By VAHVA Fitness on March 24, 2019

Try this simple method in your training and watch your results transform. Implementing this method will either make or break your training.

The fitness world has gone mad in the past several decades. Like truly mad.

Although we at VAHVA Fitness are modern and advanced in our training methods, many of our building blocks come from the old school strongmen, bodybuilders, dancers, martial artists and fitness educators who lived before the 1950s. 

In fact, there are very few guys we align with today but Steve Maxwell and Jiang Yu Shan are surely two of them. 

So, why has the fitness world gone mad?

The fitness world has gone mad because everything has become about numbers. "The science of training" is the dominant way of training these days. 

But this is only the case at the lower levels. The best coaches and trainers in fitness or professional sports are not really "scientific" per se, meaning they don't base their training on the scientific literature. 

We are not against science - we are very scientific in our approach in terms of testing everything and tracking the results. This is true science. 

We just understand that training is primarily and fundamentally AN ART and NOT A SCIENCE. 

In the fitness world, the art has been lost and everything has become about easily quantifiable variables such as weight, repetitions, skill progressions and exercises that have been validated by poorly done studies.

In the real world, there is a big difference between a good practitioner (an artist) and an average one. And it has nothing to do with who is more scientific. It's pure skill.

There is a big difference between a great fighter and an average fighter. A big difference between a great dancer and an average one. A big difference between the best sushi chef and a bad one. And the difference is not science.

If you go to a hairdresser, you don't go to the one who knows all the studies and science behind cutting hair. You go to the one who cuts the hair the best and can create the best haircut. 

The best hairdresser didn't learn how to cut hair from a book, she or he learned it through practice, from a mentor and by constantly elevating his or her standards.

Similarly, all training is a form of art where the best coaches and trainers are ultimately artists who have polished and honed the skill of training and getting results to the maximum. 

Scientific studies and books can be useful but they are really on the back seat to SUPPORT your methods and not in the driver's seat driving the method. Studies are mostly for validation.

This is actually obvious for most martial artists, fighters and dancers in the world of movement. People go learn from the most skilled and talented coaches who have the best track record - not from the most scientific ones. 

Dancers and fighters test and practice what works through experimentation, not by reading a new study. In fact, the scientific literature in these fields is very poor.

The fitness world on the other hand does the exact opposite which is why the results often come from illegal performance enhancing substances rather than the training itself. 

Obviously, stuffing yourself with massive amounts of supplements, steroids and other crap works but the outcome is not very healthy nor very athletic. 

The fitness world thinks they can outsource the "mentorship" to poorly done studies instead of actually finding a good teacher. Somehow they think they can avoid becoming skilled at training itself. 

The fitness world focuses solely on the less important variables such as frequency, intensity and volume without realizing that HOW you do everything counts a lot more than what, how often and when you do it.

We are teachers but also students (and will forever be). We learn from the best teachers available because that is the fastest way to supercharge the results. 

Even one of our mentors, Charles Poliquin (RIP 2018) was 20 years ahead of many scientific studies. If he had waited for the studies to confirm his coaching practices, he would have never become the best strength coach of his generation.

This sounds obvious to a lot of people: "Yes, the form is very important". But what a lot of people fail to understand is that the standards of the form are all relative. 

What this means is that good form for someone else can be considered a bad form from someone else's point of view. 

Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Perfection is relative and good is not good enough. The better the form, the better results you can expect.

In general, the standards for "a good form" in any exercise are very shallow. People mindlessly follow the rules such as "always use the full range of motion" and simple cues such as "keep your back straight". 

In reality, these are good cues for the most part but there are more criteria that have to be taken into account.

For example, movement quality and control are far more important than range of motion. In fact, movement quality is one of the most important parts of the good form yet almost no one talks about it.

This is because movement quality is "qualitative" and cannot be quantified with numbers. This is exactly why the scientific method of training fails. 

Yet, movement quality is 100% real. There is a big difference between the best dancer moving her body compared to a good one and the difference is very hard to quantify with external pointers and numbers.

Movement quality is the quality and purity of your movement - the better movement quality you have the more graceful your movement usually looks like.

An older video that showcases some of the higher standards: control, tempo, movement quality, mobility, stability etc. Samuli has dropped 12 kg (25 lbs) of his body fat since this video.

The sad truth is that you can't do it just like that. It's a never-ending process which is why you need to approach fitness as a craftsman. Moreover, you cannot perfect the form without proper instructions and a mentor. 

You can read 1000 books, study 1000 studies, train super hard and you won't still get to a high level. These all help but only up to a certain point. 

In the world of martial arts and dance this is obvious. But in the world of fitness this sounds like an insult to someone's intelligence which it is not - it's only the reality.

Form and movement quality are relative. The better the teacher, the better eyes he or she has for all the attributes that cannot always be quantified.

It all comes from experience and diligent experimentation. This is the reason why we search for teachers in different fields of fitness - they speed up the learning curve. 

The classical teacher-student relationship has always been and continues to be the fastest and the best way to learn. Don't try to substitute this with scientific studies.

To learn a very good baseline methodology for your training, we recommend joining our free mobility class which we continue to host on a regular basis.

In the class, you will not just learn the 6 best exercises to develop mobility but also the crucially important methodology behind everything (internal approach). The class will prepare you for more advanced training better than anything else. 

The class has received nearly 187 5-star reviews in a short time with dozens of positive feedback messages.

The class is probably the most value-packed content you will find on the internet in regards to movement and mobility training. It's 100% free so there is really no risk for you to check it out. 

You can join at adayofmobility.com

Related Content