One Size Doesn't Fit All
Runner's World|March 2018

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
One Size Doesn't Fit All

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’.

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