• Question: what are your expectations for the future in your field?

    Asked by elizabethrw to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Mark Burnley

      Mark Burnley answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Interesting question. I think my field (“oxygen uptake kinetics”, mostly) has been immune from the “-omics” silliness of much of the life sciences. This won’t mean much to you, but the incredible successes of molecular biology (DNA and gene sequencing, culminating in the reading of a single human genome) led many physiologists towards molecular techiques, and “whole body” physiology was all but abandoned. Exercise physiology, and my field in particular, did not swing so wildly. The problem we now face is that the pendulum has swung back, but rather than admit that they are doing physiology, some scientists have invented terms like metabolomics, proteomics, and (perhaps the worst) “systems biology”. FYI, systems biology is physiology without any hypotheses, but that’s me being cynical!

      As for the future, I think that we are at a stage where the next great challenge is to figure out how the central nervous system (the brain) interacts with the muscle to produce the patterns in metabolism, muscle performance and perception that we call “fatigue”. The next few years, then, are going to be about linking different experimental results into a “big picture”, but we need to do quite a lot of tidying up first!

    • Photo: Helen O'Connor

      Helen O'Connor answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      From a research point of view I think that all the new technological developments will help us conduct more specific and helpful experiments. For example, new tools are being designed to provide athletes and coaches with very precise biofeedback (how the mind can affect the body, and vice versa). This will allow psychologists, coaches and athletes to actually see more exactly how mental skills training can affect performance. Hopefully this will also prove to people that sport psychology “works”.

      In practical terms, I hope that sports psychology becomes more accepted as an additional factor that can make the difference between winning and losing, or first and second place. Most athletes interviewed would say that they know that success is at least 50% “mental”, but yet they still spend 90% or more of their training time on their physical game. In future I hope that they spend more time training for their mental game too.

Comments