Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Biases

I realize I have no actual content. However, I think it's useful to start any discourse with the parameters of discussion, so that the audience understands my perspectives.

One of the most important of these are going to be biases. Everyone has biases that color their perspectives. I have reasons for thinking what I think, but I am aware that not everyone agrees with my particular beliefs, and therefore often will reach different conclusions. I am almost certainly not cognizant of all my biases, but here are some that I am aware of:

1. I think exercise is a good thing.
2. Most limitations to exercise are relative, and not absolute. The key, then, is to identify those barriers that limit one's ability to exercise and find ways to adapt around those barriers.
3. Not everyone is the same. This, to me, seems like an obvious statement, but I know that many people disagree with this underlying premise, and this undermines some conversations. To be more explicit:
a. Men and Women are different from one another. That doesn't mean better or worse, but they are different. I think it's important to understand those differences in order to optimize one's potential. I'll go into more detail in some other posts, but it is my personal belief system that men and women differ from one another in some fundamentally different ways that is useful for us understand (e.g., throwing biomechanics, the biomechanics of jumping and landing, the processing of spatial information, perception of pain, communication, etc).
b. People change as they age. Again, I think this is important to understand, because the treatment plans for people change over time as they age.

I'm sure readers (if I have any) will let me know about some other biases as they come up (which I welcome).

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