Exercise Physiology...Is this a Joke?

I’m listening to the professor of my Exercise Physiology class give a lecture online, and I can’t take it anymore. I have to rant.

This class has officially caused me to dread the future Physical Therapists that will be running the country, especially considering that my university is supposed to have one of the best programs in the nation for it. Here are some of the GLORIOUS highlights of this class:

  1. As you try, you don’t improve recruitment, rate coding, or rate frequency of neuronal units. Only neuronal synchronization improves.

  2. A high carb diet is always the best. Period. Bar none. You won’t have energy on a high protein or high fat diet, and you WILL gain the weight back.

  3. Olympic weightlifters don’t perform eccentric exercises b/c they don’t want muscle hypertrophy.

  4. Bodybuilders look strong, but are weak.

  5. Powerlifters are soft/fat, but are strong.

  6. Lifting weights is not an adequate means of cardio

  7. Once you have been weightlifting for an extended period of time, you WILL reach your genetic potential, so progress should be extremely minimal, if any.

  8. Bench press is the single best indicator of upper body strength (I know, debatable, but still)

  9. When squatting, it’s all quads. NO posterior chain involved. At all.

  10. When looking at a male gymnast and a male olympic lifter, the lifter is fat, but the gymnast isn’t. Because olympic lifters don’t have that kind of physique.

  11. You cannot illicit hypertrophy with less then 80% of your 1RM if you are an “experienced” lifter.

  12. No diet will succeed without carbs. Your brain needs them, so cutting them out will be FATAL. (Apparently, ketones are out of the question).

  13. When I asked if 10x3 would illicit hypertrophy just like 3x10, I was told “no, it would not, as you have to train with a 3RM for that. Do you understand?”

I could go on and on. I attend this class with our G.A. Strength Coach (has CSCS, NSCA, B.A. in Biology, nationally ranked powerlifter deadlifting 666 at 181. Has to take this for his R.D. with Sports Nutrition emphasis) and he and I just die. Worst part is that EVERY OTHER student in my physical therapy class eats this up.

I explained two of the aforementioned errors with some of my friends in class, and they told me, “Well, she’s the teacher and you aren’t. I think she knows what she’s doing”.

I used to get ticked when people told me of Physical Therapists being wrong about a ton of things, but now I wonder…

What’s the copyright date on that book?

Welcome to the fitness industry

Book is the sixth edition, copyrighted 2007.

The fact that my 36000/year tuition pays for crap like this at a private university KILLS me. I’ll be in debt for 30 years for this shit? Such a fucking waste.

They teach you drive a certain way, however, once you get your license you can drive the way you like.

Graduate, get your paper and then do it right and get all the rich clients. Great at anything makes the most.

I would take what your teacher said, counter it with some research from peer reviewed journals and present it to the dean/head of the department. You shouldn’t be paying for an outdated education.

My class did this in engineering. It didn’t help our class, but the group that followed us benefitted from our ranting to the dean.

Good luck.

An interesting fact is that there is a great deal of difference in the average measured performance of students in different colleges within universities.

The colleges with the lowest average entrance SAT scores of any, as well as lowest exit GRE scores when this test is taken, are consistently the collages of Education.

Second-to-dead-last are the colleges of Journalism.

I do not know the data for colleges such as Health and Human Performance or whatever may typically be the case for where exercise physiology is taught, but at least at the University of Florida it was a sad situation.

In my own program, not in that college, I had to work what I considered hard (I was never a big studier so having to study hard the day before an exam counted as hard) to do well compared to the rest of the students.

The electives I took in the College of Health and Human Performance, I did not lift a finger to study at any time and easily was top of the class every time. Including when the class size was about 500.

I have to conclude that, at least at UF, the quality of students is lower on average in that program than in many others.

However, my professors were excellent. It was only the students that were kind of an embarrassment.

That may well not be true everywhere. It was only what I saw at one university. But it sounds as if yours is similar in that respect, but also adds at least one professor among the dummkopfs as well.

like the other guy said, get your degree and do whatever you want.

i got fired from a Ballys b/c i said you can never squat to low (in addition to other things), so dont feel so bad.

the fitness industry is exactly that, an industry. gyms are just retail. instead of selling you boxes of cereal or pants, they sell you equipment time, PT sessions and supplements.

they dont care what works, they care whats trendy. and whatever is trendy is whatever someone with a lot of money decides is trendy.

plus how much do you think they charge you for the knowledge “eat food and add weight to the bar”? bodybuilding is the simplest thing in the world but its just hard as shit to keep at it.

i mean there is nothing intricut, you pick up a weight, you lift it. the weight goes up, the weight goes down, repeat. easiest thing in the world in theory.

WOW 2007, guess they didn’t revise it much. Obviously, you have instinct, experience, and research that will guide you to question things. That should serve you well.

My Nutrition professor thought that after an athlete gets .6/g of protein / lb or something and 10-15% of their calories from fat, the rest of the diet should be carbs, and any extra calories should come from carbs to maintain weight.

Which meant something like… 80/10/10 c/p/f

I just thought my insulin and energy levels would be bouncing up and down every few hours with that ratio…

I asked if extra protein should be consumed for athletes and she said that “no, any extra protein is converted to fat, and the reason why athletes take more than they need is a myth that it will make you stronger”

I never asked another question. Besides, this was 3.5 years ago when I was a freshman and knew WHAT to eat, but didn’t understand all the science behind it… so I couldn’t really argue with someone who, while very wrong, could back it up with out-dated studies I would have never heard of…

My food, science, and technology professor also said that HFCS is fine. He invented Nutri-grain bars too, which IMO suck ass.

Ah well, while part of me wishes I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now to debate… part of me says… why bother, people are so narrow-minded and stubborn.

Is it me, or do statements 11 and 13 contradict each other in some way? Besides the rest of that pile of BS, that is. His reasoning doesn’t look quite consistent there.

I suspect the OP was using the same system for denoting reps and sets that I do, namely that if one is doing 8 reps three times, that is 8x3.

Thus his question was asking if 3 sets of 10 might elicit as much hypertrophy as 10 sets of 3, and the professor said no, because the weight would not then be a 3RM and only if the weight were that high would the hypertrophy be the same.

(Yes, I know, it is apparently more common to write, e.g., 10x3 to denote ten sets of three, even though it is not 10 times three – certainly isn’t something that is 10 being done times 3 – but rather is 10 of three and x does not ordinarily denote “of.” Still many or most do prefer to write it that way and I take it that is how you interpreted it.)

Well guys, good to know many of you have run into this problem. I’m considering going head to head with her in class, or just asking questions framed in such a way that would portray me as an innocent student wanting to know more of the picture.

Regarding the whole 10x3 thing, I meant 10 sets of 3 reps, as she said 3 sets of 10 reps would illicit hypertrophy.

Carnage, you are right, they do contradict themselves, which is another reason I posted them. To say that an “advanced” weightlifter needs more then 80% of their max to grow, but not lift anything close to their 3RM is stupid.

Although, one of her examples of undulating periodization DID have you doing 3x4 @92.4% of your 1 RM…maybe she doesn’t understand that if you deadlift 500, doing 3x4 at 460+ for 3 sets isn’t as easy as it sounds?

her? her??? well, there ya go… jk :wink:

well anyways, here’s some good reading material. I’ve only looked at page one though, there might be goodies later in the thread too.

[quote]LiveFromThe781 wrote:
i mean there is nothing intricut, you pick up a weight, you lift it. the weight goes up, the weight goes down, repeat. easiest thing in the world in theory.[/quote]

You know what’s easier and simpler? Doing nothing.

It’s easier in theory, and in real life.

[quote]dreads989 wrote:
Well guys, good to know many of you have run into this problem. I’m considering going head to head with her in class, or just asking questions framed in such a way that would portray me as an innocent student wanting to know more of the picture.

Regarding the whole 10x3 thing, I meant 10 sets of 3 reps, as she said 3 sets of 10 reps would illicit hypertrophy.[/quote]

Oh. Then her reply was not only wrong but illogical, and as mentioned, self-contradicting. The alternate notation would have still had her wrong but at least not illogical.

My profs regularly tell the Exercise Science students at my uni. outdated science and see it as the only way to think.

BEWARE THE DOGMA.

Play the game though. Answer their questions the way they want to. Suffer through class and listen to profs tell you that gemellus superior, gemellus inferior, obturator internus, obturator externus, piriformis, and quadratus femoris are 6 medial rotators at the iliofemoral joint.

Give them that answer on the test, because, I’ll be honest, I’m 19 and I’ve burned a few bridges already by thwarting ignorance with my hammer of evidence-based-up-to-date knowledge. And hell, I realize half the shit I think I know now will be different in a matter of months.

It’s the nature of science, but it pisses me off that there are professionals out there that don’t progress beyond what the textbook they graduated with said 20 years ago.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRGGGGGGG

[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
LiveFromThe781 wrote:
i mean there is nothing intricut, you pick up a weight, you lift it. the weight goes up, the weight goes down, repeat. easiest thing in the world in theory.

You know what’s easier and simpler? Doing nothing.

It’s easier in theory, and in real life.[/quote]

For reals.

Also, it’s sad that someone that is given the responsibility of looking over kids playing their sport doesn’t have the basic understanding to know the function of a few hip muscles.

(sadface)