It took me 3 days to finally decide to listen to the YouTube podcast where Dr. Eric Helms and Brad Minor, who wrote the article critically analyzing Dr. Mike Israetel’s volume ramping approach to hypertrophy, faced off with Dr. Mike and his mute friend Jared Feather. I don’t generally enjoy debates. I find them uncomfortable and awkward, preferring instead to listen to one person express their views and seeking out others if I want a contrary view. I also know from experience that Israetel annoys me to no end, and he didn’t disappoint here.
There are so many areas I can address in this one hour discussion–it really wasn’t a debate at all–about the topic itself, but instead I’ve chosen to jot down my thoughts on why I find Israetel so irritating. As it turns out, what he does has a name, and it’s a rather common debate tactic. Dr. Mike is a Gish Galloper. If you listen to the discussion on Revive Stronger’s podcast, Eric Helms responds to one of Mike’s Gish Gallop’s at the 33 minute mark, and you can immediately see how the Gish Gallop can be effective in an informal debate. The Galloper will throw in so many assertions in making their point, without regard for their basis in fact, accuracy or credibility, that to respond to it would require a significant time investment as you’d have to fact check every assertion.
The Gish Gallop can be effective if the listener isn’t well informed on the topic being discussed, or if the listener gives the debater the benefit of the doubt because of their alleged authority or expert status in the field. When Mike goes on and on about “the pump,” listeners may just accept that this pump he is discussing must be a thing. It isn’t, but it’s only one of several assertions he makes in his long, rambling attempt at making his point. When he finally runs out of steam, and the other party is asked to address what he said, it’s hard to even know where to start.
Our current Oval Office occupant is also a Gish Galloper, but he does it without trying to make a point. He just rambles endlessly about many topics in one long run-on sentence, making so many assertions that a reporter would have to stop him and ask him to clarify or provide evidence for just one item, which the Galloper in Chief probably doesn’t even remember stating. You see him do this often, where he will contradict himself when questioned or deny ever making the assertion in the first place. I don’t want to put Dr. Mike in the same bucket with the President because he doesn’t deserve to be insulted in that way. He’s much more talented in his use of the Gallop than Trump is.
The most frustrating part of this discussion was the inability to build a basic framework of the underlying issue, due most likely to Helms and Minor trying to be respectful and congenial. Minor made his best attempt at this quite late in the discussion where he asked Mike to explain how his premise would apply to a given situation. Again, this requires some basic knowledge of the topic at hand to be of any value to the listener, but presumably Steve Hall’s audience is comprised mostly of people who have at least been in the gym, lifted some weights and have heard of the concepts these guys are debating. At the end of the hour, I’m confident few minds were changed, which is the whole point of a debate, but if you were listening carefully, maybe, just maybe, you discovered that Dr. Mike Isratel is a fan of overwhelming his audience with bullshit, more formally known as Gish Galloping.
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