Don’t Blame the Science, It’s not that Simple!

Paul Hayward published an interesting article on the application of science in sport. Paul made reference to a report “Bath University’s Department of Health, via its journal, Sport Education & Society. The report examines professional rugby clubs and “the extent to which players become risk averse in order to follow strict coaching instructions could threaten to fundamentally undermine aspects of the game”. The article via the Telegraph suggests sport science may be the cause of poor performances and says “across sport a change is bound to come: a counter-movement, away from the “data-driven” methods Bath University have identified and back towards freedom of thought, spontaneity and a more human outlook, with all its flaws.”

Personally I think the article is a great piece of journalism in the sense that Paul has taken a snapshot of the world of sport science and created curiosity around a topic that creates discussion and debate. But is it as simple as to blame the science for poor performance in sport or is there more to it?

The definition of science by Oxford Dictionaries “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment:” If you close your eyes what image comes into your head? Do you see white lab coats, clip boards, equations? Well you couldn’t be further from the reality of sport science. For all the lab based testing and experiments there is much more applied work being undertaken to understand the training and competition environments.

Sport Science as with any science is evidence based and therefore requires practitioners to observe, collect evidence then test and experiment to prove theories. The objective is to identify a change that can improve or influence an outcome. And the one thing that underpins good science is it should be subject to challenge which is all that Paul has done in his article.

Science has changed the world of sport beyond recognition, and for me overwhelmingly for the better. The problem we have with sport science in general is we like it when it is linked to gold medals at the Olympics, league titles, world records etc., and we start to get all antsy about it when things just aren’t going our way. One of the issues is success breeds complacency, we become too trusting of things that contributed to previous successes and overload the process with more of the same in anticipation it will create further success. Well that’s science for you, adding more of the good stuff, will not necessarily result in a further improvement.

More of the so called ‘good stuff’ may end up being too much of one or several ingredient/s that results in ‘paralysis by analysis’. As with many business environments sport science is becoming awash with untold volumes of data. The art is in the trickle and not the waterfall of informative reporting to those that it is valuable to. The main concern for me is not in the sport science, but if every sport scientist, coach, medic etc. had 10 or so KPI’s then I would challenge the idea that are all these really key. If they assess the athlete against so many KPIs’ the problem is not necessarily in the science but in fact they have too many KPI’s and/or too much data to focus the team on the important mutually beneficial KPI’s that have a real impact on results. Athletes focusing on too many KPI’s/data may risk him/her picking on ones that influence their personal decisions and actions and not on those that are mutual beneficial for the team.

To conclude I would say blaming the science is too simplistic and does not give credit or recognition to the opposition whom in most cases will be applying this sport science that as suggested is the root cause of some teams that perform poorly. Apart from totally bad practice in science which I doubt would be the case at elite level of sport the need to evaluate the process when results are not going our way is the important factor. Building a system that not only observe athlete behaviour and performance but checks that our interventions in coaching and science are meeting the objectives and if the process has become overloaded, inefficient, is having a negative influence or impact with athletes or has in some way become flawed is the starting point. And finally, pushing the science to one side, heaven forbid, we may also have to consider that maybe that our athletes are just not good enough to win.

REFERENCES:

Oxford Dictionaries. (2014). Science. Available: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/science. Last accessed 20/11/2014.

Paul Hayward. (2014). England need to escape analysis and structures and loosen up – sports science is strangling the life out of players. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/international/england/11238149/England-need-to-escape-analysis-and-structures-and-loosen-up-sports-science-is-strangling-the-life-out-of-players.html. Last accessed 20/11/2014.