Research Match – Why You Should Care to Participate

If you are reading this you are already an excellent candidate for Research Match, you are alive. Alright, jokes aside let me tell you a bit about my experience with Research Match and why I was driven to participate.

For years I have been a keen student of physical fitness, sport, and sports medicine. It probably started way back in my youth, high school to be exact, when I competed in multiple sports and would read anything I could get my hands on that addressed technique, training, coaching, or competition. As a soccer player I followed a few national teams looking to see how I could emulate their practices. For my track and field events I would devour all of the sports, track, and medical journal articles ranging from heal-strike / placement for long and high jump, to training and form for the hurdles and middle-distance events. The Internet was still a long way off in the future.

Since then I have participated in several more sports, always seeking out the best, most recent (not always the best) learnings that I could embody in my routine. As noted in other posts, along with access to incredible information / videos with modern technology and the Internet the advent of low-cost, extremely accurate health data devices made a huge difference. So too the tracking / reporting platforms like Garmin Connect and Strava along with numerous coach / sport specific platforms such as Training Peaks. 

As great as these all are, I was and continue to be looking for more. In large part due to reading so many books, like Fast After Fifty and Outlive that reference various studies on sports performance, age, genetics, training, strength, cardio-vascular systems, diet, sleep, etc. and the many complex ways these and other factors may account for or contribute to sports performance. Of emerging interest to me was how all of this contributes to quality of life as we age. They may not enable us to live decades longer, but they will ensure we live better.

 I wanted to participate in one or more of these fitness, health, athletic studies! How to go about finding one much less get involved? Well the power of the Internet along with some search tools and research pointed me in several directions. Although initially I tried directly reaching out to book, article authors, and various research clinics for the most part these were a waste of time. 

However a few nice people at the NIH (National Institute of Health, USA) did respond with excellent emails pointing to me to a few government websites that listed open and pending research, surprisingly with a great search tool, to other organizations related to these efforts. 

Although I did not find that all-encompassing, open longitudinal study on aging athletic performance and related impacts / benefits on overall health I did find a few options where I felt my participation would be beneficial to the research community, society, and perhaps provide me with additional insights to myself, life, family, etc.

The Research Match organization really caught my attention. They cover just about everything and anything you could want to study in medicine and psychology. It did not take me long to get signed up to support their research activities. Surprisingly it did take a little while for my information to percolate through their system to the point where I started to receive emails suggesting I may be a candidate for an open project. 

Again, none of these were the type of study I was looking for but many have been incredibly interesting. In my case the vast majority have been surveys, the occasional interactive on-line game, and at least one telephone / video chat interview. Topics run the gamut. And you can choose only the ones of interest to you. I have dealt with items from work/life stress and balance to some very deep introspective questions on how I dealt with losing my parents (or other loved ones), cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s screening, to a recent one that was a survey on how to best design a survey. Seriously! And that one was most fascinating. 

Finally, I did find one in all places via a Facebook (META) sponsored link that was aimed at identifying potential genetic markers for Elite Athletes. As noted in previous posts, my VO2 Max is off the charts for my age. They wanted my data. https://elite.stanford.edu

Participating in medial / sports research may not be your thing. But if you are at all interested don’t wait like I did for the Internet to get built.