This blog post is a bit of a list, a "You May be a Redneck" style list, if you will, regarding Sophists in the realm of sport. Sophist is another name for a pseudo-intellectual, however the term pseudo-intellectual sounds pseudo-intellectual in itself. I believe that's an oxymoron, like rain on your wedding day, or swiss cheese. Basically, I become frustrated when I see status posts, tweets, blogs, articles and other such writings by people who like to inflate their ego by thinking that they know exactly what they are talking about, when much of what they write is complete bunk. So here is a list of warning signs that the post you are reading is by a pseudo-intellectual.
1. Flowery scientific-y language
Now don't get me wrong, proper language is important when discussing things related in the field of exercise science. The problem comes to be when you are incapable of writing a post without showing off some of the jargon that you have in your arsenal. The bigger problem comes into play when you use this vocabulary with your athletes when they have no background in training or exercise science. That is when their eyes gloss over and the hamster in their brain falls out of their wheel and everything you said is all for naught. Albert Einstein put it best...
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
2. Angry, aggressive points
Confidence is awesome, however I believe that it is also circular. As an example of this point, I feel that if you become over-confident you begin to border on false confidence coming from insecurity and self doubt. We all know people who talk incessantly about how awesome they are. Think back and you'll realize that these people are some of the most insecure people you've known. If someone is trying to convince you of a point regarding sports or training and they can't write without angrily speaking about what frustrates them about other coaches and athletes and what they do wrong, then you should start to look a little deeper and ask "well, why are you so angry about it?"
3. False equivalencies and other fallacies
Bit of background. In college I was required to take philosophy as a general education course. Due to an issue with the registrar I was accidentally placed in a high level advanced logic course instead of an intro course. I did not realize this fact until later in the semester. It was the only college course I failed. That summer I re-took the course at another University with actually a more strict professor but one who knew the material much better. I got a 4.0 which replaced my F. One of my favorite parts of philosophy was how to label and discover fallacious arguments. Put on one of those 24 hour news networks and you'll hear a whole gaggle of them! I read a huge number of posts that try to equate two things that really have no bearing on one another; sometimes even making analogies that make no sense whatsoever. Be sure when reading a post to scrutinize over the conclusions being made and ask yourself "Is what he/she is saying making logical sense?", if it doesn't then their whole argument will be flawed.
In conclusion, as a group I feel that those of us involved in athletics,sports,and coaching do a poor job of scrutinizing the information that we pass on to others; and athletes do a poor job of really researching whom they trust to learn from sometimes. The next time someone on your Facebook wall, or twitter feed posts something look a bit deeper into the presentation and try to figure out if they really know what they're talking about, or just pretending to.
