Every year students approaching the end of their sport and
exercise science degree sit down to a general exam. This is an examination that requires students
to assimilate the information they have learnt over their 3 year degree (or 4
for students in Scotland) and identify its usefulness and applicability within
an applied setting. This seems to be a
task that many students struggle with; describing what they have learnt is
familiar territory however the necessity to put this information to use in a
practical setting is clearly not. The
fact that students struggle with this skill however should not be surprising;
many sport scientists are caught in the vicious cycle of collecting data for
data’s sake with no real avenue for this information to be utilised by the
coach. More worryingly however is that
unless we provide students with the sort of modules that teach these skills,
should the opportunity arise to utilise the data they have collected, will they
know what to do?
In a recent conversation with a friend who works in the
finance world he told me that when researching a new investment opportunity
there really is no limit to the amount of information you can gather in order
to fully understand the sector. The
trick of course (unless 100 hour working weeks are what you aspire to) is to
know when you have enough information to make an informed decision. The same is true in sport (and exercise)
science. Given recent advances in
technology there are now very few physiological markers which cannot be tracked
on an almost daily basis; these include metres covered via GPS, training heart
rate, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, subjective responses, markers
of neuromuscular fatigue and haematological markers. What is worth remembering however is that it
is not the numbers per se that are
important, rather, their ability to enable us to make informed and accurate
decisions about how athletes are responding to the training load and how their
program should look moving forward. This
is the ‘application’ that so many students (and possibly practitioners struggle
with).
So how do we redress this balance? Firstly we need to move away from the current
silo approach that separates the composite disciplines of sport and exercise
science, a move that has already been made by BASES in the accreditation of its
practitioners as sport and exercise scientists.
Students must understand how these disciplines interact and the capacity
they have when utilised in unison to enhance the provision of support services
to athletic groups. Take for example the
physiologist who undertakes an assessment with an athlete; how this information
is reported can have as big an impact as the numbers themselves (probably more
so) which requires an understanding of the client’s psychology and how they
respond to this kind of information.
Thought should also be given to how best to communicate the findings to
the coach. This is in addition to
considering aspects such as accuracy, real change and equipment
reliability. Conversely the psychologist
must understand that no amount of mental skills training will enhance
performance if the requisite physical qualities have not been developed to a
sufficient standard. Perhaps asking
students to identify practical uses for the information presented to them would
help, in addition to developing skills in producing coach and athlete focused
synopsis’ for recent and relevant research articles.
Clearly this is a complicated skill set and one which has to
be developed over time through exposure to different situations, sports and
client groups coupled with a commitment to reflective practise. It is also something that practitioners will
learn to a large extent ‘on the job’, a positive consequence of the
proliferation of internships within the industry over recent years. To accelerate this learning curve however
University courses should develop modules that encourage students to identify
the practical implications of any data they collect and how best the key
messages might be delivered in d within different scenarios. This is likely to be a difficult challenge
however if the UK are to continue to excel on the world’ sporting stages it is
paramount that each new generation of practitioners learn to work as ‘applied
practitioners’ as early as possible in their careers.
