I often think back to the sports I did in junior high and high school, and the things our coaches had us do. I had some great coaches back in the day - Mr. Jones as my Cross Country coach in junior high - Mr. Brown as a track coach in high school, and later Les Schroll as my cycling coach. All of them played a big part in helping me grow as a person and as an athlete.
But one thing that I think about is some of the things that were conventional wisdom back then, and stated as fact, that turn out to just be wrong. But many were handed down from years and years before, and treated as absolute truths.
I've been doing a ton of reading lately about training techniques and the physiological responses behind them. The real "why" behind the "how" of training. See, it turns out that some things that sounds like they should be true, just aren't.
For example, we all learned to stride out as far as we could when we run. The idea as to increase your stride length so that you were covering the maximum possible ground with each step. It turns out this isn't the best way to run; getting your foot out in front of you just means that it's going to slow you down when it hits the ground.
Another example is intensity. Most of us believe that the way to get fitter is to just to train harder, right? So if I want it to be easy to run an 8-minute mile, I should go run 7 minute miles and then 8 minute miles will seem easy. That's pretty much how most people do it or think it should be done.
It turns out, especially for endurance sports, this is false. For any significant distance, the way to get faster is to improve your body's ability to deliver oxygen and energy to your muscle cells. Running hard and fast doesn't train that. It might make the muscles stronger, but it doesn't make them more efficient. It turns out the best way to get faster is to run...wait for it...slow. A lot. Over a period of years, week in, and week out.
All of this makes me think about how many things we assume are true by default, usually because someone along the line asserted it as being true. No one stopped to ask "really? how do you know?" It's kind of a fun game to play. Next time someone makes an assertion - especially when it reduces something inherently complex to a simple one-liner, just ask them and see what happens.