Trust.
It’s a big issue.
It takes ages to earn it and can be completely destroyed in seconds.
The sports and fitness communities have been basing their advice on scientific research for decades.
Why?
Because they trust it.
But in 2017, writing in the publication “The Biologist”, neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell revealed that our understanding of how information is passed through the brain, what information is being passed from level to level and what that means for animal behaviour (including human) is severely limited.
In fact, he even says that when it comes to understanding the genes that have been associated with human traits and disorders, scientists can actually only make the “fuzziest” of predictions.
What does that have to do with injuries or improving movement?
Well, science has been “proving” certain “facts” about human bodies for centuries – and we’ve taken them to be true.
But in reality, our understanding of the living human being is actually quite poor, so while outcomes might be true for some studies of human movement or behaviour, we can’t know for sure EXACTLY how or why that outcome happened.
Let’s take foam rolling (or myofascial release) for example.
Science can only ever ask one question at a time about it.
If the question was “does myofascial release reduce muscle tension?”, then the answer might be “yes” for some populations.
But – and it’s a big one – unless we ask a follow up question like “does the reduced tension increase tension in the surrounding tissue?”, we’ll never understand the true implication of an activity such as myofascial release on the whole human body.
And we’d have to ask a LOT of these follow up questions!
So, what tends to happen is that we take the “yes” result as the truth, and build our sports and fitness practices around it.
The problem is, that these results are only PARTLY true.
Yet, they are exactly what the fitness industry has been built on.
That’s why scientific “evidence” is always changing.
One minute foam rolling is the thing to do, the next it’s not (I’m just choosing foam rolling because it’s a popular practice).
And those who don’t keep up, are still advocating their use long after they’ve been shown to be ineffective (just like ab crunches).
That results in the industry being filled with outdated, ineffective, yet still popular practices.
So, how can we be confident that our sport and fitness practices are actually doing us any good?
We stick to the laws of nature and other indisputable scientific facts that apply to every living being, without exception.
We don’t get bogged down in trying to explain WHY or HOW something happens, we stick to what we DO know and use it to get results – FAST.
So, while everyone else is arguing over the lastest scientific “evidence”, we can just get on with delivering outstanding performance, technique and injury prevention results to our clients.
By the way, this is just one of the topics we cover in the “Injury Prevention Decoded” video course.
Over the course of 7-modules, you’ll discover exactly how these partly true facts have driven the industry to develop the practices it has, why these practices are compromising YOU as a coach, and the 10 facts we can REALLY base our practices on instead…and MUCH more!
If you haven’t grabbed this course yet, you really should – before the standard industry practices start hurting your clients, you, or your business (which they will eventually, if they haven’t already).
You can get instant access here
Oh, and the last LIVE training for this course is being delivered tomorrow at 1.15pm UK – and once it’s done, the price will be going up, so even if you don’t think you’ve got time to do it right now, grab your place today, you’ll still get access whenever you’re ready AND you’ll get any extra future trainings I add as a result of everyone’s feedback!