Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Research?!? C'mon...

“Men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience.” - Aristotle

The longer I’m in my field, the more I realize the above statement is true. Theoretical research comes out every day in the world of health and exercise that makes me go “huh?!?” This isn’t the problem to me but rather the likelihood that someone who doesn’t do what I do for a living will see the news report about the research and go running with it, assuming it’s valid and/or applicable to their personal situation, when it probably isn’t.

Recently I saw a news report about a study suggesting that eating breakfast isn’t that important as it relates to weight loss and health issues as people previously believed. The study mentioned that people that skip breakfast don’t necessarily eat more throughout the rest of the day, and therefore don’t take in more calories on a whole.

I’ll preface my reaction to this report with this: All research can be called into question. Typically research is performed to validate an opinion. Generally speaking, if the opinion isn’t proven correct, people don’t run around yelling “Look! I was wrong! I was wrong!” More often, they design the study to prove their point and run to the news with it if they’re opinion was validated. And of course, if it’s even a little bit controversial the media will scream it from the rafters in order to get us to watch. This is magnified exponentially if the research is funded by a company that has a financial interest in the outcome of the research.

In this particular case, the researchers had a theory that people who don’t eat breakfast don’t eat more through the day and wanted to show they are correct. What was not mentioned in the news report is countless other research, both subjective and objective, that suggests that even if that is true, it doesn’t take into account other very important factors to your health.

Even if you are not eating more by skipping breakfast, you surely are burning fewer calories by skipping breakfast. You’re body is already in a form of fasting mode 1st thing in the morning because you haven’t eaten since the night before at best. This brings your metabolism to a screeching halt – when your body doesn’t get food, it doesn’t burn food because it thinks it’s starving – it does this as a defense mechanism. Skipping breakfast only exacerbates this situation, and forces your body to lower the number of calories you’ll burn.

Am I saying discount all research and theoretical studies? Of course not. Many great societal progressions have come from studies like this.

I am saying however that research studies are simply a tool and should be treated as such. Take what is said with a grain of salt, especially if it’s reported through the media.

Far more reliable than theoretical research is real world experience. This is something that many people I trust in my industry have told me, but it becomes more evident and grows more valid every time I think about it.

There is a misconception that working experience is not research. It is. It’s subjective however, so therefore some would have you believe it’s not as valid as “scientific studies”. But as we’ve discussed, they can be pretty subjective as well.

So when push comes to shove, who is more credible? The person in a lab measuring and quantifying statistics with a very small number of people over the course of a few weeks, or, the person who has seen and worked with real people day after day, year after year for decades? I’ll take that 2nd person’s opinion 99 times out of 100. Their observations are priceless because they aren’t theories about what MAY work, the observations are knowledge about what HAS worked in real situations.

It reminds me of the early days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Two martial artists who believe their fighting style to be superior to all others disagree with each other: Would you believe the guy whose system was never actually used in a real fight, or the guy who actually got in the ring and showed his fighting style worked better than others? Uh, when I’m in a dark alley, I’d rather have the 2nd guy watching my back.

I mention this warning about research because we’ve always believed at The Training Rim that results speak for themselves, whether it coincides with popular ideas and research or not. When there’s a new training methodology out that claims to be superior to all other previous modalities, our response is usually “OK, prove it. And not with mice in a lab – with real people with real jobs, families, homes, social lives etc. If it doesn’t work in that setting then it’s useless information.”

This attitude has worked well for us. We use training methodologies that we know to be effective. We know they’re effective because we’ve been using them for over a decade now and we’ve seen our clients continually get great results.

That beats the hell out of any research study any day of the week to us. If you want to debate the latest ideas and studies go right ahead: by the time you’re done we’ll be wrapping up another workout that’s already been proven to make us stronger and leaner.

In the words of Ron Burgundy, “It’s science.”