False prophets bearing gifts

I really feel sorry for the young people coming into the field of performance enhancement. How can they separate the wheat from the chaff, and style from substance. The problem is that the premium today is on marketing. One prominent guru has endorsed two different cable pulley systems in the last two years. According to him they both were the best. Which one is better, the latest one that paid him more? We have a responsibility to think about these things. This creates confusion. It just adds to the pollution of knowledge that we have in this filed. At the moment it is a highly toxic atmosphere. I can?t understand why people do not wake up. As a prerequisite for entry into this field everyone needs to have a finely tuned ?bullshit filter.? Whatever happened to good old fashioned humility, thirst for knowledge, substance and hard work.

I make my living in this field, but that does not give me the right to mislead and misinform people. I am willing to admit when I am wrong or that I do not know something. That is why I am no longer part of the Perform Better dog and pony show. The ?Learn by Doing? segment of those clinics is nothing more than a three hour product demo. They have contributed greatly to the pollution of knowledge, everything is about selling product, it does not matter if two speakers follow each other and contradict each other, as long as they sell product. They are not the only ones, just the most prominent. Knowledge is meant to be shared. There is really nothing that is new in this field, it just has a fancier name, more attractive packaging and it costs a lot more. Kettlebells are advertised as the Russian secret training method, there were kettlebells in gyms all over the United States a hundred years ago! They just fell out of favor. If everything is placed in a historical and scientific context it is clear that there are certain commonalities that sound functional training programs share. The functional path has many road signs pointing us in the correct direction; we just need to read the signs.

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Vern Gambetta

Director at Gambetta Sports Training Systems

Vern is the Director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems. He has been the a conditioning coach for several MLS teams as well as the conditioning consultant to the US Men's World Cup Soccer team. Vern is the former Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets. He has lectured and conducted clinics in Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe and has authored six books and over one hundred articles related to coaching and sport performance in a variety of sports. He has a BA in teaching with a coaching minor and an MA in Education with an emphasis in physical education from Stanford University.