testering wrote:
For those that are seriously invested in it, they are trying to isolate the 'know' and the 'feel' down to certain factors, science requires, by and large, a reductionist approach. In the current funding environment, unfortunately a lot of the results need 'immediate' interpretation - hence each 'new' variable becomes a hit. .
The problem with this 'reductionist' understanding of the parts -- of painting, aerodynamics, and automotive engineering -- it will not make one an artist, or a test pilot, or a racecar driver. Understanding physics does not make you qualified to coach gymnastics or dance. I could go on and on with this.
Making illogical leaps of logic is how we get so-called 'scientists' claiming that there is a 'proper' or 'better' footstrike, etc, when the best runners in the world, year after year, refuse to subscribe to what is proper in the minds of the whitecoats. Of course the whitecoats will tell you that the elites only run fast becasue of an accident of birth, and if only they knew what the scientists know, just imagine how good they would be? Rubbish. When you consider that the athletes and coaches knowledge was EARNED over the decades, collectively through millions of man-hours of sweat and toil, through failure and success that was shared and tested in the fires of competition, a reasonable person would think they know something?
The whitecoats are so far removed from the sport of competitive running that they could be looking through a knothole in the leftfield fence, while the athletes, coaches, and agents are on the field and in the dugouts. They are in the game.
Jumbo Elliot knew more about training for peak performance than the collective wisdom of every exercise physiologist who has ever lived, yet you couldn't find one whitecoat, NOT EVEN ONE, who would ever model a training program after Elliots. That, in itself, is a huge indictment on the 'science' of exercise physiology.
Be wary of voodoo. It's doodoo.