The Stoic Approach to Fitness: Why Dogma is Ruining Your Results

The Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus once posed a hypothetical question: If you needed medical treatment, who would you choose? A physician who spoke beautifully and graduated at the top of their academic class, or a quiet, closed-off doctor with decades of hands-on experience treating your exact condition?

When your health is on the line, charisma doesn't matter. You don't care about the glam. All you care about is getting the right treatment from the person who has actually been in the trenches and is best suited for the job.

Musonius applied this principle to philosophy, but it translates perfectly to strength and conditioning. I see the exact same divide happening in the fitness industry today. People are trying to build careers and support themselves, and I get it. But the modern fitness landscape has become obsessed with preaching absolute, dogmatic rules rather than seeking to understand the individual in front of them.

There was a time when I fell into that trap myself. Early in my career, when I was grinding out over 320 sessions a month, and later when I was helping a client pack on 20 pounds of muscle to land in the pages of Men's Health, it was easy to let my ego believe I had discovered the "ultimate formula." Back then, I leaned heavily on the dogma of strict, linear progression and rigid templates. If it worked for one person, it had to work for everyone, right?

But as the years went on—stepping into the role of a Personal Training Director, mentoring teams of trainers, and eventually launching Knight to Fit Performance out of the Salt Lake City Lifting Club—the sheer volume of human experience I encountered shattered that illusion. I watched people break under the exact same programs that made others thrive.

After dedicating my life to understanding what the human body is capable of in the physical realm, the greatest realization I've had echoes the words of Socrates: the wisdom I’ve gained has made me realize that I know nothing.

In the coaching world, "knowing nothing" means refusing to die on one hill. It means refusing to declare that there is only "one way" to get results, or fear-mongering that a specific movement is the "worst thing you can do" and must be avoided at all costs. Broad, generic statements are the enemy of actual progress.

The coach who has gained wisdom through experience learns that every tool—every exercise, every protocol—depends entirely on the context, limitations, and desires of the individual client. Our job as fitness professionals isn't to force you into a pre-packaged template. It's to teach you the reason behind each exercise. Think of it like walking into a kitchen: a butter knife is for butter, and a steak knife is for steak. Matching the specific tool to the specific task yields the highest return on investment and efficiency.

You see the danger of ignoring this in nutrition constantly. Influencers preach that Carnivore, Keto, Paleo, or Vegan is the only way to live. But their perception is narrowed to that one single lens, and they have zero context for your actual life. When trainers push extreme diets onto clients, they often derail the very habits that get people into the gym in the first place, leaving them burnt out, frustrated, and convinced that getting healthy is just "too hard."

The same dogma infects the weight room. You’ll hear people claim that deadlifting is a "bad exercise" that will destroy your back. It’s pure fear-mongering. Under the right context, execution, and calibration, deadlifts will bulletproof your back.

Or, on the other end of the spectrum, you see coaches who treat their clients like robots. I recently started working with a client whose previous bodybuilding prep coach had her doing the exact same exercises, week in and week out, for over six months straight. Yes, strictly applying linear progressive overload to a static list of movements will technically force an adaptation. But that level of mundaneness is like watching paint dry. It is completely unimaginative, and honestly, it shows a trainer who doesn't truly love their craft. How is that fun? How is that engaging? Because of that crushing monotony, this client—and c

ountless others I’ve seen in similar situations—eventually gave up on training entirely. The gym shouldn't feel like a prison sentence of repetitive spreadsheets. Working out should be exciting, challenging, and fresh.

If you want to know whether you are working with a coach who operates from a place of wisdom or a place of rigid dogma, look out for these three major red flags:

1. They use complexity to talk over you. A coach who constantly uses massive words and complex jargon isn't trying to teach you; they are trying to prove they are smarter than you. True mastery is the ability to take a complex physiological concept and explain it so simply that you could turn around and teach it to someone else. Early in my career, I had another trainer poach one of my very first clients. Instead of getting angry, I reframed it: what was I failing to do to connect with this person? I realized that checking in, building genuine rapport, and ensuring the client actually understands the plan is everything. Communication should empower you, not diminish you.

2. They ignore your physical feedback in the name of "motivation." There is a massive difference between a coach pushing you to reach your potential and a coach forcing you to lift a weight you are actively telling them feels wrong. I have seen clients come to me with severe injuries because a past trainer ignored their pain signals and told them to "push through it" just to look hardcore. A good coach listens to your feedback. If you don't feel confident or safe in a movement, the answer isn't blind motivation—it’s recalibrating the tool.

3. They try to play Registered Dietitian. Unless a trainer has the specific, specialized credentials, they have no business prescribing full dietary overhauls. My wife is a Registered Dietitian, and I see firsthand the depth of education required to do that job safely. She went to school to understand the complex chemistry of how food interacts with medications, how nutrients break down on a cellular level, and how to navigate the reality of a client's daily life. Most trainers do not have this knowledge. Pushing an extreme diet on a client without that clinical background isn't just dogmatic; it's dangerous.

Real coaching isn't about applying some infinite pattern of generic progressive overload to everyone who walks through the doors. It’s about taking the science of human adaptation and alchemizing it for the individual standing right in front of you.

Drop the dogma. Find the right tool for the job.