To me, strength and conditioning, sport science and the fitness industry used to be divided into two camps: practitioners and scientists. The scientist often accused of not understanding how coaching works in the "real world" and the coaches working solely on "feel". However, there seems to have been the development of "evidence-based coaching". Now don’t get me wrong I am all for this, but what does it actually mean? Is it just another trigger word that fits the latest fad, such as "functional", or is it someone who only coaches using methods published in a scientific journal? Personally, I believe an evidence-based practitioner should bridge the gap between art and science and utilise the best of both worlds.
The problem with the Science
Science is great, it can tell us the relationship between two variables, it can tell us the certainty of an outcome from a specific stimulus, and it can help distinguish cause and correlation. In order to do this, it needs to test things in very specific situations. It needs to control and understand as many of the variables as possible to provide an answer as to what is going on. As a result, we get recommendations on training from studies that focus on very particular questions with very particular participants and very specific environments.
As practitioners we have to consider whether the training method or principle we are thinking of using with our athletes is similar to that used in any given study. If we work within a team, we also need to consider how much inter-player variation there may be, how other training may play a role, and multiple other factors. You can see why it isn’t as simple as "X study said this, so it will 100% be true with my athletes".
The Problem with art
Art can be random, it can be opinion, it can be interpretation. You can splash 20 different colours on a canvas and get a good result and then do (what you think) is the same and get a terrible one! Can you ever really be sure as to why a certain outcome occurred? Consider a guitarist jamming and they happen to play something extraordinary, chances are they will never recreate it exactly. So, while the random, expressive nature of art can produce some master pieces, it can also create so disastrous ones.
This applies in coaching too, if you are constantly changing and adapting and working off "feel", you may never be exactly sure why something happened. When you go to recreate it, you may get a different result and must "feel" your way around everything again. This is particularly true when you have a group(s) of athletes. Do you have time to feel your way around every session, do know what has really worked?
Bridging the Gap between Art and Science
In my opinion, a true evidence-based practitioner sits somewhere in the middle of art and science. They must be able to extrapolate information from research and put it in place in the "real world". Once they have a framework of general rules and principles to work from, they can then lean on their intuition and artistic side to add any details and nuances.
Additionally, I feel they should be able to conduct analysis of their own programming and systems to continually improve their practice. A recent post on Sportsmith highlighted the need for coaches to understand and be able to interpret data, which I completely agree with. For those working in an environment where there are multiple other training and life stressors for an athlete, it is important to make sure we provide optimal training solutions which cause minimal fatigue.
The ability to read and understand your athletes must go hand in hand with the ability to understand the research and determine what works within your programme.
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