New directions

I’m still surprised that people still come to this site and to all my readers: It’s incredibly flattering. I still get the occasional e-mail from a reader and every time, whether positive or not-so-positive, it’s still amazing.

You may wonder why I haven’t been writing. Apart from the rigors of residency, I haven’t been writing because I’ve been trying to decide on the direction of the blog. I’ve gained a bit of a reputation as the nay-sayer blogger: Nothing works; it’s all a hoax and they’re all out to get you and your dollar and your time. And while I don’t have an issue with being that person (I believe that growth and forward movement comes from debate, and a discussion in which everyone agrees is a just a party), there comes a point when one has to re-evaluate the contribution one is making to the overall community. The role I want to take is not one in which proponents of new training methods/supplements/rehab techniques are driven away, but rather one in which my commentary sheds light on decision making.

In many ways, the challenges that I’ve faced with this blog are no different than the challenges I face with the same issues in surgery. And surgeons are far more bullish than any trainer or coach that I’ve met. But there is a paradigm shift occurring, and I’ll keep pushing to be a part of that. The whole idea of “evidence based practice” is still quite new. The concept wasn’t really around until the early 1980’s. And for a field of study, that’s pretty young. So while those of us who are proponents of it are big fans of it, we are still struggling in terms of how to really integrate it in a practical, palpable way that makes sense to those people who would practice it, if only it didn’t seem so pedantic and irrelevant.

That being said, there have been some steps forward in the past few years, and even within the “evidence-based” field, the way we look at how this approach can be applied is changing dramatically. So, in the coming entries, I’ll be talking more about what the whole concept means and how it applies to fitness professionals, their clients in general, and to you, the fitness consumer.

Don’t worry, there will still be research reviews, but hopefully this new direction will bring a better life to this flailing blog.