Don't Believe Everything You Read

We have all read Facestalk updates and blogs (much like this one) that sometimes make some pretty bold claims. It’s pretty frequent for personal trainers to make statements of position standpoints without backing it up with any real evidence. You would have seen this yourself ‘Eat food X to make yourself thin like Paris’ ‘Only train Biceps on Tuesday because physiologically this is the greatest time to do it’ and so on.

Do you trust a Tarot reader?

To make a valid statement you must provide some degree of evidence to support your claims, this is done simply by referencing where the idea came from. For example; Muscle spindles are surrounded by a myelin sheath (Marib & Hoehm, 2010). This in the land of the internet should be linked to the source data, or at the bottom of the document state the source title, authors, publishers and page numbers.

This alone however, will not secure validity in the author’s statement. It is up to the reader them self to investigate the said sources; so let’s look at some options:

 

Blogs, Facebook and website sites (such as this one) often have little to no credibility; they can be written and published by anyone at anytime with no scrutiny what so ever and there may be undeclared financial interests behind their writings (Body Building dot com anyone?)

However, if the authors of the site have referenced their said statements there may be some merit in what they say (such as 8 weeks out).

 

Mags should declare financial interest

Magazines; This is a hotly debated topic, as with websites mags pretty much always have some form of financial interest. For example Muscle & Fiction magazine rely on advertisement from supplement companies to finance their publications. Do you think they would ever write an article questioning the effectiveness of sport supplements?   

 

Books; remember that old saying ‘don’t believe everything you read’ it’s pretty much true here. Typically a book will not be published if the publishing company question its validity and merits (self published books are pretty much always bullshit!). So for the most part you are relatively safe. However, in the world of sport and exercise science the information can become outdated and superseded quite quickly. So check the date of publishing!

 

Case Studies; A case study typically contains a report of action upon a single person. For example; I personally did four weeks of sled sprints at a ratio of 1:2 and found my fat mass has visually decreased. This is fine and does have some merits. However a large amount has been left uncontrolled such as what my nutrition was like during this period and what other training did I partake? Furthermore; this concept may have worked for me, but if its trialled on 100 people what percentage will report similar results?

 

Mythbusters? Ah who cares its Kari Byron!

Scientific Peer Reviewed Journals: For something to be labelled a science it needs to be controlled, observable and repeatable (Red plus Green equals Yellow). For a journal to be published it must first be critiqued by what is known as ‘peer review’ this means other experts in the field will analyse the data and give it the all clear for publishing. Peer review is considered the gold standard in referencing. However, also check the author’s credentials before accepting their position as fact. This can been seen by the now discredited work of social psychologist Diederik Stapel

 

I have made it very clear before; personal trainers (& other so called health experts) simply can no longer make outlandish statements without a shred of evidence to support their theories. The old cliche 'There is no experience better than one thousand hours under the bar' simply will not cut it anymore.  However, since the internet remains completely un-moderated it is up to you the reader to investigate and formulate your own opinions!