Posted by Cris (24.66.94.141) on January 19, 2004 at 14:43:17:
Juerg is completely right. With the Timex GPS system or the new GPS system that operates similarly by Garmin allows you to collect objective pace and distance data anywhere outside, including water sports that are on the surface of the water, like paddling.
I wouldn’t worry too much about “standard” testing. With lactate, heart rate, and a speed/ distance measuring device you have as Juerg put it, your own portable lab. If unfamiliar with testing protocols, learn the standard tests, learn the FACT test, then in time you make your own protocols that are meaningful for what you are trying to measure. It is interesting to see how one athlete compares to another, but it is more useful to see how one athlete compares to them selves. Use one or two standard tests to be used in META analysis, but also develop unique procedures. The more people who this, the more we spread our “research power”. Who knows, any one of us here may develop good testes that help us discover something new. The FACT test is a perfect example of how people can successfully develop new meaningful tests that others can benefit from.
Indecently, I’m going to be so bold, if permitted, to make a policy statement of mine. In light of technology like lactate and glucose testing, heart rate profiling, and other objective data that can be collected and analyzed, it is my opinion that no coach should claim to be a professional coach unless they have these tools and know how to use them. An amateur coach, not having the equipment or expertise, should align themselves with somebody who can mentor them through using these tools.
If these tools are not used, a “coach” can only guess, making it impossible to make an informed prescription for individual exercise programs. In my opinion this is bad for the coaching/ training profession because it pollutes the industry with opportunists, “know it alls” and those who have some scrap of paper after 40 hours of “education” that apparently signifies they are “certified”, meanwhile they wouldn’t know a lactate/ heart rate test if it poked them in the nose.
I’m not sure how many other coaches feel the same way, but I definitely cringe when I see personal trainers and aerobics instructors (the very worst offenders), preaching various exercise axioms, yet never once doing heart rate or lactate profile on themselves, let alone any person they have ever “trained”. I am interested in hearing from other coaches on this topic.
And also interested in hearing from athletes who have worked with coaches who use lactate testing: would you as an athlete take training advice from a coach who does not use heart rate or lactate testing, after having coaching experience with a coach who does?
Cris