The Role of Evidence Based Practice in the Fitness Industry

In my experience, the majority of fitness professionals to date have constructed their methodology entirely from anecdotal evidence and opinions. I’ve worked as a human performance professional now for around eight years. I started at a commercial gym as a performance coach for young athletes along with doing some personal training with the general public. Around four years ago I decided to jump into entrepreneurship and open my own gym. One thing I’ve learned in my experience working with both young athletes and adult clients is this: You better have a reason why you are doing everything.

If you prescribe an exercise, any exercise, you had better know why and be able to articulate that to your athletes or clients. If you cannot, you just simply won’t last very long in the industry. People are getting smart, and they want to know why certain methodologies are being applied and why others are not. If our health care system doesn’t change and preventative medicines like professionally guided exercise and nutrition don’t eventually become socially subsidized people are only going to want access to more information about what they are paying out of pocket for. Fitness professionals have to be prepared to provide it. Having your practice based off current research and evidence will be the only way to do so.

To date, the group that has done one of the best jobs of providing a large pool of evidence to support their methods and providing a framework for professionals to implement those methods is the Functional Movement Systems (FMS) group. Implementing the FMS to help guide us through exercise selection and corrective exercise application at my gym has not only helped us to establish credibility as fitness professionals, but has vastly improved our ability to serve our athletes and clients.

According to the systematic review in our required reading, “Do evidence-based guidelines improve the quality of care?” by Bazian Ltd: Having guidelines to help us make decisions only improve the quality of care if they are implemented consistently and correctly. Some fitness professionals may be apprehensive about using a framework of guidelines to make decisions for fear of removing the “human element” or the process becoming too boring for the client. What I’ve found, is that most of your clients won’t mind if the end result is a desirable one. Furthermore, the ability to gather information, have a large pool of evidence suggesting to us what that information means, then parlaying that information into professional decisions actually frees us up to coach more instinctively.

I foresee the role of evidence based practice in the fitness industry being the only way to sustain a career and professional credibility. As preventative medicine becomes more important to societies with increasing health problems fitness professionals are well positioned to sufficiently expand their role in the health care system. Having your practice grounded in objectivity will likely be the only way to ensure you don’t miss out on the opportunity.