The Power

If you follow my Blip, you'll know by now that I like B&W and abstract images.

I was lucky enough to be left alone with a bit of Bike Porn today... an item that many females I know are slightly jealous of as it sits in between the thighs of Sir Chris Hoy. It's one of his UKSI track bikes...circa £25000 worth!

More images on my Flickr.

I really enjoyed today, a culmination of quite a bit of hard work and perseverance. I was delivering a workshop for BASES on Power: Understanding Cycling Performance. As a first time course, it's always difficult to judge what level the audience is at but I think I managed that. There was one minor disaster as a laptop died just before our practical session. Shit happens, so I just decided to deliver the next module and then do the practical after lunch. Shit rarely happens twice in a row but I was interrupted by marketing to tell me that the BBC was now filming and I couldn't get access to the test area! The only negative feedback of the day was that it could have done with a practical activity! Blahhhh!

Hopefully, I achieved a very personal aim today....in fact almost a raison d' etre: to break down barriers between academic research, applied practice and coaching practice. Reasons for these barriers include:

Research Excellence Framework- This is like the league tables of the academic world! Work published in high impact journals is worth most points....but quantity of publication in lower impact journals is worth points too!

It's like in schools.....quality and quantity of GCSE and A' level results are the aim.....rather than providing a balanced and worthwhile education. Result is that the majority of research has no real-world impact whatsoever. One good thing that Michael Gove has done for 2013 is to award 20% of REF points based on impact... so we may see a change in the long-term.

Editorial bias and requirement for novel/significant finding- Many academics will tell you of perfectly good papers being rejected with the suggestion that editors are bias i.e. findings may not match the editor's way of thinking or contradict their own work. Research which is not novel or non-significant findings is rarely published even though data could contribute to meta-analysis or refute previously significant findings. It's like 'perception of self' i.e. that our perception of who we are is based on filtered memories of our own experiences..... i.e. a bias view of who we are and the world around us.
Access to Knowledge Knowledge is worthless if it cannot be disseminated to those who could apply it. As a coach working outwith an academic institition, I just cant get access to much quality research. It costs circa $35 per paper....more than a good book, but I can only tell if it's useful once I've paid for it.... I have no budget for such papers anyway so I can't get hold of up-to-date knowledge!!!

Mindset- I believe that sports scientists have quite a different mind-set to coaches so that they don't value each other as much as they could. The scientists try to 'sell a product' which the coaches either don't understand or want. In turn, the coaches aren't so good at explicitly telling the scientists what product they actually want....so no one benefits and the vicious circle continues.

Hopefully today, I explained the types of services coaches value and how to deliver them. If I've influenced even 1 scientist in their practice, I'll be happy.