The Future of Evidence-Based Fitness

For the last 3 years, Evidence-Based Fitness has languished in blog posts for a number of reasons, but the most important one is this: I really don’t feel like I have anything unique to say that I haven’t already said. I started Evidence-Based Fitness as a countermovement to fishy scams selling things with no justification for their claims. But as time as marched on, the market has gotten savvier, and scammers are just marketing as if they do have scientific evidence for their claims. The use of the term “evidence” has soared as a substitute for “legitimate”, when actually, nothing has actually changed. Just like certain branding on foods have health auras, branding a product or service as “evidence-based” has a “validity aura”.

I actually felt like I was just making things worse. The term “evidence” has been thoroughly corrupted to the point of having no meaning at all, and I felt blogging under its umbrella just meant that there would be more opportunity for scammers claiming to be “evidence-based” to enjoy the validity aura. Things in my life got busy (not in a good way), and so I just put it aside and let it slide.

I don’t think the current format of Evidence-Based Fitness works. I think that while most of my old posts are pretty evergreen in content, I’m not sure that anyone understands anything that I write; that I’m just as guilty of blinding people with science as the scammer that is doing the same thing, even if I have the best of intentions and am trying to counter the scamming.

So what does this mean for Evidence-Based Fitness?

When I started the blog, it was really mostly for me: A way for me to express myself during a time when I didn’t have much outlet for expression. I wrote about things I thought were interesting. I wrote about things I thought people would think were interesting. And while every so often, I hear from someone out in the Ether that they really like my blog, it still feels like I’m up in the Ivory Tower and that my readers are not with me; that if Evidence-Based Fitness just disappeared, that it would not have left much of an impression. That’s not to say that I’m writing for the likes, but nothing changes if what I’m writing isn’t relevant to the people who read it.

When I see a patient, I don’t guess what their needs are. I ask them. I want both Evidence-Based Fitness and Critical Mass to be vehicles for change. Critical Mass is about changing people’s relationship to health science. Evidence-Based Fitness about the stories that lie beneath the lines of health studies and the culture of research.

In the coming weeks, you will see new content coming that is hopefully more structured than before. But I will be counting on you, my readers, to give me the direction that you want to go. What stories do you want hear, and how do you want to hear about them? What do you want from Evidence-Based Fitness? What brought you here in the first place, and did you find it?

Email me. I’m at evidencebasedfitness@gmail.com