Information Overload, What Works Best for You

There is a great deal of information on proper technique in swimming, cycling, running, as well as nutrition, and how to tie your shoes. Furthermore, it’s all right and it’s all wrong depending on who you ask. This leads me to believe it comes down to what works best for you. Unfortunately, most people when seeking advice on the best way of doing things don’t want to hear our most common answer after dispensing options, which is ultimately, “This is what I do, but you have to do what works best for you.” This is not meant to be a cop-out as much as a disclaimer.
Every expert who is providing their scientifically proven method will tell you their way is right, but then somebody else will refute this with an opposing view. This leaves us again with doing what works best for us individually.
I’m generally of the opinion of, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Well, I’m too often injured so apparently what I’m doing is broken, so I look for ways to “fix” my situation. I read articles in magazines, I read websites I trust, I listen to podcasts, I talk to friends who are athletes, and I gather information from my own experiences. The following is some of the things I have found with regards to swimming, cycling, and running.
Swimming: Admittedly, I have not read much about the Total Immersion swim technique, but my understanding is that one of its most basic premises is that it is important to keep perfect body alignment and have exceptional rotational skills. My understanding is that when you are rotating, your bellybutton should be facing the lateral walls as to rotate the body so it is slicing through the water with a vertical plane, rather than a flat, horizontal plane. I then hear on a podcast that a study has been done indicating that the extreme rotation described in Total Immersion is not as fast as a horizontal position. The podcast went on to say that this extreme rotation is good for drill work, but is not as efficient for swimming long distances. There is more to it than this, but my point is there are two authorities on a subject with opposing viewpoints. Argh.
Cycling: Lance Armstrong started cranking out a very high cadence and having obvious success, and it has been thought that this method was best for cycling. Then I read that for triathlon, this might not be the best method and that banging out the big ring with more power is better suited for the triathlete who needs to run off the bike. Hmm.
Running: I read in a couple different sources that flexibility is a good thing, but too much flexibility may actually hinder performance. If I remember correctly, the thought was that if the muscles were too loose from stretching, they would not allow for very powerful send-off with each step. Now I’m reading the Pose Method of running and it is a strong proponent of being very flexible. Uhhh!
My facts may not be exactly right because I’m drawing from my memory of these various articles and sources, but my point remains the same. Just about anything somebody says with authority and backed up with scientific evidence often faces an opposing view on the same topic, also with scientific data to back it up. So where does this leave us? With doing what works best for us, of course this leads me to my next thought which is lack of time and lots of laziness in really giving new methods their due to see what indeed does work best for us, but that’s for another post.