n=1/m=1, and the Relevance of Street Cred as Opposed to “Conferred” Cred

An interesting phenomena that the communications ease enabled by the Internet has brought about: the relevance of the n=1/m=1 experimenter, the citizen scientist.  Less and less do credentials matter; what truly matters are documented results; results that can then be duplicated, verified and substantiated by anyone, anywhere (again, regardless of “established” credentials).  Blogs now serve as as living curriculum vitae, with theories, postulates, experiment results, etc. laid out for all to examine.  Art DeVany is an economist by training, yet that didn’t prevent (nor lend any particular credence to) those ideas that eventually became today what we know as Evolutionary Fitness.  Physical Culturalists read Art’s ideas and theories (myself included), tried them on for size, and found them to be (mostly) spot-on.  Many of us took Art’s ideas, gave them our own n=1/m=1 spin, and documented those findings in our own blogs.  Does anyone really give two shits that Art’s formal training happens to be in the “dismal” rather than physical sciences?  Results are what ultimately matter.  How one got to the point of being able to produce those results matters little, other than as an “oh, by the way” vignette.  The fact of the matter is that access to knowledge is virtually free to anyone with a want to dig; access to “impressive” credentials, on the other hand, is still rather limited by economic barriers.  But again, my point: what really and ultimately matters, credentials or results?  Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly do not discount the contribution of the subject academic — I simply believe that creative thought from outside of the box plays a much bigger role — a critical role, even — in discovering the underlying truth of a matter than has previously been acknowledged.

An interesting Huffington Post article, DIY U, Educational Access, and the New Elitism, by Anya Kamenetz, talks to some of these same points.  Also, Seth Roberts has an interesting recent post regarding self-experimentation, and the re-emergence of the citizen scientist.  And from the blog of Tim Ferriss, comes this piece, written by Ryan Holiday, titled The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne .  N=1 experimentation; life as a consummate epistemocrat.  A belief in those who actively seek the truth, and a healthy skepticism toward those who claim to have found it. Credentials might be useful as a sound-bite crutch, however, to those of us willing to dig, consider, contemplate and research, they matter very little.  To me and other like-minded individuals, the credentials litmus test is, well… passe, and worse than that, useless.  Does anyone really care what Louie Simmons’ formal education consists of, or whether or not he is “certified” for example, by the NSCA?

On to the workout front –

Monday, 10/25

Pendulum hip press (hierarchical set): 400 x 12, 500 x 6, 600 x 3;
then immediately to a superset of the following:
trap bar deadlift: 460 x 2, 2, 2
weighted chins: 50 x 6, 5, 5

Thursday, 10/28

a superset of the following:
power snatch: 95 x 10; 115 x 6; 135 x 3; 145 x 3; 155 x 3; 160 x 2, 2
ab wheel roll-out (standing, full extension): bw x 10 each round
– then-
behind-the-neck push-press: 135 x 7; 185 x 6; 205 x 3; 210 x 2; 215 x 2; 220 x 1, (miss), 1

Friday, 10/29

a superset of the following:
floor press: 185 x 10; 215 x 7; 235 x 4, 4
bent-over rows: 275 x 7; 305 x 6; 325 x 4, 4

Each set of floor presses was preceded by a set of 7 explosive push-ups; primers for the cns.  And speaking of cns primers, check out this post from UND S&C coach,

Aaron Schwenzfeier, on pogo hops as a potent cns stimulator and a mighty effective “warm-up” to boot.  I agree, and I use the same methods myself. 

…and to round things out, here’s a great article, from T-Nation, on the mechanisms of hypertrophy:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_hypertrophy_specialist

More support for the notion that physical culture cannot be boiled down singular “best” methodologies; what’s “best” in fact, is the intelligent co-mingling of many different techniques and methods, dependent upon the trainee’s goals and current status.

 

In health,

Keith