Here’s something I’ve noticed about practitioners who get stuck: they’re more comfortable being consistently wrong than occasionally uncertain. They’d rather stick with familiar failure than risk looking like they don’t know what they’re doing.
The therapist who prescribes the same hip mobility routine for every single runner with IT band issues, even though half of them don’t get better. The strength coach who programs Olympic lifts for everyone, regardless of technique, history, or, most importantly, response. At least they have a plan, right? Who cares if it works.
Whyyyy do we do this? I think it’s because admitting something doesn’t work means admitting you don’t know everything. And apparently, that’s scarier than watching someone’s athletic career slowly die in front of you while you frantically flip through the same playbook that got you here in the first place.
You know what actually works? Trying something new. Seeing if it works. And if it doesn’t, trying something else. This revolutionary process is called trial and error, and it’s only responsible for every meaningful advancement in human history—from medicine to engineering to that one time someone figured out you could eat mushrooms but probably shouldn’t eat all mushrooms.
But we’ve convinced ourselves that trial and error is somehow less professional than denial and bullshit. That admitting “I don’t know, let’s find out” makes us look incompetent, while confidently repeating failed interventions, somehow, makes us look like experts. We’ve got it backward. The practitioner willing to be wrong temporarily is infinitely more valuable than the one committed to being wrong permanently.
The human body adapts, it responds, it gives you feedback every single session. But if you’re not listening—if you’re too busy having a passionate romance with your protocol instead of serving your client—you’ll miss all of it.
The Blame Game Is a Losing Game (But We Keep Playing Anyway)
When protocols fail, the finger-pointing starts faster than Twitter outrage. “This athlete just doesn’t respond to treatment.” “They have terrible movement patterns.” “Some people are just injury-prone.”
Okay. And then what?
Every time you say “they just need to do more” of what isn’t working, you’re basically telling athletes to order the same terrible meal but ask for extra salt. Every time you default to “they always have issues with…” you’re writing fan fiction where you’re the hero and they’re the problem.
But you’re not the hero in this story. You’re the detective, and the real hero brought their case to you. Your job isn’t to defend your methods—it’s to solve their problem. And detectives who ignore evidence because it conflicts with their theories and opinions don’t solve many cases.
When you feel that familiar frustration creeping in, when the same intervention keeps producing the same disappointing results, that’s not the athlete’s limitation. That’s your cue to evolve.
But evolution requires letting go of what isn’t working, and that’s where most practitioners tap out. It’s like staying with someone you know is wrong for you, but they have really good Wi-Fi.
So what does actual evolution look like? Trial and error. That’s it. That’s literally what evolution is: trying things, keeping what works, discarding what doesn’t. Biology figured this out billions of years ago. Maybe we should catch up.
Get obsessively curious about what you’re seeing. Stop looking at the obvious stuff and start noticing the weird details. How does their breathing change when they move? What do their toes do when they stand on one leg? How do they initiate movement? Your eyes have been trained to see certain things by school and habits—so you need to deliberately look elsewhere.
It sounds obvious, but this is rare: treat failure as data, not personal attacks on your character. When an intervention doesn’t work, you just learned something valuable about that specific human being. You discovered what doesn’t work for them. That’s literally how science advances: one “well, that was a spectacular disaster” at a time. Edison didn’t invent the light bulb; he found 10,000 ways not to make one. Be like Edison, but without murdering elephants.
Chase outcomes, not exercises. If the goal is pain-free shoulder movement, stop falling in love with specific exercises and start falling in love with whatever creates that outcome. Maybe it’s crawling patterns. Maybe it’s hanging from a bar. Maybe it’s interpretive dance—I don’t judge. The exercise is just the vehicle; solving the problem is what matters.
Actually evolve your coaching. If you want help developing this kind of adaptive thinking—the kind that lets you observe, learn, and actually solve problems instead of just repeating the same protocols—the Evolved Coach course teaches exactly that.
The Icky-Sticky Truth, Brought to You by Reality
Look, being effective means being wrong a lot. It means trying things that don’t work. It means looking stupid in front of athletes while you figure out what their body actually needs instead of what you think it should need based on that cert you got in 2019. Being wrong is being lost. But as long as you know how to navigate, you’ll figure it out. (Pssst, I can teach you to navigate.)
When an athlete comes to you, they’re trusting you with their body and the trajectory of their career. That’s worth a fuckload more than a dinged ego. And it’s a responsibility I don’t think any coach should take lightly (and every good coach I know takes it to heart). We should be willing to try and err for them if that’s what it takes to solve the case.
The body is too smart for your bullshit. But it’s also generous enough to keep giving you chances to get it right. Your athlete’s career, however, isn’t that patient.
So here’s your choice: keep defending protocols that don’t work, or start discovering what does. Keep playing it safe with familiar failures, or get comfortable with the messy process of actually learning. (I’ll hold your hand through the process, if you want.)
Trial and error isn’t just better than denial and bullshit. It’s the only thing that actually works.
If you’re ready to get better at getting your athletes better, register for the Evolved Coach course. It’s the last course I’m offering this year, it starts next Monday (October 6), and it’s made for practitioners who care more about results than looking like they have all the answers—because the best practitioners never do.
If you’re a physical therapist, you can get 34 hours of your 30 required with this one course. This one course and you’re done for two years of CEU hunting. Ask me for the packet, you send it in, and wham, approved CEUs.
Forever FAFO-ing, but in a scientific way,
– Austin
[Feature Photo by Michael Walter on Unsplash.]