Fads & Fallacies versus Facts

How and why
do some of these crazy ideas that take on a life of their own get started?
There is so much pseudo science and instant information without anything to
substantiate it once you must look past the headlines and look at the research
design or the results. Once again I quote Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet fame “Just the
facts”.  Why can’t we just look at the facts? Throw out the marketing and
the hype, look at results. Look at performance over years. Before anointing
someone an expert look at their body of work. Just because you hitch your wagon
to a star or luck into working with a championship team does not make you an
expert. I know I was there once, an athlete I coached won the California State
meet in the Shot Put my first year coaching. In retrospect that probably set me
back two years as a coach. I thought I knew much more than I did. I am always
interested in learning and finding better ways to do what I do, but I learned
many years ago that bouncing from idea to idea, fad-to-fad did not get the job
done. I refuse to do something just because it is what everyone else is doing
or it is the "hottest" new idea. Look for substance – Is there any
there beyond the hype and marketing? Step out, be an independent and critical
thinker. Try it yourself before you ever try it on an athlete, that is what the
great pioneers in distance training Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman did. They
tested the ideas on themselves. I will leave with this quote from
that famous coach, TS Elliot who said: “We shall not cease from exploration and the
end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place
for the first time.“