Isn’t it strange as we grow older that we rely on our experience and mastery to get us through our daily roles and responsibilities but often forget the fundamentals that got us to where we are.
The importance of mastering the basics cannot and should not be underestimated in many walks of life but especially in fitness and performance testing where the smallest detail and lack of attention can be amplified significantly creating enormous impact to the client.
Masters of sport and exercise science have undoubtedly gained theoretical and practical knowledge in the physiological, cognitive and, to a degree, psychological aspects of an athlete however scaling this experience laterally is often a chore and aspects of sociology are mis-interpreted or missed completely when it comes to the important role of assessing many sub-elite, youth development or disabled athletes.
It is uncommon for an experienced and well trained academic to actually perform and control an environment of testing sub-elite and junior development athletes and pretty rare that you will see one involved in school testing or testing of disabled and wheelchair athletes so who is actually verifying this extraordinarily important data and ensuring validity and reliability? Additionally, under what guidelines are they working and what support are they provided?
Surprisingly it is common that when true professionals in the fields of sport science, conditioning and coaching perform testing and assessment they often overlook the fundamental basics to ensure reliability allowing interns or students to do the more labour intensive duties (measuring, setting up, assessing, writing results, instructing athletes, maintaining equipment). The issue is that the very moment the athlete approaches the test is the very moment inter and intra tester reliability is compromised.
If tester A and tester B do not instruct each athlete identically, there is a compromise of reliability. If tester A changes the instruction between athlete 1 and 5, there is a compromise of reliability. If tester A even motivates athlete 1 and provides basic instruction to athlete 2, there is a compromise of reliability. This list goes on and there is a basic gap in the learning of test staff and reminder of experience professionals that mastering the basics and learning the complex is a skill of greater requirement.
I don’t hide behind my passion in this field and my ethical desire to ensure every ability, every person and every sport are given equal opportunity to perform and be assessed reliably hence the heavy investment in to Global Performance Testing Quality Assurance as the worlds first international basis for reliable testing on people at scale. Staff are trained specifically in the area of testing, not developing or coaching therefore creating a unique professionally unbiased environment for the subject.
While professionals and academics in sports and active living are proficient at interpreting the data to develop, improve or manage the athlete we have had significantly positive response to our GPTQA level 1 online short course reminding us of the purpose, delivery and interpretation of a fitness and performance testing environment. WHY ARE YOU TESTING?
I applaud everyone who works to solely improve another humans life and reiterate that mastering the basics and learning the complex is a necessity for an unbiased, reliable assessment.
Keep up the great work.
GD
#MasterTheBasics #TrueData #LearnTrainWork #GPTQA #DontSettleForAverage #ProfessionalPerformanceTesting
Links: www.globalwellnesstracking.com | www.gptqa.com