Understanding 'impact' in sport and exercise.

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.