What is Science?

Many of us talk about and prescribe training in scientific sounding ways. We want to hear about the latest nutritional strategy, aerodynamic gains or the latest footwear which will help enhance performance, preferably backed up by the latest scientific evidence. But what does science mean to you and how important is it to your coaching? As a coach and chartered scientist, these are questions I have thought about and wrestled with for years. My conclusions have not only made me a better coach, they’ve helped me see the world in a different light too. In this article, I’ll take you on a whistle stop tour of science. Admittedly, history lessons are not typical given in coaching, but bear with me. If I am successful in my goal, hopefully I will shift the way you think about science a little.

We are living in a post-truth era, where a right to an opinion is seen by many as more important than the truth of the matter. This is not a new phenomenon. Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, warned us that we should not accept what others tell us on face value, especially from those in positions of authority. Rather, he advocated that we seek out evidence, engage in rigorous reasoning and challenge assumptions through observation. After a large ‘intellectual’ historical gap during the Dark Ages, such classical teachings came back into ‘fashion’ in the Western world during the Renaissance Period (from the 15th to 18th Century). People like Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton made great advances in our understanding of the nature and the physical world. In fact, many Newtonian principles still underpin the mathematical models used in software such as Best Bike Split today. However, in these pre-science days, most great thinkers were not constrained by yet to be invented scientific disciplines. Rather, they were natural philosophers who constructed new knowledge about the natural world and the universe through deep intellectual reasoning. Whilst the Latin word ‘scientia’ was recognised as meaning knowledge, it was not until 1833 that a British philosopher, William Whewell, coined the phrase ‘scientist’. This word was used to describe those who constructed knowledge about the natural world, in which Whewell wanted to make the distinction between wider philosophical principles and art. Whilst science remains a branch of philosophy, few scientists today think about it as such. But what exactly science? One definition comes from The Science Council in the UK:

I now want you to do a little task. I want you to think about science in relation to your own coaching practice. Do you believe that your coaching practices are science driven? What is scientific about the way you coach? What kind of scientific material do you draw upon in your coaching? I cannot answer these questions for you, but I do want you to reflect on your answers at the end of the article.

Many of the ways we learn to coach are not systematic. Rather, most coaches learn through a craft process of ‘doing’. We construct our knowledge through trial-and-error, by watching and listening to others. As a result, most of our knowledge is tacit. That means that we may have difficulty explaining what we do and why. Additionally, our brains are full of cognitive biases, flawed patterns of thinking which influence how we make decisions. For example, we often go seeking information to support our pre-existing beliefs and that make us feel good about ourselves. This means that many of our coaching practices are built on subjection and opinion rather than on objective evidence. The Science Council definition suggests that science provides us with more rigorous and objective methods of constructing fact-based knowledge that has primacy over opinions. This is because scientifically based knowledge is constructed through objective and systematic measurements and data. It often involves experimentation, critical analyses and scrutiny from expert peers. But does this make scientific approaches better? The answer to this question is ‘it depends’ on:

     - The quality of the scientific evidence and

The fact is that whilst academically rigorous methods may have been used to produce evidence in the sport sciences, these methods tend not to hold up when we try to apply findings in the ‘real world’. Most scientific disciplines follow reductionist approaches in which complex phenomena are divided into smaller chunks, being labelling in terms of discipline and sub-discipline. These approaches require carefully controlled environments in which researchers seek to prove or disprove a hypothesis (a proposed explanation in the absence of insufficient evidence) using some form of observation or experimentation. However, these types of studies often have poor ecological validity. This means that it is difficulty to generalize study findings to our coaching practice. To overcome such limitations, it is important for scientists to test findings in real sporting settings by conducting implementation studies. These studies are difficult to conduct and often produce ‘messy’ results, which whilst reflective of the real world, are difficult to publish. This means that such studies are rarely conducted and that many scientific beliefs have limited real-world evidence to support them.

Scientific evidence and theories which have not been tested in ecologically valid ways regularly find their way into coaching courses and training articles. Such evidence is typically presented in separate building blocks i.e. physiology, nutrition, injury prevention, psychology and periodization. As coaches, we are expected to use these building blocks to influence our coaching decisions and to build stable training plans. However, coaching is conducted in a complex and messy world, not carefully controlled environments. The scientific evidence we are presented with usually fails to account for the daily challenges we face as coaches. Thus, it is difficult to apply in real-world settings. When this is the case, I argue that it represents very poor quality scientific evidence.

Knowing scientific sounding stuff and using scientific terminology is very different to being able to apply science effectively. In endurance coaching, many of us use physiologically based training load models to design annual plans and workouts. Some coaches use scientific sounding phrases like ‘VO2max or lactate threshold’ to describe the purpose of workouts too. Coaching using such methods is not a new phenomenon. Rather, in around 220AD, a Greek philosophy teacher called Philostratus wrote a text called Gymnasticus about training methods for the Olympic Games. Philostratus was highly critical of the coaches in his day, arguing that the common four-day ‘tedrad’ method of periodization used by athletes was too rigid to account for the complexity of human performance. I am with Philostratus on that one insofar as I believe that too many coaches present ‘illusions of validity’ by using scientific words to describe coaching methods that are too simply to work well in a real-world setting. Rather, my coaching is informed by Behaviour Change Science which accounts for the fact that to help our clients go faster, we need to change their behaviours. My practices in doing so have more in common with the intellectual reasoning processes used by the ancient Greeks and the natural philosophers than of a modern sport scientist.

I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think (Socrates)

     - Earlier in the article, I asked you to consider three questions:

     - Do you believe that your coaching practices are science driven?

     - What is scientific about the way you coach?

     - What kind of scientific material do you draw upon in your coaching?

Remember, Socrates advocated seeking out evidence, engaging in rigorous reasoning and challenging assumptions through observation. He was also a voracious debater who challenged the primacy of knowledge coming from those in positions of power and influence. I suspect that Socrates would see the benefits of modern science, which gives us some of the methods to measure things, to challenge to our pre-existing beliefs and to add objectivity to our coach decision-making processes. We should not dismiss our own beliefs that have been built through experience in our coaching or though seeing through our own eyes either as being less objective than science. But we must always keep an open mind, considering alternative approaches and different points of view too. Being able to do so means using intellectual reasoning, sometimes supported by scientifically driven methods. It also means not accepting scientific evidence at face value. Rather we must know how and why the science works in the real-world and have evidence to support our beliefs.

Andy Kirkland Ph.D. CSci, Lecturer in Sport Coaching & triathlon coach

And edited version of this article was originally published on the TrainingPeaks website in October 2020.