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Check What Would Have Happened Anyway Before Crediting Your Programme
From the FASTER syllabus: this article is taught in full in the FASTER Sports Scientist course →
In short: On the FASTER Sports Scientist course, the lesson 'Why it worked for my client is not evidence' teaches that things change on their own. Outcomes shift through natural history and regression to the mean with no help from the intervention. A control is any feature of a design that lets you estimate what would have happened anyway, and it is the step that turns a story about one client into something a trainer can lean on.
The short version
A client's result can be completely real and still not prove the programme caused it. The FASTER Sports Scientist course teaches the reason in one lesson: many things change outcomes on their own, and a control is any feature of a design that lets you estimate what would have happened anyway. Knowing that turns "it worked for my client" from a story into a measurement you can lean on.
Key Takeaways
- "It worked for my client" is the most common evidence in the fitness industry and one of the weakest.
- Not because the client is lying, and not because nothing happened. Plenty of things change outcomes with no help from the intervention.
- A control estimates what would have happened anyway, so you can see what your programme added.
The nicest kind of weak evidence
Every trainer has one. A client arrives, a programme goes in, six weeks later the number moved. The story is honest and it feels great. The course lesson is gentle about it: the client is not lying and something did happen. The only open question is how much to credit to the programme.
Two of the forces behind that gap are easy to picture.
Things settle on their own. The lesson calls this natural history. Plenty of things improve with time, and whatever you did during that time will look effective.
Regression to the mean. When someone is measured at an unusually bad moment, the next measurement tends to sit closer to their average, even with no intervention at all. Clients often start a programme right after a rough fortnight, so the first test can be the low point. The retest looks like growth. Some of it is real. Some of it is the number drifting back to where it normally lives.
What a control gives you
A control is any feature of a design that lets you estimate what would have happened anyway. It does not need a laboratory. It can be as small as a second baseline test taken a couple of weeks before the programme starts, so the "before" has a shape and the programme has something honest to beat.
That is the quiet superpower of the FASTER approach to research: finding the best question, then the best fit of evidence, to make a decision for a client, without needing an academic background to do it. The Sports Scientist course goes properly deep on this in Module 1, with the visuals and the worked examples laid out lesson by lesson.
Where it pays off on a Monday
A trainer who asks what would have happened anyway sounds different. Results get described with care: this changed, this is what the programme probably added, this is what we will watch next. Clients hear a coach who is checking, rather than a salesperson claiming.
It also protects the trainer. A programme that gets credit it did not earn eventually gets copied onto the next client where it does nothing. Knowing the difference saves a lot of programmes that were really coincidences.
Where to go next
The FASTER Sports Scientist course teaches this properly, lesson by lesson, with the learning built to be read, listened to and answered by typing or dictating. PT Manager is free with any FASTER course, and it is where a trainer keeps the baseline and the retests side by side.
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Frequently asked
What does a control do?
It lets you estimate what would have happened anyway, so you can judge what the programme added.
What is regression to the mean?
When someone is measured at an unusually bad or good moment, the next measurement tends to sit closer to their average with no intervention at all.
Does this mean a client's result is not real?
No. The result is real. The lesson is about how much of it to credit to the programme.
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