My thoughts on Functional Patterns
This is a response to a personal trainer I was working with for an initial evaluation. I said:
Love the methodology but am hung up on the concept of hiding the information from people. Why does functional patterns do this if the mission is to help people?
His response:
Hey David, I'm really curious as to what experience you had that has you ask this question?
Here is my long form response to this:
Realizing this response is probably more appropriate for an email. I also don't expect you to be able to address my concerns. My guess is that it is an issue with functional patterns "the business" itself. Happy to get on a call with you or others to discuss further. I am drawing on experiences from myself and about 10 other friends who feel a similar way:
I think the best way to explain is to show counter examples: ATG and Bryan Johnson's blueprint program I can spend little to no money and see most/all of the content. With blueprint the entire thing is available for free (https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/), the money is made on making the program more convenient to follow (https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/). With ATG I can get access to all of the workout plans and detailed form feedback for $50 (for 1 month). Also, there are lots of videos explaining each workout in detail and showing proper form and cues. His instagram and YouTube accounts show much of the content with feedback from the community which I can read about and discuss.
With functional patterns all I see is testimony and claimed results. There are some segments giving the general idea of what the workouts look like but nothing showing in detail. There is the 10wk course for $200. My friend that is doing that and told me that it isn't that relevant to me as I should already be doing more advanced stuff. I basically need to pay ~$1000 to get a sense of if this very different way of working out will help me.
I am a firm believer that no one ideology/program will work for everyone and that trying a bunch of different things and picking the aspects of each that work best for each persons unique situation is path to the ideal state. (I feel the same way about diets)
For example, ATG helped me overcome pain from cartilage damage in my knee! This was game changing for me. From everything I have been able to see FP wouldn't have been able to help much...at least not in the same way.
In summary, the combination of high initial cost, lack of transparency/engagement with the community (on specific strategies), and the claims that everyone else's struggle's are because they are doing it "all wrong" are what make me feel like functional patterns is trying to maximize profit and not help people. It feels similar to epipen pricing (https://www.vox.com/2016/8/23/12608316/epipen-price-mylan). How do you decide what to charge for your life saving product when the person will pay you everything they have? FP very well might have a revolutionary new workout tool but it appears they are charging as much as possible for it rather than trying to help the most people. Yes, the example is extreme but helps illustrate the direction of my concern (not the extent ofc).
Conversely, I agree with the first principles thinking and love challenging the status quo and do think that FP is onto something that has been missed. For those reasons I really want to try out working out in this way. For the most part I don't think I need the gym or much more guidance. I am very effective in a self directed way and have access to a gym with much of the stuff needed as far as I can tell. I feel like I have to pay for the help/hand-holding way when I want access to the content so I can do it myself. The analogy to the blueprint protocol is the most illustrative. It would be like if Bryan's blueprint diet only sold the (very expensive) "blueprint stack" product (https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/products/the-blueprint-stack) and didn't post the way to effectively get the same benefits by doing it all yourself: https://protocol.bryanjohnson.com/Recipe-Guide-by-Zero.
What I am looking for is a way to pay a lower cost to get access to the content that you think would be most helpful for me to do in a self guided way? I could then do 1/2 more sessions with you as a checkpoint to make sure I am progressing and a final evaluation to fix the things you have identified. Or do I have to buy expensive FP "product" to get that information?
After typing all this out I sent this instead:
Happy to share the 1000 word response I just typed out but I will spare you the details and just ask for what I really want: Is there a way I can pay for the content itself and do all the workouts in a self directed way in a gym I already have access to? Maybe I could pay you to review a few videos to spot check me and then do 1 more session at the end as a final check?