What’s On My Mind

What’s On My Mind
Don’t Let the Dunning-Kruger Effect Hold You Back

This Month’s Health Challenge
Extremely Limit Added Sugars

What’s On My Mind

Don’t Let the Dunning-Kruger Effect Hold You Back - by Kyle Ligon

When you’re about 1-5 years into your fitness journey, you are most susceptible to negative influences of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. But, by being aware of the effect and how it can impact your fitness journey, you can adopt strategies that mitigate most of the potential issues, dramatically improving not just your rate of progress, but how you experience the ups and downs of your journey. Let’s dig in…

To provide a ridiculous, but true, example: two bank robbers once used lemon juice on their faces to make them invisible to the security cameras. They fell prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect and attempting to rob a bank without masks unfortunately did not work out for them. Oftentimes, especially when we are at the beginning phases of learning something, our lack of understanding impairs our ability to recognize the extent of our lack of understanding.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect represents how, when we start to build some knowledge on a subject, we tend to underestimate its complexity and nuance. Oversimplifying the subject, leads to overconfidence in what and how much we actually know. The more we learn and dig into a topic, the more we realize just how much there is to know.

The two most impactful parts of the Dunning-Kruger curve for your fitness journey take place when you are at an intermediate to low advanced level, about 1-5 years into your fitness journey: Peak Overconfidence and Underconfidence.

Let’s first look at the red horizontal line that hits the first peak and moves across the chart. Notice how the intermediate to low advanced athlete’s confidence in what they think they know can be as high as an expert’s confidence, but obviously there is quite a wide gap in knowledge.

Here are the top 3 most common mistakes that I see people make during this period and what to do about them:

1. Beginner Gains Resulting

Resulting is a term that describes someone who overemphasizes results when determining whether or not their decisions were good or bad. As all seasoned athletes, business people, gamblers, etc., especially those more mathematically inclined, should understand, bad decisions can come with good results and good decisions can come with bad results. The fact that a good result occurred, does not mean it was a good decision.

For example, if you hit a shot in tennis that has a 10% chance of winning the point and a 90% chance of losing the point, that is likely a poor decision, regardless of how the point turns out. But, if we are caught resulting, then if we happen to catch the 10% of time it does work out in our favor, we may take the positive outcome as proof that our decision to hit that shot was a good one when it wasn’t. If we continue to hit that shot, in the long-run we will lose the vast majority of points.

Obviously, we need to take results into account when we are reviewing our strategies and processes, but we need to have a more in depth review process that does not put all the weight on the result.

In the gym and in sports, what we call beginner gains take place in the first few years - The progress you can make in the first 3 years relative to where you started is incredible, but as you accumulate training years, your relative progress inevitably slows down. 20-200%+ increases in a year are normal for beginners where 2-5% increases in a year for advanced athletes would still be amazing progress.

In the beginning years of your health and fitness journey, practically anything you do will move you in the direction of your goals, regardless of if the strategy will work long-term. Is a running only program good? Well, it’s better than doing nothing, but it does not come close to a holistic cross-training approach. If you have good adherence to even poorly designed, single-modality workout programs or even any fad diet, you will likely make very good progress...until you don’t anymore.

This is where beginner gain resulting becomes an issue. Anything can push you towards the results you’re looking for in the short term, but almost all methods available will plateau well shy of the full results you’re after leaving only the few, high-quality methods that are capable of getting you the full results you’re looking for.

Beginner gains resulting leads people to give too much credence to the specific methods they adopt in the beginning of their journey, leaving them potentially committed to ineffective programs and diets, even when their results stop. This leads to a lot of frustration as people start blaming their genetics, their effort, and can begin to think that getting results may just not be in the cards for them.

It’s important to remember that as your journey progresses, so too must your strategies, knowledge, and skill. Unless you got lucky and found something like the MovementLink method right out the gate (wink wink), it is highly unlikely that the methods and habits you start with are all what is going to work and fit best into your life.

If you plateau, there is nothing inherently wrong with you. The issue will be able to be traced back to your adherence, your effort, and your methods. You absolutely do need effective methods (Summary of the MovementLink Method). With effective methods, you do not need heroic adherence or effort, just consistently doing enough (How much exercise is enough).

2. Close Minded to New Ideas

This over-commitment to what we start with also parallels an over-commitment and overconfidence in first things we learn.

We are the most difficult to coach when we are at intermediate to low advanced levels, especially when we get introduced to a new perspective. We have enough knowledge to have heard credible people say a lot of things, but we don’t have enough knowledge to understand the full context and application of everything we have heard.

When the source is reasonably credible, and even sometimes when it’s not, humans typically believe new things we hear right away and lock them in our heads as things we know. We forget to assign a confidence level to what we think we know. We forget that, especially when we are at this intermediate level, that there is a reasonable chance we misunderstood, misheard, and/or are misremembering what we think we know and that there is a very good chance that we don’t understand the full context and nuance behind what we think we know.

The additional challenge for our progress is that the threshold to change our mind is much, much higher than the threshold to originally “know” something. This tends to make us dismiss new ideas when they seem to contradict our already embedded ideas. This close-mindedness really hampers learning and development.

When two things seem at odds to us, typically at this stage we think one must be correct and the other one must be wrong, when in fact maybe they are both correct within more nuanced contexts. Here is a purposefully complex example of a common situation in the gym that our coaches experience with new members who just started at our gym, but who are at this intermediate level. This may confuse intermediate athletes, but gurus will have no issue understanding this example.

Their old coach told them that they should perform a full squat on their cleans, but now one of the MovementLink coaches tells them to squat to a depth that allows them to receive the bar at the bar’s highest point. If the athlete is suffering from the close-minded nature of the intermediate level of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the athlete resists and discredits the new information instead of being curious as to why two coaches may say seemingly contradictory things.

The reality in this example is that in certain situations doing a full squat on each rep may make sense - Like in a CrossFit competition where there are rules may require squatting on each rep or when the workout program is specifically looking to get additional squat volume in. But, receiving the bar at its highest point is something the athlete should aim to do regardless of if they are going to finish the rep with a full squat or not. Almost all intermediate athletes do not do this well. If the athlete isn’t doing a great job of this, or doesn’t yet understand it, the coach will likely want the athlete to focus on improving that aspect of the lift and may want them to focus on cleaning up the speed of the third pull instead of emphasizing squatting all the way down after receiving the bar. There are many additional scenarios where both can be simultaneously correct, either could be wrong, or either could be right, but I’ll spare you any more time on this. The point is to show that it is easy to be in the “overconfident in what we know” phase, not realize it, and miss out, slowing your progress in getting to the next level. Not only that, the better coaches are going to be the ones who understand more nuance and will likely say even more seemingly contradictory things!

What you can do is, instead of getting defensive when you hear seemingly contradictory statements, get curious. This should involve reviewing the sources and assigning a confidence level to what you think you already know and dig into trying to understand why someone may say something that, to you, seems contradictory. You could ultimately decide that the new information is poor and stick with your original information, but you can’t afford to be close-minded. Being curious is the fastest path to real understanding.

3. Not Enough Attention to the Foundations

To be at this intermediate level, you will have developed a reasonable foundation of technique, but all too often people stop focusing on the basics. Without an extremely deep knowledge, it’s easy to be overconfident in how solid your foundation is and your progress will always be limited by the cracks.

The bells and whistles are all over the place and we are easily distracted by new shiny exercises, programs, pieces of equipment, etc. It is actually OK to stretch your skills and start trying to learn new things, but you absolutely have to keep in mind that your foundation is never complete, and you must keep a heavy focus on continuing to develop it. This will not only prevent injuries, it is the only way to continue to add higher and higher skills. Attempting to perfect the basics as you add new skills is the path to expertise.

Lastly, I want to touch on the blue underconfidence line from the Dunning-Kruger Effect diagram above. Inevitably there comes a moment, when you learn enough to become aware of how little you really know. It’s ideal to be aware of what you actually know, but it’s the fall from overconfidence that puts you at a high risk of quitting. You thought you were further along and the rug got pulled. The higher the overconfidence point in your curve, the bigger the fall, but understanding that it’s natural to go through a phase of disillusionment can help get you accept it and get back on track.

The more aware you are of beginner gains resulting, the more open minded you are to new ideas, and by consistently maintaining attention on the foundations, the less of a shock it is to understand just how much there is to the exercise and fitness world.

Most coaches, programs, diets, and people following along fall into the intermediate to low advanced levels. Most information available, especially via social media, is delivered and received with overconfidence. What I’d love for your takeaway to be, is to continue to be proactive in developing your skills and knowledge by staying curious and always trying to improve.

The path to the results you’re after is through your adherence, your effort, and your methods. Want to know exactly what we recommend, stay tuned and explore MovementLink.FIT.

A Complete Guide to the MovementLink Method

This Month’s Health Challenge

Extremely Limit Added Sugars ("Empty Calories") - By Kelly Dodds

The holidays are a time for celebration, but they can also lead to overindulging in foods and drinks that are high in “empty calories.” But what does the term “empty calories” really mean? It refers to foods and drinks that provide energy (calories), typically from sugars or fats, but little to no essential nutrients—those that our bodies can't produce on their own, like amino acids, fiber, vitamins, minerals, polyunsaturated fats, and phytonutrients.

Consuming excess calories can lead to an increase in body fat, which is linked to numerous chronic diseases and can reduce life expectancy. Furthermore, studies show a connection between excessive sugar intake (more than 10% of total daily calories) and health issues such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration, and even psychological disorders. While added sugars aren't necessarily harmful in moderation, they can have two significant effects when consumed in excess:

Excessive Caloric Intake – This leads to an overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which causes inflammation throughout the body.
Reduced Dietary Quality – Foods high in added sugars often lack essential nutrients, which impairs the body's ability to function properly, as each cell requires nutrients to carry out biological processes.

Foods that are easy to overindulge in during the holidays—such as sweets, baked desserts, ice cream, bread and butter, stuffing, chips, and sweetened drinks—are often packed with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, and fats. These combinations make these foods especially “palatable” and hard to resist. When sugars, fats, and salt are combined, they trigger the brain's reward system, encouraging overeating. However, these foods don't trigger the body’s natural satiety signals, leaving us less aware of when we've had enough.

Consider natural foods that contain both sugars and fats—coconut and dairy (like milk and cheese) come to mind. These are relatively rare in nature. Highly palatable foods that combine these elements in a way our brains find irresistible are mostly a product of modern food processing. Our brains evolved to survive on scarce food sources, so today’s abundance of processed, sugary foods can overwhelm our natural reward systems, leading to overeating and the consumption of “empty calories.”

Opting for less-processed foods provides more essential nutrients, while limiting the intake of added refined sugars and fats. This not only helps reset your brain’s reward system, but also increases satiety, making you less likely to overeat. Nutrient-dense foods—those rich in protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants—provide the necessary building blocks for your body to perform its essential functions. When you focus on eating these foods, you’re also less likely to crave high-sugar, highly processed options.

This Month’s Challenge

Check the Labels – Take a look at the nutritional content of any processed foods, sweetened beverages, or desserts you consume. Pay attention to how much added sugar is included.
Choose Whole Foods – Aim to make less-processed foods the foundation of your diet. Try to limit added sugars to 5-10% of your total daily calories (>25g of added sugar per day is recommended). This recommendation doesn’t include the natural sugars found in whole fruits.
Pre-load on Nutrients – Before heading to holiday parties or indulging in holiday treats, eat nutrient-dense foods to fill up. This will help you consume more essential nutrients and leave less room for “empty calories.”
Pay Attention to How You Feel – Notice how your body responds when you eat less-processed, whole foods compared to sugary, processed options.

By being mindful of your sugar intake and focusing on nutrient-dense foods, you can enjoy the holidays without sacrificing your health.