When it comes to self-care and self-improvement, most people have a serious lack of confidence in their own abilities and sense, and (if you ask me) a serious over-confidence in the abilities and sense of just about everyone else. Many of us are all-too-willing to take the advice of an online guru or a health/wellness professional as gospel, assuming that as long as we type the right combination of magical words into Google or pay a trained professional a large enough chunk of cash, we will get a simple and guaranteed solution to our problem or a foolproof means to reach our goals. We believe that there must be someone out there who has the exact answer to our exact question.
And then, when things don't go perfectly, we are dumbfounded and upset that the guru we trusted in is, in fact, not an omniscient oracle or faultless virtuoso, and we give up and decide that our quest must be an impossible one.
Of course there are situations in which it is not at all prudent to rely entirely on your own abilities, and times when it is absolutely necessary to seek out a health professional. You're not going to have any luck "self-sufficient-ing" yourself out of cardiac arrest, and you're probably not going to win any Olympic medals through self-coaching and self-education alone. There are times when it is necessary to utilize the services of a coach, physical therapist, dietician, etc. to allow you to reach the next level or address a more serious problem, and to take advantage of the countless hours that they have (hopefully) put into developing an up-to-date understanding and practice of health and fitness.
But for all the middling, low-risk problems, queries, and pursuits in self-care and self-improvement—all of the things that we face on a day-to-day basis like dietary choices, getting stronger, addressing minor aches and pains, getting leaner, moving efficiently, feeling energetic and positive, etc.—so many of us are far too afraid to get our hands dirty and learn and figure things out ourselves; it's much easier and more comfortable to put all the onus on someone else and blindly hope that they'll do all the thinking and work for us. Too many of us are too lazy to put in the legwork to educate ourselves and too afraid to take action to really learn about ourselves.
Note, also, that burying your nose in books and peer-reviewed health and fitness journals 'til the cows come home is not enough. Education and understanding is necessary for making the most of our health and fitness, but it is only one part of the equation. We also must act; we must think critically, try things for ourselves, test, observe, and retest.
Be your own lab
Life does not occur in a vacuum, and the human experience is so variable and complex that we cannot control for (or even be aware of) all variables. Because of this, any evidence-based prescription derived from results from other people is necessarily a generalization—a probable estimation of expected results. In other words, what works for a group of 40 subjects in a randomized, controlled study will not necessarily work for you. (And of course, any non-evidence-based prescription is just speculation.) This is where self-experimentation has its immense value: with an awareness of what current evidence suggests and an understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved in human physiology, you can then conduct N=1 "trials" on yourself to determine what works for you. We cannot absolutely determine what works for everyone, but with self-experimentation, data collection, and attention to detail, you can determine what works for you.
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| One hell of a laboratory that would be.1 |
This of course comes with a long list of caveats.
First and foremost, self-experimentation is not an alternative to knowledge, evidence, or scientific rigor—it is a supplement. Self-experimentation should spring from generalized evidence and understanding, and a heaping dose of common sense (and self-preservation instinct). Conducting a self-experiment in which you see if cyanide is a good weight-loss supplement isn't going to get you very far, and you're going to have an awfully hard time collecting and analyzing data when you're dead. Be smart and have a good idea of what you're getting into before you go all mad scientist on yourself.
In addition, the results of self-experimentation should not be taken as anything other than just that. Self-experimentation is an excellent way to determine what works for you, not for your friend or your great-aunt or your dog. All else being equal, the greater the sample size, the more universally applicable the results. A sample size of 1 does not lend itself to any sort of universal applicability. Additionally, for the same reasons that a trial examining the effects of high repetition squats on knee joint stability within a group of 35 professional bodybuilders utilizing performance enhancing supplements does not apply to a geriatric patient recovering from a full knee replacement, your results cannot be taken as true for anyone other than yourself. All self-experimentation should be conducted with this awareness.
Self-experimentation is also limited by available resources. Your experiment is limited to whatever factors you can control and whatever tools you have at your disposal. For most folks, the tools at our disposal are quite limited. On the one hand, this limits the depth and diversity of the trials we can conduct on ourselves. But on the other hand, it does not always limit real-world applicability. While I may not have the tools available to measure the electromyographic activity in the hamstrings during a wide-stance squat, I can fairly easily determine if a wide-stance squat strengthens my hamstrings with very basic "tools."
Self-experimentation does face a considerable challenge insofar as the researcher is also the test subject. Because of this, introducing a placebo or a control group is virtually impossible. Results of self-experimentation must be viewed with this in mind. However, because the results of your self-experiment are not being applied to anyone other than you, the placebo effect does not change your results, only the broader application of and underlying reasons for your results (in other words, just because something works doesn't mean it works for the reasons you think—this is where your ability to control variables and repeat experiments comes in handy). In addition, because you are your one and only test subject, you must be aware of the influence that one trial can have on another when conducting self-experiments. Your starting point for each trial you conduct is necessarily different, particularly if you are conducting sequential trials addressing the same general hypothesis or inquiry.
But despite all these limitations and caveats, self-experimentation still stands as the most effective tool for learning about yourself, about how you respond to different changes/stimuli, and about what does and does not work for you.
Some guiding principles
I am not an expert on experimental methods, and so I won't claim to have the master formula for the most accurate and precise method of self-experimentation. However, I'll leave you with a few principles that can help you formulate effective and useful trials.
1. Be honest. Being honest with ourselves is one of the hardest things to do, but it is a huge asset in learning about yourself and becoming better. Don't let confirmation bias overrun your experiments, and don't be that guy so entrenched in his beliefs (regardless of their origin) that he can't see a plain-as-day fact staring him in the face. Emotionally separate yourself from your experiment and be an objective observer of yourself. This is one of the most valuable skills you can have in life.
2. Be observant. Observation is a cornerstone of the scientific method. When you are conducting a self-experiment, it is imperative that you observe and be aware of variables and changes. It is important to consider what variables may influence your experiment, and to notice any changes throughout the experiment, even if (especially if!) they are not the changes you were looking for.
3. Collect data. Simply put, your experiment is about as factually accurate as a fairytale if you are not collecting any data. This ties in closely with being observant: observe variables, observe results, and then record them. Conducting an experiment in which you examine the efficacy of a "squat everyday" program on your 1RM squat will not yield any valuable results if you don't record your 1RM squat at the start and at the end of the experiment. "Well, I think I feel stronger" is not data.
What kind of data should you be collecting? Before conducting any experiment, you should consider (and, if possible, discuss with someone else) all of the possible factors that could affect your results. Just about every self-experiment should consider factors such as: sleep (quantity and quality), diet (calories consumed, additions or omissions, timing, supplements, caffeine and alcohol), stress (general stress level, new/additional stressors, leisure time), general activity levels (time spent sedentary, low-level activities like walking/hiking, etc.), sun exposure, exercise regimen (intensity, frequency, any general changes), daily practices (meditation, movement, stretching, posture), hydration, injury or illness, and of course, your starting data points for whatever you are observing or attempting to affect change in (this could be anything from a blood panel, to a 1RM bench press, to skin condition, to joint range of motion).
4. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Because your lab of one is limited to, well, one, conducting multiple trials is important for ensuring the accuracy of your results.
Let's say you are conducting an experiment in which you examine the effects of performing a daily 15 minute breathing exercise on your run times. You notice that, during this 3 week trial, your run times progressively go down. Obviously the breathing exercises helped improve your breathing efficiency or capacity, thereby helping your running, right? Not necessarily. Let's say you perform the same 3 week trial a month later, and your run times plateau and then begin to increase in the 3rd week, despite performing the same breathing exercises. You look at your data (because you are recording data, right?) and find that during the first 3 week trial, you were sleeping 9 hours per night, work was minimally stressful, and you were eating a small caloric surplus. During your second 3 week trial, you were sleeping 6.5-7 hours per night, work was a stress-fest, and you were eating in a caloric deficit to try to lose some pounds.
The more we can repeat our trials (and observe changes/consistencies in variables between trials), the more accurate our results can be. Obviously there is a limit to this. Repeating a 1 year trial on yourself 50 times is not a worthwhile investment of time and energy (and remember, time itself is a variable!).
5. Remember to still be a human. Self-experimentation should be for the sake of self-improvement. Therefore, if your experiment is requiring you to completely abandon an enjoyable and enriching life, you're missing the point. Be reasonable. Don't turn yourself into a guinea pig and lock yourself out of a fulfilling life in an effort to control all of the variables in the name of science.
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| Just working in the lab.2 |
This self-experimentation business probably isn't foreign to most of us. Whether you're aware of it or not, there's a good chance that you've already conducted some form of self-experimentation on yourself in your lifetime. Have you ever eliminated something like dairy or soda from your diet for a few months to see how it affects you? Ever tried increasing your training volume to see if you could progress faster? Ever added supplements to your diet to see if it made an observable difference? This is all self-experimentation. It is how we best learn about ourselves.
Don't let someone else's generalization be the final word on how your body operates and responds. Put on your lab coat and get out your data sheet and see for yourself.
NOTE - I'll say it one more time, just so we're absolutely clear: don't be stupid and go destroying yourself in the name of self-experimentation and knowledge. That's just not cool.
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Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.
Follow me on Twitter @PSprimont and on Instagram @PSprimont
Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.
1 photo credit: DSC_0294 via photopin (license)↩
2 photo credit: via photopin (license)↩
