The Best Method

A dissection of the debate between methods and learning from them

In the world of health and performance we are increasingly discussing “the best method”, this may be a training style or system, a diet, an exercise regime or anything else similar. Endurance sport recently saw this, with the success of Cole Hocker in the 1500m and Grant Fisher in the 5000m and 10000m at the Olympics and Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s struggle in the 1500m everyone was wondering what was happening in the USA. Whereas previously, when Ingebrigtsen was doing well and the Norwegian Triathletes were doing well we saw everyone turn their eyes to Norway. In the realm of diet and health there seems to be a tussle between Veganism and Carnivore - whilst the Mediterranean diet seemingly needs a better PR agency and marketing department.

This article is intended less to evaluate the merits of any one of these paradigms as much as it is to help you navigate a landscape where “the best method” can change to be the polar opposite in the space of a few minutes or social media posts.

How Should we Evaluate Success?

The debate in the endurance world reminds me of the discussion in sprinting at the time just as Usain Bolt started succeeding on the senior international scene, prior to this, Asafa Powell was the model of ‘ideal’ sprinting, because he was the world record holder. Overnight, this immediately changed towards Usain being the ‘ideal’ model, because he was now the world record holder. The fact these two models were absurdly different somehow didn’t set off the alarm bells of many in the popular discourse (I am hoping this example gives readers a bit of an idea of where this article is headed).

What is most interesting though is; what if Usain had never run that record? Would the popular discourse in sprinting have updated its model? We are now at the heart of one of the core issues here; the world of elite sport is about fine margins. Jakob Ingebrigtsen was ~2m away from a gold medal, not just any medal but the gold, in a race that he is far from ideally suited for. Is this more or less impressive than Cole Hocker’s win in his only event? Should we be training more like the guy who’s previously succeeded (and for a long duration) in a race less suited to him or the new guy who’s succeeding? This obviously transcends the specific situation and is attempting to point out the silliness of some of our thinking in the space.

When we get to health things are even more difficult. This is because the feedback loops are SOOOOO long in many cases. This knowing what is better or worse is even harder. The timeline for success (something I touched on when discussing misunderstood dichotomies) is crucial in this case, because your friend who’s just started carnivore and lost a bunch of weight, or cleared up their acne, may not be seeing any potential downsides over a short-term time scale. Similarly, the research would suggest that the majority of folks who start a diet do not manage to sustain it in the long term and I’d wager the extreme the diet the wore they fair in the long term.

So, it is clear then that success is quite difficult to measure when it comes to methods (rather than a season for an individual, in which case any one of the methods are successful, perhaps even multiple). Given that change itself is sometimes enough of a stimulus to see progress (as discussed in my article on useful heuristics in health and performance), it stands to reason that these methods would then need to work across multiple people for them to be considered successful. Similarly, if considering timelines, and the fact that consistency and sustainability are crucial in success for health and performance, longer term success, or rather sustained success, should be another criteria we use to evaluate successful methods based on. The final criteria I would consider pertains to context, and whether the method can transfer contexts and still drive success – is the method confined to a certain context or group? If so, then it doesn’t make it unsuccessful as much as it does specific for a given set of circumstances and thus perhaps not “the best” at all times.

The Principles are Few, the Methods are Many

The title of this section is attributed to Andy Galpin – a very smart exercise scientist. In its application here, I tend to use it to seek the principles that underly the specific methods being used. In both carnivore and veganism (at least ideally) there is a limitation of processed foods, something nobody thinks we need more of as an example (more undebatable health and fitness behaviours here).

When it comes to endurance training, there seems to be a good volume of training being done regardless of anything else. There’s also some intensity, in a healthy dose, and of course there is progressive overload in the systems. The specifics of all of this vary but these principles underly all systems.

How Should we Choose our Own Method(s)?

One word of caution is that when looking at your favourite athlete, celebrity or influencer (heck any ‘role model’ or similar), it’s worth remembering that they are where you want to be; not where you are (or even one step in front of you). This is important because doing what they are doing at that stage, is not what they were doing when they were where you are. That’s to say, Eliud Kipchoge was not training as he is today when he was a child, or even 5 years ago, so you adopting his training doesn’t make a lot of sense if you are nowhere near him in terms of performance.

Thus, it stands that the best way to choose methods is to understand the principles behind them, which requires more than a little bit of work to understand the landscape of the field of interest. Following this, it is worth evaluating your situation, understanding it’s not unlikely to vary from the individual popularising the method. Characterising this difference is a helpful in evaluating which aspects of the method may work for you before even starting to try applying any principles. Remembering always, that in these situations the big rocks still hold the greatest influence and importance, and these shouldn’t be compromised.  

Let’s look at an example from the strength training world; “German Volume Training” developed in 1970s Germany (shocking I know) by Rolf Feser and popularised by Charles Poloquin in the ‘90s. Most folks even recreationally interested in strength training, or the fitness industry would have come across this methodology in their path. In short, it entails doing 10 sets of 10 reps at 60% of 1RM (60% of your max single rep effort for that lift) with only 60-120 seconds rest. Sounds like a lot right!? It is, believe me. Now of course this methodology will work for muscle building, and you could even argue it’s been around long enough that the “Lindy effect” should be noted here. However, it bares considering that this type of training is very taxing, so unless you’re very inexperienced, in which case you probably don’t need it, you’re likely going to end up with problems related to the volume and intensity. The origins of this method are from a time where anabolic steroid use was rife and as such recovering from these sorts of training methods was much easier. That’s not to say we should throw the method out, but let’s have a look at the underlying principles. Even non coaches would probably appreciate this training system is built on volume overload, so in applying it to your situation you may decide that to break through you plateau or change your programming you will focus on more volume overload, perhaps using something like 5x10. If you went further and examined the literature, you’d even find good support for volume as a key driver of hypertrophy (muscle building).  

So don’t go jumping onto the latest trend, especially not if it’s been around for less time than it takes for your eggs to go bad in the fridge. When any new method arrives, it is worth spending some time evaluating the underlying principles of the method. Particularly seeking where it is similar and where it differs from the established methods at the time to try and work out if there really is much difference (there’s often less difference than people would like to believe or argue there is on the internet). Once you’ve understood the underlying principles, if you want to experiment with it, ensure you have means of tracking success or progress with the method and start applying some of these principles.
*One word of warning though, mixing too many methods can be a recipe for disaster (think too many chefs in the kitchen), so ensure you don’t mix too many methods – a trap I fell into early in my training which ended in me being extremely run down from overtraining (thankfully short lived).