This weekend I was in Sterling, Virginia just outside of DC teaching a workshop with Tony Gentilcore at Underground Athlete, and it was an awesome experience. These are always fun to do, especially when everyone’s jaws hit the floor with some of the cool hacks I show how to do and when we get to dropping mobility like errant confetti at a wedding. Plus there’s breathing, deadlifts, squats and beef jerky, so that’s all you ever need in a workout really.

Our next event will be in Los Angeles in November, so if you’re around the west coast or just feeling like doing some heavy lifting around your next trip to Disneyland, click HERE to find out more info and to register. We’ll even have some cool fitness celebs there, like some New York Times best sellers, RKC/SFG master instructors, A-list celebrity trainers, and and random dudes we think are cool.

The point of this article was a discussion Tony and I were having when we had dinner with Ann Wendel, a very skilled physical therapist, and her husband on Saturday night. We were talking about what we were planning for the day two seminar, and Tony mentioned something along the lines of “all the fun activities,” then looked at me like I should pick it up from there, to which I responded with a very convincing:

“Yeah.”

The look on his face was like he just saw me kick a puppy. It was a mix of anger, disappointment and concern for my entire way of being/manhood that I didn’t pick up on the reference from Step Brothers.

 It became pointedly obvious that our friendship was now in jeopardy, as I had not witnessed what was in his opinion one of the best comedies of the recent decade, to which I asked if he’s seen any of the episodes of Game of Thrones yet. His answer was he started but Lisa didn’t like the gratuitous use of gratuitousness, so he hadn’t gotten into the best television series of all time.

IT’S LIKE I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU ANYMORE!!

This got me to thinking about how we relate to each other through our expressions, language, and even the jargon we come to rely on in our own circles. I’ve had a chance to go to different countries, parts of the United States and Canada, and have been able to see how vastly different regular vernaculars can be. A bunnyhug, for example, is a hooded sweatshirt to people from Saskatchewan, but to the rest of the known world it’s called a hoodie. A Toque in Canada is known as a wool cap or simply a hat to Americans. “Taking the piss out” means something along the lines of “are you trying to play a joke on me?” in Europe. Food Babe is known as a 4-letter word used by discerning ob/gyns around the world, so at least that’s universal.

Even our references are highly specific. If I haven’t watched Step Brothers, I’m on the outside looking in while everyone else quotes one-liners like no one’s business. If Tony hasn’t watched Game of Thrones, he’s going to lead a very unfulfilled life letting Lisa decide his television watching habits, even though he could download the episodes on his laptop and watch them on the plane with the screen dimmed REALLY DARK at certain points like a normal human being.

Imagine coming in to a community that has such a highly specific language and vernacular, standards of practice and customs, and having absolutely no idea what anyone else is doing or discussing. Does this sound like the fitness industry? I’m sure there are times when I write a post on this blog that sounds as resemblant to Klingon or something like that to someone who doesn’t eat, sleep, and breath the fitness industry, but for everyone who knows the difference from their ass and acetabulum, there’s also someone who either has no idea about anatomy and just wants to stay healthy, or speaks a different language altogether and wants to understand what the conversation is all about.

I went to a course in March where the research they were quoting was primarily in Spanish, and since my Spanish is about as good as many Bible belt goers French, I couldn’t look much of it up and dig into the specifics of what was going on, their methods, etc, but hopefully it will be translated soon so I can see what they’re doing and what results they’re getting for myself. For me, I was relying on the interpretation of essentially unpublished research in a foreign language as the basis for the entire methodology, so I was somewhat at their mercy in that regard.

An interesting fact about air travel is all pilots and air traffic controllers are required to converse in English, and to use the same technical jargon to understand exactly what is going on at all times, regardless of the country they’re in or flying from. This limits the possibilities of misunderstandings, slang terms, and confusion about what exactly a pilot is supposed to do to safely land or take off without incident.

Chemistry has a massive requirement to nomenclature so other chemists can understand what a chemical name means in terms of its’ structure, positional variations, and alignments, but the average person on the street looks at those chemical names and goes slightly grey. Many of these chemicals when they become mainstream term into an acronym. Think of the chemical bisphenol A, which was a chemical in low grade plastics that was linked to certain types of cancer. It was changed to BPA, and then everyone and their dog jumped on the “BPA Free” bandwagon.

Will we ever reach a consensus language or type of terminology with the fitness industry? Likely not.

The downside to developing a highly specific and descriptive terminology in relation to something as broad as fitness is it will rarely encapsulate every aspect of the movement or outcome, and will also present one more barrier of entry to a population of leyman who need to work out and have as few barriers as possible. I mean, I can’t even begin to TELL you how many of my clients come in saying they want to train their reactive recoil capability for their levator ani for incontinence prevention during excitatory explosive intraabdominal pulsation.

I can’t tell you because it doesn’t happen. They just want to not pee when they sneeze or cough.

I think fitness will always have varying levels of language depending on the person who is in on the discussion. What I would say to a client and what I would say to a PhD researcher are going to be completely different in terms of vocabulary, but the gist of the discussion may be entirely the same. The importance of the message doesn’t diminish, but the specificity to the individual may differ when you speak “up” in terms of sophistication of terminology or “down.” The goal of many is to make fitness inclusive, with fewer barriers of entry for those who truly need it versus an elitist academy that excludes those who would benefit the most from participation.

I would rather always have someone understand what I was trying to say than to simply try to wow them with my witty use of multisyllabic words. If no one laughs at the joke, no one understood it. If no one understands what you’re saying, your message falls on dead ears, even if it’s what has to be said. Speaking the same language as those who are in the same conversation with you is incredibly important, regardless of whether it’s their first day ever in a gym or whether they’re a grizzled vet or advanced researcher.

For the record, I’m going to watch Step Brothers on the plane home from Toronto today, so Tony had better step up his Game of Thrones attempts.