Which academic journals worth following?

[Michael Korczowski]

I'm looking to get serious and school myself about fitness training.

I've put together a nice big list of books that I want to get through, but was wondering if there are any academic journals out there with a good signal to noise ratio.

which ones consistently publish the most useful information?

[Steve Shafley]

"Useful" has to be taken in context.

The issue with so many published studies are:

1. Inappropriate population (i.e. untrained college students)
2. Funding by group with interest in outcome
3. Statistical analysis couched in a lot of obscure language to obscure the results.

Look at the debacle with regards to The China Study, and how certain correlations were publicized and certain correlations were not.

Unless you are in a research field, or have a bit of a jones for the research, most scientific journals are essentially worthless to someone just interested in training.

[Steven Low]

None.

Journals occasionally have good studies, but generally they have mostly worthless stuff along the lines of what Shaf is talking about.

The only thing I might recommend is Alan Aragon's research review:
http://www.alanaragon.com/researchreview

But yeah...

It's better to learn stuff from coaches who put out articles. For example, look around the web for stuff people like Dan John, Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, Bret Contreras, etc. people put out because they contain useful information about training, especially with athletes or injuries in a lot of cases.

T-nation actually has had a good rash of articles in the past few months. Just check out some of the authors sites and they should have lists of articles they've written that are very good.

[Steve Shafley]

Apprenticing yourself to someone good is probably tops.

[Andrew Wilson]

http://www.iaaf.org/development/studies/index.html

http://194.213.2.7/wps/portal/iaaf

[Steve Shafley]

Andrew: Can you list changes made to your training, or to other athletes training that are directly attributable to that organization?

Not being snide, just curious.

[Andrew Wilson]

Originally Posted by Steve Shafley

Andrew: Can you list changes made to your training, or to other athletes training that are directly attributable to that organization?

Not being snide, just curious.

LOL all of it, that's the study depot where the international t&f coaches dump journal articles for the "New Studies in Athletics" Journal, articles detailing their training methods, studies on their champs, and successful practices with their methods. Tomas Dvorak and Roman Sebrle's training program is on their before they set the world record, Jonathon Edwards training program is on there before he set the world record, there's mountains of articles on bioenergetics, biomechanics, developing explosive strength for jumping, tons of Verk articles, and middle distance, all written by world class sports scientists and coaches that have produced world champions in track and field. I've used all of information from their middle distance articles. They have these round table discussions from some of the top tier coaches in the world, and describe brilliant information on how they've developed their athletes. I've downloaded like 200 journal pieces from that second link- its a gold mine, the trick is figuring out how to use the search because its sketchy.

[Steven Low]

Nice resource Andrew