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The bullet hole problem
During World War Two, the Allies wanted to improve the armouring on their planes, so as to reduce the number of fatalities. However, too much armour would drastically limit the range of a plane, so the decision was made to prioritise the most crucial areas. To figure out where these crucial weak points were, they conducted a study, where they analysed the bullet holes on planes returning from combat.
The image below shows their findings:
As you can see, the majority of the bullets hit the centre, the wings, and the tail. The intuitive conclusion made by the military was that more armour in these areas would result in fewer deaths. But a mathematician from Columbia University believed they had got this entirely wrong.
There was an inherent flaw in their study design, because all of their data was coming from the planes that made it back. What they had actually identified, was the places where a plane could afford to get shot, and still survive. The fact that none of their sample had bullet holes around the fuselage, cockpit, or propellers, indicated that those were actually the critical areas that could not afford to be damaged.
This is an example a logical error known as survivorship bias, and it is highly prevalent in fitness.
Listening to the biggest dude in the gym
You probably don't want just okay results - you want the best results. In the quest for attaining those, it is understandable that you would look at what the people with the best results do. The assumption is that the exercises they do, the way they structure their programme, what technique they use etc. must be the best, because they're the best.
However this is just another form of survivorship bias.
For example, it's common on social media to see lots of very jacked guys lifting with bad technique, for too much weight, and crazy volumes. But what we're not seeing, is all the people who potentially took that approach and got hurt, or simply didn't make any progress.
Clarence Kennedy is a great example of this. In this video, he outlines how he trained to squat 300kg, and it is insane stuff that could probably only be achieved by someone with both great genetics and anabolic steroids. Even at that, Clarence still got hurt while taking this aggressive approach. (To Clarence's credit, he directly advises people not to do what he did).
Look to those who beat the odds
The bottom line is that there is always a chance that elite athletes have succeeded in spite of how they trained, not because of it. They have things like genetics, and often times PEDs on their side, which allows you to do some pretty dumb stuff and still get phenomenal results, particularly if you are naturally resistant to injury.
If we really wanted to get a strong idea of what works best, we should actually be looking at what got very weak people to a modest strength level. I'm far more interested in knowing what the guy who struggled with deadlifting the empty bar on day one did to progress, than someone who pulled 200kg on their first day. Whatever those people did, is our version of where the plane needs to be armoured.
As it happens, I've trained a lot of people with very meh genetics (myself included) and read a lot of research.
So I've put together a free beginner programme that uses all the stuff I've found works best. You can get it 100% for free right here.
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