I started obsessing over health and wellness when I was 18. After my athletic aspirations imploded, I channelled my focus toward mastering all things exercise, nutrition, and health. I knocked out a personal training certification. I read a bunch of nutritional biochemistry. I got a job sweeping floors and coaching classes at a local gym. I was passionate and motivated, a classic case of a nascent meathead health nut. This all happened over the course of only a few months. But here’s the odd thing: despite being such a beginner, I truly felt like an expert.
When people came to me asking for advice, whether they wanted to lose weight, rehab their shoulder, or fix their IBS, I didn’t hesitate to offer advice. I felt like I knew what I was talking about.
“It’s simple. You need to do ‘x.’ You need to stop doing ‘y.’ You’re welcome.”
It’s painful reflecting on those interactions. That advice came from an infant of the industry with next to no coaching experience.
Here’s the issue: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I was unskilled and correspondingly unaware of my lack of skill. Incompetent, but blissfully confident.
Fast forward nearly a decade (yikes). I now have a Bachelor's of Science in Biology and Psychology. I’m a few months away from finishing my Master’s in Physical Therapy. I’ve spent thousands of hours studying and have treated hundreds of clients.
But if you came to me today asking how to rehab your painful shoulder, my answer would drown you in nuance:
“It’s complicated. It depends on your goals, your anatomy, your injury history, your training experience…blah, blah, blah. I’d need to thoroughly assess you to even know where to start. Go see your local PT or Chiro.”
Strangely, nearly a decade of study and practice have actually made me less bold in my convictions. As the saying goes, “the further you get from shore, the deeper the water.”
Now, it recently dawned on me that my story is a textbook example of a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect emerged from studies in which individuals rate their own skill in areas like grammar, humour, and logic, and are then tested objectively in these same domains. Researchers then compare the self-perception data with the objective testing data. The punchline is that the least competent individuals are the most likely to overestimate their own performance 1. For example, individuals in the 12th percentile predict their scores to be at the 62nd, on average. This effect holds up to about the 80th percentile. It turns out that the same skills which reflect competence in a domain are the very same skills needed to assess competence in that domain. While we all overestimate our abilities to some degree, beginners do so most outrageously.
As Darwin so wisely pointed out in 1871:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
This figure sums it up:
While 18-year-old Leo was shouting from the rooftops of Mt. Stupid, too naïve to zoom out and notice where his feet were planted, 25-year-old Leo is humbly residing at Basecamp, re-examining the basics and acutely aware of imposter syndrome.
So, here's the question:
how can one expedite the slow climb from the Valley of Despair up the Slope of Enlightenment? The simple answer – spoiler alert – is to put in the sweat equity to gain genuine expertise. There's no substitute for experience. But in the meantime, it is vital to appreciate that allowing internal hesitancy to manifest externally is extremely detrimental to professional interactions. It’s absolutely crucial to demonstrate confidence as a clinician. As many PTs have told me, “if you don’t believe in your own treatment plan, why should your clients?” And beliefs matter. The placebo effect is very real. It’s so real that sham surgeries for knee Osteoarthritis produce improvements comparable to the real thing2. Wild, right? As much as I’ve always hated the cliché, there’s some truth to the importance of faking it until you make it.
This presents a thorny problem: if we’re all faking it until we make it to one degree or another, how can anyone objectively discern fraudulence from authenticity?
As a case study, let’s consider the Wild Wild West of Fitness/Rehab Instagram, which is populated with influencers hailing from Mt. Stupid, Mt. Genius, and everywhere in between. Given the frequent disconnect between authentic expertise and a facade of confidence, how can the typical social media user be expected to separate the wheat from the chaff? When inexperience is thinly veiled in flashy marketing and incomprehensible Bro Science, it’s only natural for the average user think that the guy with the 18-pack-abs must have the core routine that’s right for them. The girl with the most ‘Fit-Tea’ sponsorships must have the most credibility when it comes to glute training. The rehab guru who uses the most science-y words in his post about “how to PERMANENTLY FIX your BAD posture with ONE move” must have the answers.
Don’t get me wrong, Instagram is a fantastic way to expose yourself to new ideas. Brilliant minds like @ericcressey, @strengthcoachtherapy, @bobbysportspt, and @dr.jfitboyd have effectively filled the blind spots in my formal education with their outstanding content. Most accounts put out responsible content that educates the consumer and encourages physical activity, both of which are sorely needed right now. But a small part of me dies inside when I see a post titled “The One Shoulder Exercise You Should STOP Doing,” or “The Surprising Core Exercise You NEED to be Doing.” Just as there are no “good foods” and “bad foods,” there are no “good exercises” and “bad exercises.” There are only exercises that are good for a specific person, under specific load, volume, and frequency, in the context of a goal-driven plan, accounting for that person’s anatomy, injury history, and preferences. InstaRehab is the death of nuance. It favours the generic and dismisses the subtle. Credible, nuanced opinions don’t go viral because – quite frankly – they’re boring and take time and effort to understand. Outrageous, simplilfied, one-size-fits-all claims generate the most clicks. That’s just human nature. While evolution wired us for many things, critical thinking is not one of them.
In a perfect world, competence would precede confidence, and humility would trump hyperbole. But that’s not the world we live in.
As Bertrand Russell so eloquently put it:
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Ultimately, recognizing our own ability to fool ourselves might grant us enough humility to notice when we’re standing atop Mt. Stupid. It might also sharpen our skepticism as we consume our never-ending information diet – something we could all use during this age of content overload.
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121.
Moseley, J. B., O’Malley, K., Petersen, N. J., Menke, T. J., Brody, B. A., Kuykendall, D. H., … & Wray, N. P. (2002). A controlled trial of arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee. New England Journal of Medicine, 347(2), 81-88.
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