One Size Doesn't Fit All

WHEN RESULTS ARE BASED ON AVERAGES, SCIENCE CAN BE ITS OWN WORST ENEMY. HERE’S HOW TO MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU…

- Dr Ross Tucker

I STUDIED SPORTS SCIENCE to grow my own knowledge in a way that would equip me to make better decisions. To learn about the human body during exercise so that I could understand it, then predict how it would respond, and share that knowledge in a way that would best help a large number of people to run more, faster and injury-free.

That core purpose hasn’t changed, but my attitude towards applied science has. I’ve come to realise that in my desire (however well-meaning) to give advice, I sometimes overlook complexity and individual variability; and end up giving advice that – for possibly a large group of the target audience – is exactly wrong!

Why? The simple answer is that an individual in a group does not always behave like the group. In fact, they may respond in a completely different way.When a scientific study is done on, say, 20 runners, our tendency is to bundle the 20 together into an ‘average’, and then give advice based on it. This may be doing a disservice to seven runners who are extreme responders in one direction, and six runners who behave in completely the opposite way – leaving only the remaining seven vaguely satisfied, because they’re closest to ‘typical’.