Two decades of managing and mentoring staff and interns has taught me some things.

Some advice for early career practitioners that prospective mentors and employers will likely be too polite to provide: A dose of reality:

The market is not in your favour - supply vastly exceeds demand and the odds get worse with the influx of new graduates each year.

If you want to play play such a low probability game you must go above and beyond to differentiate yourself from the competition

The term 'stiffness' has become part of the lexicon (generally in relation to sprinting and training).

Been thinking for awhile we need to come up with a term that better captures what we're talking about

If not a misnomer, stiffness is at least prone to misinterpretation 🧵👇 We collapse complex phenomena into simplified models and then distill the concept described by the model into a word.

In this case:
human locomotion (complex phenomenon)
mass-spring model (simplified version)
'stiffness' (term)

Among other things, I write and publish books.

Where I've proved less successful to date - and even been neglectful - is marketing and promoting those books.

I am beginning to see how illogical my thinking on this has been🤦‍♂️

A 'mea culpa' thread 🧵👇 An exchange between @jordanbpeterson and @jockowillink:
'No matter how good your product.. the world will not beat a pathway to your doorway... you need to pay attention to marketing; you can't be contemptuous of it... who the hell is going to buy something they don't know about'

"We (should) only care about discovering the truth; we shouldn't care ahead of time which truth it is... if we want something to be true and not something else then we pay attention to evidence which favours that theory and discount evidence that doesn't" @seanmcarroll
🧵👇 Describes a huge problem in sports science/sports medicine that is endemic in the social sciences.

There should be no 'proposing a theory'.

The point of debate is not to win, or necessarily agree fully with the other party at the end.

It doesn’t need to be adversarial and the objective doesn’t have to be arriving at consensus

🧵👇 The purpose of engaging in debate is articulating our perspective on the topic, presenting the rationale for our position.

The value comes from hearing the other side’s perspective, getting their insight and considering their arguments to stimulate thoughts and update our model

Greater humility is warranted when we consider where true expertise resides and where the meaningful insights that move things forward come from.

Spoiler: academic research rarely drives cutting edge practice.

Empirical study is not restricted to the research setting
🧵👇 1/6 The most meaningful work that leads to discovery is often done in the field.

To use the example of injury rehab/return to sport, there is a lag between what is studied in research and practices at elite level that are pushing the boundaries and advancing our understanding 2/6

Those of us involved in academic research might benefit from humility in considering where true expertise resides and where the meaningful insights that move things forward come from.
Empirical study is not restricted to the research setting
(mini thread) The most meaningful work that leads to discovery is often done in the field.

To use the example of injury rehab/return to sport, there is a lag between what is studied in research and practices at elite level that are pushing the boundaries and advancing our understanding 2/5

The role of arm action during running tends to be minimised or dismissed entirely, largely based on biomechanical modelling data.

Perhaps we are missing the point. The contribution of upper limbs to lower limb action during flight and stance go beyond what modelling captures 1/5 Coordination of bipedal locomotion (upright walking, running, sprinting) modes still involves all four limbs!

'During bipedal locomotor activities, humans use elements of quadrupedal neuronal limb control'

Link to the full read: link.springer.com/article/10.100… 2/5