> If I go to a coach to help me with running faster their advice won’t be “completely wrong” — it will be “by and large” correct.
Nope. Unless they've been vetted, their advice is rarely better than random. And, even if they've been vetted unless they're biomechanicists, they often have these totally weird misconceptions about some specific thing.
See: baseball pitching. Practically everything about pitching below the major leagues was detrimental to pitchers (and even the major leagues had lots of misconceptions) until the scientists got involved.
What disguises this in sports is that consistency wins out over correctness until you reach the very, very highest levels. The problem is that it is almost impossible to adjust to "correct" after 10+ years of doing it wrong. So, what happens is that those doing it "correct" move on to the next layer while those doing it "incorrect" get left behind.
Nope. Unless they've been vetted, their advice is rarely better than random. And, even if they've been vetted unless they're biomechanicists, they often have these totally weird misconceptions about some specific thing.
See: baseball pitching. Practically everything about pitching below the major leagues was detrimental to pitchers (and even the major leagues had lots of misconceptions) until the scientists got involved.
What disguises this in sports is that consistency wins out over correctness until you reach the very, very highest levels. The problem is that it is almost impossible to adjust to "correct" after 10+ years of doing it wrong. So, what happens is that those doing it "correct" move on to the next layer while those doing it "incorrect" get left behind.