongly tied to assessment, i.e. , over some period of time the performance metric of interest improved. Is it optimal in that the program delivers the greatest strength or hypertrophy improvement over its duration? If so by how much? Is the average benefit in the optimal program slightly better than the suboptimal program but still within a standard deviation so the statistical significance is small? I’ve read/heard one metric that the BBM programs are optimal is because it is setup in a way to facilitate multi-year progress. Is the claim that initial progress may be less but the path forward presented by BBM can be sustained longer and therefore in aggregate is more favorable in the client’s 5 year plan? Or is it more like compound interest, wherein the client will consistently sustain a modest improvement over another program and in aggregate over the next five years will have an exponentially better result? Do you have data to support the lens by which you view optimal programming? I’m trying to discern the epistemological and phenomenological components of programming design.
Thank you,
Eric
P.S. Jordan, was the vinegar strokes Baraki pic a troll within a prank?