There’s an inside language to understanding the twitter feed of my favorite author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He frequently calls out IYIs (Idiot Yet Intellectuals), posts math problems I have no hope of solving. Anyone who wants to get paid for not producing anything of value is a “rent-seeker”. Encapsulating all of these are the mythical class of “BS Vendors”.
The BS Vendor is a person who tries to profit off of selling you pure, unadulterated cow manure. They are often IYI’s, putting a veneer of “science” around an empty shell. They don’t understand how probability works, which you don’t need to understand complex math to figure out. They seek rent (money) for their BS.
No field is free from BS Vendors. In swimming, we have plenty. The following is a guide for identifying BS Vendors in the sport so that you can avoid paying money for crap, unless that’s your thing.
Reads a Book/Takes A Class/Talks to Someone Then Decides to Teach It
At one point in my life, I regularly attended yoga classes. I found them relaxing, refreshing and great for my often poor flexibility. Yoga is a great experience with a skilled instructor.
You know what would be a terrible experience? Yoga instructed by a teacher that had attended one Yoga class.
This is all too common in coaching. Coaches read a popular non-fiction book (for example Angela Duckworth’s GRIT, Carol Dweck’s Mindset, Daniel Coyle’s Talent Code), then decide that they are qualified to “teach” these concepts.
Or they attend a clinic and listen to one talk by a particular field expert or coach and then set about teaching the concept that they “learned”. Or they have a conversation with someone and get inspired to “teach” a concept that they learned immediately after.
Now I know this going to rub some coaches the wrong way. So let me clarify- I think all of these pursuits of knowledge are worthwhile. We should all keep reading, keep broadening our knowledge. But we should not cheapen the learning process. Again, imagine teaching somebody one swim lesson and then setting them to teach another person how to swim. Hopefully you would never do that.
Instead, these introductions to concepts are great ways to start learning a topic. Use them as a starting point to seek out further knowledge. Start to make observations about how they might apply to what you are doing. Use yourself as the first test subject to try out some of your hypotheses. Find out what the next set of questions are about the concept before proceeding to other people.
Read the best critiques of the concept you can find and challenge your own assumptions. There is a lot of work to do before you can teach a concept.
Denies Accountability for Their Opinions
Anybody who’s selling their opinions on what to do deserves to be accountable for their advice. Beware of coaches who are constantly selling the “idea of the day”, skirting from topic to topic without any kind of reflection about what they were wrong and right about in the past.
Look, I get it. It’s never been harder to admit that you are wrong. It’s also never been more valuable to have a leader who can do so. Otherwise, you risk a constantly moving set of criteria for what those around you should do.
A typical coach-swimmer relationship relies on the basis proposition that if the swimmer takes the coaches advice, they are more than likely to improve. A non-bs vendor will be willing to admit that nothing is guaranteed while also honestly evaluating what they are recommending (and how well they’ve been listened to).
Uses Scientific Jargon Without Being Able to Explain Concepts Simply
Beware anybody that cloaks whatever they are doing in jargony, science sounding language. They are often attempting to appear as if they have expertise in an area. Often, they can get away with it because they are unlikely to be challenged by someone with knowledge in the subject area.
Regardless of your level of knowledge, any coach should be able to explain something so simply that it makes sense even to a non-swimmer. If you’re going to sell concepts to the masses you better be able to explain things in a way that makes the knowledge you’re adding usable.
Also, any level of expertise in a subject area related to swimming has to acknowledge how it interacts with everything else in the sport. Matt Kredich did a good job of describing this in a podcast I listened to once. If you’re going to bring somebody in as a psychological expert, they better at least understand how their advice interacts with every other piece of coaching you may be trying to achieve.
Doesn’t Like Me
One of the easiest ways to spot a BS Vendor is that they don’t like what I write about in here. Just kidding….mostly.