On a related note, there are a lot of completely insane conspiracy theories relating to COVID. I saw some stuff on Twitter, that lady from the Plandemic movie saying that the vaccine will kill at least 50 million Americans - how does she figure that when we don’t even know which vaccine will be used. Some other guy says the virus is caused by the nanobots contained in flu shots. I don’t understand how anyone can take this seriously.
“Creative interpretation” is a bigger problem for me than not correlating to real life given the field we’re talking about. Barbalho’s lab has been shady for a long time.
My point is that exercise physiology has a field has some unique challenges it needs to address and order for the studies to be directly applicable to top end coaches. This is a function of the field itself rather than the researchers you named with the notable exception of the guy making up data.
I would be careful calling them phony. Those are serious terms that I don’t use lightly when it comes to science. With the exception of that one lab, none of the others would be considered phony and I don’t think you should consider them that way. There is always a big gap between research and what actually makes sense for a coach at the top. This is one of the reasons why there are conflicting opinions in the field.
It is not easy to do phony research and you will get caught. There are some structural issues with peer review and the way we work, but I consider those a longer conversation not for this thread. If you’re going to publish in top tier journals and you are not going to be able to get away with a lot. There are always questionable design choices and method choices, which is why real scientists tend to read the methods more than the abstracts haha. This is one of those things that a lot of people in the general population have trouble grasping, and it’s not entirely their fault. Honestly though, a research study even well designed and scrupulously executed is likely to be wrong in the short term. This is not how science is usually reported though which leads to a disconnect.
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I suppose as a scientist it wouldn’t be proper to level those sorts of allegation, so I see your point. But how else would you consider a study using questionable methods to begin with, then finding a conclusion that the data doesn’t actually support?
Seriously flawed and junk lol. Questionable methods for a coach’s desired outcome (practical) are different than questionable methods for a narrow research outcome. Many times researchers are asking basic questions that don’t really link to practical coaching. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not.
As a field exercise physiology is weak IMO. Structural issues with it (lack of funding for harder/longer/more involved studies, trouble finding adequate volunteers, variable quality of said volunteers, etc.) are not going away very soon sadly. As I see it there are two primary problems with it-- 1) the “big grant money” always goes to disease research not elite sports research like we might be interested in 2) most researchers suck ASS at designing programs because they are weak, non lifting newbs. Obviously Israetel etc are definite exceptions, but they also still have the structural issues of the field to deal with.
Incidentally, the lack of money is one reason most research is private (like, secret private) to individual teams (Yankees, Jags, whatever). They collect mounds of performance data and employ a staff of data divers and coaches to pour through it. They’re not going to publish it because that’s their competitive advantage. You’ll occasionally see snippets at a conference presentation or something, but otherwise, it’s all confidential. I’ve been privy to some team data from Texas Longhorns, Buckeyes, and NFL teams, and it’s awesome. Unfortunately not publishable for the coaches.
This is getting to be a longer derail than I’d like, but that’s how I see it. This is a point in time where is you’re an elite strength coach you or someone on your staff are expected to be part scientist, and the best organizations hire scientists specifically for the data mining. I’m also a coach remember, so I can sympathize with your frustrations. Apologies everyone else.
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What do you coach?
Strength and conditioning :). Focus on strength sports (Oly lifting, PL, strongman, bodybuilding) and combat sports–MMA, wrestling. American football as well obviously. I’ve coached people in close to a dozen different ones though, including road cycling, rowing, volleyball, baseball.
EDIT–I would honestly say in many cases the private team data is more robust than the research literature… Because they have a captive audience of hundreds of athletes that even the best researchers would kill for. Grant money simply won’t cover that, and most elite coaches won’t let a random researcher mess with their team athletes.
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I bet there was more research in the Communist countries, trying to get an edge on sticking it to Uncle Sam.
Plus many guinea pigs for testing theories.
Not sorry for derail, lm sick of covid.
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I can’t argue with that! Lol. Me too.
100% correct about communist countries. Nice thing about having 10s of thousands of captive - er, I mean volunteer - athletes, and having a farm system that starts at 5-6 years old.
I’m not a big “secret society training methods” person, but it’s 100% true that they discovered things in the 60s and 70s that we are just now getting back around to in the West (just now meaning 20 years or so). They had discovered velocity based training zones in the 60s.
Also they saw Olympics/sports as a way to show the innate superiority of the communist system over Uncle Sam, so they had a nationalist interest. Nothing like that to find massive amounts of money to spend on things
First of all, “massive amounts of money” is debatable. Even top athletes behind the Iron Curtain lived and trained in much worse conditions that collegiate athletes in the US, for example. And they did all that with absolutely shitty nutrition.
What they did have was discipline, advanced training methods, selection from a very young age and steroids.
All of those, in addition to essentially being told, “If you don’t perform and win, expect to be executed upon your return.”
You speak as if getting 11 square meters of apartment space instead of 9, and running water on most days is nothing.
Your work record will need to be examined in greater detail, comrade.
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Massive amounts of money was meant to be relative rather than absolute, and also meant for the programs themselves (i.e. selection, system, etc) not the athletes. I’m definitely aware even the top athletes lived below what anyone in the west would consider standard. But, it was good compared to those around them.
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Although I need to point out plenty of US athletes had access to steroids at the same time, before they were illegal.
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HeYyyyyyyYyyyyy
LeAvE aUsTrAlIa OuT oF tHiS!!!
There’s legitimacy behind the lockdown, when adjusting for populace, areas regarded as being “metropolitan Melbourne” aren’t doing too well. Within certain districts you could take 1000 people at random and statistically more than a few will have covid-19.
We initially had it all under control, unfortunately instead of using the ADF to conduct survalliance over those in hotel mandated quarantine (overseas arrivals) we catered towards using untrained private security guards. As a result, it turns out a bunch of the guards fucked the guests. Some of these guests had tested positive for covid-19, The rest is history…
Regional Victoria is now in stage 3 lockdown. Metropolitan Melbourne is stage 4, the rest of Australia has more/less opened up again aside from the international travel ban (expires September 17, 2020 although I’d put my money on further extension til early 2021).
I think they’re taking it too far with the international travel ban. You can easily let people go overseas, mandate quarantine within hotels upon arrival back to Aus.
Everyone was given around 12-24 hours to get their shit together. Furthermore Melbourne was already under stage 3 lockdown, meaning you weren’t visiting friends or going to bars to begin with (unless you wanted like… What? A 12,000$ fine). If you aren’t in Victoria this lockdown didn’t effect you and only those residing within metropolitan Melbourne are under full scale lockdown.
The city of Ottawa has roughly the same number of deaths as all of Australia, and this is considered to be a place where the situation didn’t get too severe. It’s a major overreaction. The main thing is to keep it from getting into nursing homes, in Canada over 80% of deaths were in nursing homes and the numbers are similar in Europe and the US. The WHO now says the death rate is 0.6%, and that includes all elderly and seriously ill people as well. Remove them from the equation and it will be a fraction of that.
Well Joe Biden said 120 million have already died from the disease, so we need that vaccine BAD!
He should sign up to be a human guinea pig, set an example for the rest of us.
IF this is true and is from credible sources…hyperbole and/or false information only increases the “Fake” Pandemic rhetoric.
I retort:
Is it true he said it or that there are 120 million dead from covid??
Cough cough East Germany cough cough
People in the West like to hero-worship the likes of Verkhoshansky and Sheiko but it was pretty straightforward - the only competitive advantages were training and selection, so naturally trainers who had a large sample of students to experiment on through the years built the best training systems.
If you also consider chess as sport, literally all children from the age of six onwards were inolved in a regular sports activity - that’s a large pool to select from.
And don’t forget that especially during those first decades post WW2 many of the Soviet athletes winning gold medals were either drunk or severely hungover.