In my head I can often here my grad school statistics professor saying “68 percent of the population fall within one standard deviation from the mean”.  What this means, besides the fact that I’m a total geek, is that whenever there is an average response to something (such as a training program) this only applies directly to approximately 70% of the people you use it on.

That is not to say that it won’t work at all on the others, but that it has the greatest chance of success with the majority that fall closest to the average.  The further you are away from the average the less likely the plan is to work on you.

Of course, this assumes a normal bell curve and, without getting into too much statistics, I can tell you than not every physiological phenomenon occurs like that.  Sometimes the results are skewed more to one side or the other meaning that a lot more people or less people are responsive to a certain program.

And finally there are people that scientists like to call “outliers”.  You can see in the picture above that these are people who don’t fit the rest of the data.  They stand out by themselves and their results are not typical of the rest of people being tested.  These are the people that scientists like to remove from the data because they make statistical analysis more difficult.  However, these are the people who are more likely to respond to a specific plan that may not work for everyone else.  On the flip side, they are also less likely to respond to the program that does work for everyone else.

My main point here is that everyone in the fitness industry has their philosophy.  For nutrition some people like to tell you to eat for your blood type, others will tell you to eat based on your ethnic background, and some will tell you to eat based on your skin caliper measures.  Still, others will tell you just to eat the same thing as everyone else they train because they don’t know any other way.

High Suprailiac Skinfold - "Low carbs for you tubby!"

With training some people will design your program based on fiber type, others will base it on a Functional Movement Screen, Z Health, or other type screen.  And some will exclusively use kettlebells, strongman equipment, other implements in their program design.

As an intelligent trainee or coach I agree that it is important to have a base philosophy to work from.  This will provide a starting point for yourself or your clients.  However, even more important is not being too attached to your program or your ego to let it go when it possibly isn’t the best plan for up to 30% of the population.

No matter how much science you have backing up your program, it doesn’t mean squat if you’re not getting results.  Ultimately this leaves me with two take home points.

1.  Measure your progress.

If you’re not measuring your progress you don’t know if you’re moving forward, backwards, or staying the same.  Of course, this assumes that you already you have specific and measurable goals to work towards, but you already knew that because you’re too smart to be training with no goals…aren’t you?

2.  Use Results Based Programming

If you (or your clients) are not moving towards your goals then you need to revise your system.  You need to look at your previous measures of results to find out what brought the biggest gains.  This means looking back at your training and nutrition logs (you have these too right?) and seeing what worked.

*As a side note to trainers and coaches, this is also the point for you to evaluate YOUR system.  Have you been pursuing one system for a long time to the exclusion of all others.  Maybe it is time to look at something else for a while.  Don’t worry…your system will still be there when you get back.  The more resistant you are to this idea, the more you probably need to follow the advice.*

In the end, systems are great tools, but results are paramount.  Explore and read all you can about as many systems as you can and select the one the brings results for the specific person or situation.  Better yet, take elements of many systems and create your own.  No one system is perfect.  Except mine, of course.  Just kidding.