Applied Coaching Research Journal Volume 1 | Page 52

APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018, Vol. 1
Within sports science recently the
biggest progression has been around
training load monitoring and our
awareness of how we should monitor
training load, how that can influence
injury risk, performance markers, player
well-being and welfare. It is still in its
efficacy phase because it is an emerging
area. Training load monitoring is an area where you would probably go into
professional clubs and see them doing
something different now to what they
were doing say three years ago. In terms
of sport in general I do not believe that
one research area or project will have
much impact and influence. Small bodies
of work help people make their practice
better, more holistically.
Why do you
think it’s
important to
apply research
findings into
practice? I think it is important, but I also
think that the majority of research is
interesting but unfortunately not useful.
The difference between interesting and
useful is probably due to the research
question. If the research question is
right, people want to know the answer,
therefore the answers are useful. If the
purpose of research, either knowledge
or application is agreed then, applying
research to practice is easier. If research
is contributing to knowledge, not
immediately, but eventually, it will have
application, but if it is not contributing to either knowledge or application
then it should not be done. That is why
researchers should also appreciate
the practice side of research. From
the perspective of people working
in policy and practice, the amount of
high-quality research that is ongoing
within academic institutions worldwide
is phenomenal. If you do not make
the most of that, you are not making
the most of the available knowledge.
There is enough information out there
to help people in practice make some
well-informed evidence-based decisions.
Are there
any specific
research
studies that
you have
worked on
where this has
happened? There are numerous studies we have
done where they have had a small
contribution to how we work in the real
world; around understanding better the
recovery and fatigue response following
different training sessions, training
modalities and different level matches.
For example, does it take a player 24, 48
or 72 hours to recover from a training
session or a match? Once we understand
that, we understand better when to
prescribe the next stimulus. I would be
pretty confident and say most of our
work is designed to have impact. What would
you say
has had
the biggest
influence to
date?
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