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Re: [smellyhippie] Question about weighted pullups:
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aerili
Jan 30, 2008, 11:58 PM
Views: 9291
Registered: Jan 13, 2006
Posts: 1166
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smellyhippie wrote: Thanks for the thoughts. Sorry that you think that the analogy is silly. I feel a little attacked by the tone of your email. I'm confused , though, because I think we're saying the same thing. Both of us seem to be saying that strength is only one factor that influences climbing performance, are we not? Thus we agree that it is correlational and not causal?
Sorry, I wasn't trying to attack you; but you said you thrive on this stuff, right?! I'm giving you life, man! 
Anyway, I think other people have explained why your illustration doesn't make any sense here.
In reply to: I also agree that PhD's can earn more than coaches, but this is not always the case. I only said that coaches might make more than the highly lettered, which is true. That's pretty much all I have to say about that.
I see what you're thinking. You don't realize there's a difference between the TEAM/INDIVIDUAL COACH and the STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING COACH. I am not the former; they get paid the big bucks in certain arenas. However, they do not condition their athletes, do not possess degrees in exercise science nor certs to do anything special wrt that. They just train their athlete(s) in the sport skills and mental strategies required. Strength and conditioning coaches, OTOH, do not teach athletes actual sport skills, game strategies, or whatever. They condition the athlete as best as possible for the highest level performance possible. That's why we don't and can't be a "great" athlete in every discipline--it ain't possible when you are conditioning many kinds of athletes. And it's not necessary to be/have been elite (or even have trained at all) in a sport in order to understand how to condition someone properly for it.
In reply to: You're point about the PhDs being able to interpret research and communicate it to non-academics is well taken. Given, though, that for every PhD there is an equal and opposite PhD, and given that the quality of research varies tremendously, how do you evaluate whether or not the implications for practice are sound?
Most conferences (run by the leading orgs in the biz) of course look to recruit people who are considered to be the cream of the crop in terms of what they know, what they've done, how they approach issues, and/or what they've accomplished in real world applications, esp. over the long term. Are you saying that my certifying organization has little clue how to figure out what is sound and what isn't when proposals come rolling in for the next conference? Aren't these issues faced by every single scientific discipline? It's peer review.
In reply to: It would be nice to think that each speaker at your upcoming conference truly represents a uncontroversial body of knowledge, but it's probably not entirely true. I'm sure there are differences of opinion among conference presenters on various topics. Also, I noticed some of them are presenting summaries of topics, they'll probably present some different viewpoints within each topic.
No speaker at any conference of any kind that is scientifically based represents an uncontroversial body of knowledge, of course.
In reply to: The crux of the issue is how do you, Aerili, assess the quality of the research for incorporating into your practice? How do you determine what applies to rock climbing and what doesn't?
Part of it is having a certain threshold of experience and up-to-date education--it helps one evaluate what seminars to take in the first place. But a lot of it is the education: if you don't understand exercise physiology very well and you don't understand biomechanics very well and you don't know accepted protocols for structuring conditioning programs properly, then yeah, it's gonna by way harder to figure out how the Physiology of Fatigue lab presentation or the Anaerobic Threshold Testing and Training sem will apply to climbing, not to mention which kind of climbing and under what conditions.
Many of the presenters I see are people I've seen before--they are researchers or practicing professionals working with athletes on a daily basis and many of them are all continually interacting, contributing to the same journals as editors, advisors, letter writers, article writers, etc. They go overseas and collaborate with people who come from different backgrounds. It's an interactive growth with constant checks and balances. Quacks or those with unsound practices won't last long on the circuit because both the organizing professionals and the audience is educated enough to recognize such and they won't be able to get a gig again (at least in respected venues that carry a mark of quality with the name).
In all the years I've attended lots of different CEC stuff, there's only two presentations in my memory I've found to be either stupid to some degree or complete bunk.
In reply to: A third issue is, how do you evaluate yourself as a coach? Is it client success or satisfaction? Are those appropriate measures for evaluation?
Most athletes of collegiate, minor/major league or pro level have at least 2 coaches (if not more) to measure various components of skill, agility and performance and they do so--at various times to measure actual changes. Part of it also is the motivational factor--if you don't motivate, you won't get much. And part of it is getting an intrinsically motivated individual to train. A lot of athletes are actually quite lazy if you don't give them a lot of structure, or they don't want to lift the weight you tell them to use, they want to lift what some other, bigger dude is moving. So, you have to find ways to get around that to get the end results.
Success is complex and does involve social psychological factors that aren't always in our control. Environment and access to the right training tools makes a big difference too (something a coach or trainer may not be able to control either). But primarily I see hard measurements of performance being the benchmarks, all other things equal. Because it's not true that "just any" training or methods will produce equally good results.
(This post was edited by aerili on Jan 31, 2008, 12:04 AM)
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Post edited by aerili
() on Jan 31, 2008, 12:04 AM
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