How Exercise Science is Failing Coaches

Kechi Anyadike-Danes

In this episode, we dive into an awesome study published recently. It digs into something we often talk about here: the huge gap between sports science research and the actual reality of coaching in the human performance space. Right after it came out we saw people from across the human performance space talking about it, so we knew it would make for a great discussion.

The author of the piece is Kechi Anyadike-Danes and our discussion was definitely enhanced because, in addition to his research work, Kechi is also passionate about training and coaching (especially weightlifting). This background puts him in an excellent position to address the ways human performance research (plus accreditation systems, education, etc.) is failing to address the realities of actual human performance coaching.

Kechi is a doctoral student at the German Sport University Cologne where I he has been looking at various aspects of athlete preparation and how coaches perceive various theories, concepts and strongly held beliefs that exist in the training literature. He is particularly interested in the reasons for divisions that seem to routinely exist between sports scientists and coaches on certain topics. His doctoral research is being supervised and helped by friend of the pod John Kiely from the University of Limerick and Lars Donath from the German Sport University Cologne.

Read Kechi's study: Coaches’ Perceptions of Factors Driving Training Adaptation: An International Survey

We mentioned the TED Talk "Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?"

Listen to our previous episode with Kechi's research mentor John Kiely