UnlearningPROCESS

“Success can only be ensured by instinct sharpened by thought.” – T. E. Lawrence, The Science of Guerilla Warfare

In my office is Auguste Rodin's classic statue "The Thinker." Until recently, I must admit that I have not thought much about it. It is just a statue, right? Well, yes it is, but according to Michael Angier [1], it is also very “captivating.” After all, it represents “deep thinking” – not just thoughts or mental activity of this and that. It is not thinking required to open the garage door or answer the question: “Shall I eat breakfast or skip it?”

The crisis of a young person’s life, as I’ve written about many times, is often reached exactly when he or she graduates from college. Many jobs, even in cardiac rehabilitation, are not easy to get and may not be worth the getting. In the normal course of things, particularly the payment of tuition loans, education generally results in better-prepared students, but are the students able to anticipate the job challenges in the public sector? From my experience, they are not prepared to anticipate and shape issues. Often the jobs they get are part-time with minimal benefits.

In light of this uncomfortable economic reality, students appear to cling to the idea that everything is okay. They fail to understand that the exercise science degree is not a career-driven degree. Having failed to understand this point, it is just a matter of time before realizing they will need to return to school. Why is it students lack the ability to reflect on and accurately assess this point? One answer is that they are not thinking. Often I believe they are too humble as well, not wanting to challenge their teachers.

Other students are more in touch with career opportunities in their fields. They are conscious of the impact of accreditation and professional behaviors. They understand the meaning of the word “career.” And, they understand the need to temporarily suspend assumptions, including their own interests and values, to better manage their future career opportunities. Why professors are not dealing with these points, especially the tough up-front work of imaging the future and communicating it to their students is troubling.

Interestingly, even the 1893 edition of the Funk and Wagnalls dictionary in America added the following definitions of career to the familiar ones: (1) A complete course or progress extending through the life or a portion of it, especially when abounding in remarkable actions or incidents, or when publicly conspicuous: said of persons, political parties, nations, etc. (2) A course of business activity, or enterprise: especially, a course of professional life or employment, that offers advancement or honor.” Why, then, 114 years later, is this point still so hard to grasp? Honestly, it isn’t rocket science!

By the late 19th century, the Century Dictionary and Funk and Wagnalls acknowledged a new use of the word “career,” such as self-sufficiency, self-regulating standards that separate and define a career independently of the general community. Again, the question: “Why is it that exercise physiologists don’t think more about their students finding a career in exercise physiology?” Perhaps one reason is that they do not make time to think about the academic culture. After all, many at the doctorate level are college teachers and, as educators, are members of a distinguished profession. Unless they fail to get tenure, they don’t have to concern themselves with the reality of the real world without a doctorate degree.

The age of professionalism has come for exercise physiology. If you are a member of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists, you stand a better chance of understanding the issues and problems, and a higher probability of being a valued asset. The good news is that there are exercise physiologists who are thinking hard and long about the professional development of exercise physiology. The bad news is that there are more exercise physiologists not thinking about the professionalism of exercise physiology.

Not only has the American Society of Exercise Physiologists brought this thinking to the forefront, it has brought coherence and uniformity to the education of students for a career in exercise physiology, and it has structured and formalized the practice of exercise physiology. Why academic exercise physiologists remain uninterested in the ASEP initiatives is rather obvious. First, there is the lack of time taken to think about the problems related to the dissatisfaction of the students in the exercise science and related programs of study.

Second, it seems that the academic exercise physiologists have made their university work priority number one. The student’s concerns are far less important, especially since college teachers believe their work is done at the close a lecture. Third, there is a historical sense of “what is exercise physiology” that gets in the way of how to think about the American Society of Exercise Physiologists and why it is important?

Fourth, no one wants to be seen as complaining and so the price of change remains too high for them. It is best to be a good team player. No one wants to question others, especially if they stand to lose something. And, fifth, never before within exercise physiology have we been so aware of the arrogance, shallowness, and abuses of the existing thinking by exercise physiologists who justify their behavior.

Holdrege [2] said, “When we truly think -- and don't just mimic what another person tells us -- the activity arises out of questions. Questions are the driving force of any thought process; they give direction, focus, and energy. If we're interested in helping students think, then we must help them learn to question themselves and the world.” It's paradoxical that exercise physiologists are so involved in scientific research that they have become so poor at asking questions.

Shouldn’t the primary task of scientific teaching be to help students and professionals awaken from a certain naïveté of dogmatic slumber, even if it means taking a risk? Hence, this seems to raise the question for exercise physiologists, for example, “How should they feel when failing to get involved in the new way of thinking about exercise physiology as a healthcare profession?” Don’t they understand that failing to get involved means that ultimately they will have less control over both the academic process and the products (as healthcare professionals).

When I teach the “Professional Development of Exercise Physiology” course in the Spring Semester at The College of St. Scholastica, I emphasize that students shouldn't take any handed-down thinking for granted, that it should be evaluated for its credibility, and that new thinking is always critical to understanding issues and concerns. Students are taught to ask question, particularly in regards to what they think they know. In other words, students need to become skeptics [3] in order to determine the truth.

Moreover, according to Holdrege [2], “When we begin questioning in this way, we soon realize that we know very little. Although at first unsettling, this realization becomes exhilarating.” Several strategies should help students question better. One that comes to mind immediately is to find a new perspective that no one else has taken [4]. Leonardo da Vinci believed that, to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, one should begin by learning how to restructure it. This is what ASEP has done! It is an immutable fact.

Everyone has the responsibility to think, and no one should benefit from the work of others. Because students must be treated with dignity and worth, their undergraduate education must be updated and accredited and the faculty must be willing to work on behalf of the students and the profession. And, when they do so, the results are much more likely to provide many opportunities to think, plan, and act strategically. They will also learn that maintaining status quo is a mistake.

Status quo was never Einstein’s way. History points out that he thought through a problem by breaking the subject into many different parts and, then, he would visualize various solutions. This is exactly what ASEP has done (e.g., code of ethics, board certification, accreditation standards, scope of practice, and on and on). Of course, when you start to consider alternatives to a problem and visualize solutions, some ideas will work and others will naturally fail. That’s life.

But, failure is not an impassable wall. It is a fair test of our willingness to stay the course, and to work for a cause. All academic programs need to be nurtured. It is the responsibility of every exercise physiologist to see that there are viable career opportunities for students who are interested in exercise physiology. All anybody wants is a vivid and real picture of the future; one that is better than today. Students desire such an image, and we should be inspired to do what it takes to see that it becomes reality.

That is why combining and reshaping ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or strange it may sound or look is another good strategy to think better [4]. Imagine the impact of thinking that a new organization just for exercise physiologists would be a good thing. Well, just such thinking resulted in the founding of the ASEP in 1997. Then, it became reality. And, yet clearly, there are exercise physiologists who cannot visualize the power in ASEP. It is as though they lack the intuitive sense of what ASEP means.

ASEP is the result of many things but, in particular, the reshaping and combining of thoughts already in place by other healthcare professionals have helped tremendously. Yet, the idea that leadership thinking and business concepts and ideas could (or even should) be combined with the scientific thinking of exercise physiology is still an idea not easy for many to grasp. It is not a surprise that both are important as they play important roles in the professionalism of exercise physiologists.

However necessary and important to the scientific base of exercise physiology, research per se (especially without meaningful application) falls short of the images and thoughts of professionalism and professional development of exercise physiology. This is also why making connections with dissimilar topics and ideas is so important. For example, spirituality [5], laughter [6], Qi gong [7], exercise as medicine [8], and so many other connections to exercise physiology that go far the less often examined healthcare qualities.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of exercise physiologists are people who have thus far demonstrated relatively little interest in ASEP or even healthcare per se. Everyone is thinking about running faster, jumping higher, and getting bigger. It should be a surprise to anyone, given the historical precedent of sports and athletics. The idea that it is time to examine new possibilities involving career options and standards of practice hasn’t become the big picture yet.

But, like everything else, including the growing of children and trees, planning involves thinking and time. The latter is especially important so that the future can be explained by those who have the ability to visualize it to those who cannot. Not all individuals have equal ability to create mental pictures and, therefore, it might be that those cannot are less inclined to raise questions that would result from visioning.

If this is true, to take time to think is still necessary to look at relationships and develop new strategies. Time also allows for a commitment to ask questions: “Where are we?” How did we get here?” What is necessary to move on?” and “How can we come together?” Clarifying and setting goals are critical to creating a paradigm shift, such as ASEP argues.

Obviously, to think is to analyze and, where possible, to resolve differences. Similarly, to conceive thoughts and ideas and, then, to reason is to think. The end result is learn or to know the truth [9]. In other words, when exercise physiologists take the time to “think” about the ASEP organization as the professional organization of exercise physiologists, they should appreciate that it was founded from opinions that were well-formed and intelligently reasoned. They should understand that considerable thought and debate went into the founding of the ASEP principles and beliefs.

Exercise physiologists who aren’t willing to arrive at the same judgment as the ASEP leaders are either not willing to listen or wanting to get involved. I suppose, to be fair, maybe they don’t know how to get involved or they are afraid to get involved. Not everyone, regardless of academic degrees, has the same ability to bring one’s mind to a focus on the professionalism of exercise physiology. Perhaps, it comes down to this one comment by Daniel Immerwahr [10]: “Thinking is work, not magic.”

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. -- Albert Einstein

“Thinking is work” bears repeating. There is nothing magical about thinking up ideas for a paper for a new profession of exercise physiology. To combine the thinking of Immerwahr and Einstein, it is enviable work! In other words, exercise physiologists must work at thinking about exercise physiology. It is not as simple as the “acute and chronic changes that occur with exercise” as most textbooks state. Exercise physiology is more. It is the 21st century breakthrough thinking in healthcare [11]. It is about exercise physiologists and the use of timely exercise prescriptions as medical treatment [12].

However, exercise physiologists must “think” and “decide” to be healthcare professionals in much the same way as men used to think the world was flat but got over it. It is time to stop acquiescing to sports medicine. The failure to do so will postpone the inevitable. If exercise physiologists want professional status, they need to think, talk, and write as healthcare professionals [13]. In other words, exercise physiologists thought their world was sports medicine until the existence of the ASEP organization.

Clearly, “exercise” is central to health and wellness and exercise physiology is therefore central to this nation’s health and wellness. We know this because the definition of “a healthcare profession” is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness. Exercise physiology is a healthcare profession because “exercise” helps to prevent, treat, and manage illness!

“Exercise” should be the foundation of our healthcare system. But, the truth is that healthcare is a technology-driven growth industry. Meanwhile, as doctorates we engage in more research, build our resumes, and attend conferences that make us feel good. Many of our colleagues without the doctorate degree remain as fitness instructors and personal trainers, not as healthcare professionals [14].

In school or out of school…male or female…young or old... you have just one question to answer if you want to begin thinking about a career in exercise physiology. And, no longer is it true that the doctorate degree is required to be successful. No longer is the question, "Which university should I apply to get “my” doctorate?” No, not now, given so much information about the benefits of regular exercise with its far-reaching positive effects.

Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter. Most people set a few resolutions with 2007 before them. Some want to publish more research articles. Others are interested in finding a more rewarding job. Still others are interested in starting their own healthcare business. Unfortunately, most give up and life goes on as usual. This, it seems to me, is why exercise physiologists give up on ASEP before giving it a real chance. It is hard work to embrace change. It is even harder to “think” about making more money and attaining financial freedom when exercise physiologists choose to stop confusing who they are with sports medicine.

The quality of our life is determined by the quality of our thinking. The quality of our thinking, in turn, is determined by the quality of our questions, for questions are the engine, the driving force behind thinking. Without questions, we have nothing to think about [15].

In other words, the quality of our professional development is determined by the quality of our professional thinking. The quality of our professional thinking is, in turn, determined by the quality of our critical thinking, for critical thinking is the engine, that is, the driving force behind our professionalism. Without critical thinking, exercise physiologists have little reason to think they are meaningfully interlocked with other healthcare professionals. And, similarly, without leadership, which is about making conscious choices to bring about positive change [16], exercise physiologists have little reason to expect something new or the confidence to see that it happens.

Many academic exercise physiologists continue to present papers after papers without internalizing the concepts and principles essential to the professional development of exercise physiology. All the scientific papers, presentations, and posters by exercise physiologists at national meetings cannot define exercise physiology as a profession. This point is within our understanding if we work at critical thinking as we have taught ourselves to think scientifically.

Despite having the doctorate degree and after teaching college and university courses, few professors have the skills or the questions to become self-directed, self-monitored, and self-corrective critical thinkers to guide the path towards professionalism [17]. Critical thinking is vital to well-reasoned solutions to become skilled professionals, who have their own rigorous standards of practice. It is within the systematic questioning and self-assessment of our issues and concerns that we learn to become effective teachers, counselors, researchers, and practitioners.

With a questioning mind, exercise physiologists will learn to focus their thinking in a disciplined manner to think analytically, conceptually, and empirically [17]. Such a mind questions:

…information, inferences, and implications. It questions world views, perspectives, and implications. It questions politics, culture, and academics. It questions laws, policies, and human behavior. It questions contradictions, double standards, and false integrity. It questions media bias and propaganda. It questions our innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires [15].

Central to this point is that no one can do a good job of thinking analytically who is afraid to fail. So, why is the idea of failure important to anyone? It shouldn’t be in that few people ever do something perfect the first time or even after a dozen or so attempts. Having competed in gymnastics at the college level for four years, I can contest to the multiple efforts to learn gymnastic skills. Few gymnasts ever see a move and then execute it successfully the first time or even the second or eighth time. This is true with all sports and life in general.

Exercise physiologists should be untroubled by the idea of making mistakes. Thinking is hard work. There will be failures, and there will be successes. It is the only way to act on an idea or to embrace an existing paradigm. In fact, if exercise physiologists aren’t doing things from which they are likely to fail, they are probably not pushing ideas far enough. So, how can exercise physiologists learn to think differently? Well, I think part of the answer lies in the following statement by David Pollard [18]: “Broadening our thinking therefore requires us to consciously will ourselves to think about things, and think in ways, that we are not comfortable or familiar with. It is counter-cultural, more of an unlearning than a learning process.”

2. Holdrege, C. (2006). The Art of Thinking: Helping Students Develop Their Faculties of Thinking and Observation. The National Institute. [Online]. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/ch/thinking.htm

4. Michalko, M. (1998). Thinking Like a Genius: Eight strategies used by the super creative, from Aristotle and Leonardo to Einstein and Edison. New Horizons for Learning. [Online]. http://www.newhorizons.org/wwart_michalko1.html

6. Boone, T., Skrypek, S., and Erlandson, A. (2000). Cardiovascular Responses to Laughter: A Pilot Project. Applied Nursing Research. 13:204-208..

7. Lim, Y., Boone, T., Flarity, J., and Thompson, W. (1993). Effects of Qigong on Respiratory Changes: A Preliminary Study. American Journal of Chinese Medicine. 21:1-6.

15. Foundation for Critical Thinking. (2003). Developing the Questioning Mind. Critical Thinking. Events and Resources Catalog 2003, 1, page 6.

16. Bender, P. U. (1997). Leadership From Within. Toronto, Canada: Stoddart Publishing Company.