Strength in Numbers #2
Do you want to set yourself apart? Be part of the 10% of coaches that read peer-reviewed research articles.
Unfortunately, in a world where social media posts are most accessible, very few coaches spend time digging into facts. For that reason, many hold strong beliefs in the information not scientifically vetted or considered “pseudoscience.”
Research articles do not have the same story-telling features as social media posts and are more difficult to digest. Yet, with research, you can rest assured that experts have vetted the article to ensure that the study methods, results, and conclusions are accurate and qualified.
Reading research is the best way to identify new ways of making gains with your athletes and improving existing programs. If you are still doing the same things as 10 years ago, the chances are that you are probably not keeping up with current research.
There are two important research avenues to consider in making your scientific breakthroughs:
- Evidence-Based Practice
- Practice-Based Evidence
Create Your Own Performance Lab
Evidence-Based Practice and Practice-Based Evidence work together to help you create the highest level training programs.
First, when you think you have a novel idea that can help throwing athletes perform at a higher level, scour the literature. The current literature available is Evidence-Based Practice. This data is external to your programming and tested to examine effects.
Next, implement your expertise by trying something new that’s not been studied before. Practice-Based Evidence uses internal data points that you have uncovered in your programming. These data are new and not easily tied to published work.
When you combine both external and internal evidence, you get to a level of validated sports science. You have intersected what you are already doing with what is shown to work in research. At this point, you have a high-quality addition to your programming methods and can explain to your athletes why you are asking them to do something new in their training.
We want to support you in your growth as a performance specialist. In this featured edition of ArmCareIQ, we walk you through how to search for high-quality research on Google Scholar, the world’s most popular and most extensive electronic journal library. We also give you insights into how to evaluate research abstracts before integrating them into your training methods or testing approaches with your athletes.
We are always excited by those in the field who dare to be scientifically creative and expand their knowledge on gaining strength, improving movement consistency, and increasing velocity. ArmCare.com gives you data to evaluate if your novel training concepts improve overall function and strength imbalances.
Become a coach-scientist and advance your athletes’ abilities. If you have an idea that you want to test out to further your theories and approaches to make gains from tweaks in training, skill development, preventative training, sports psychology, and more, reach out to us at support@armcare.com.
