The Insanity of College Testing

I sit here at the computer at work as I am preparing notes for the Team Mallard meeting later in the day. I look at the bar at the bottom of the screen and notice a tab that reads "APK 4125 exam 2 review". APK 4125 is titled Physical Fitness Assessment and Exercise Prescription. When I get finished with my notes and the structure of the meeting I take a look at this exam review. I was pretty shocked...

First lets look at some of the nutrition questions:
Of all the substances consumed, which is the most problematic in terms of weight gain in the United States?
Carbs

Not three question later this comes up:
What percentage of your daily caloric intake should come from carbohydrates?
45-65% of calories

So you are telling me that while carbs are the most problematic substances in our diet, we should still get over half of our daily calories from that source? Then we come to strength training. In my personal opinion most people have no idea what actual strength training is. When I hear someone say, "I'm strength training right now", it usually elicits an automatic eye-roll reaction from me. Here is one of the questions that got my blood boiling:

What range of intensities would you prescribe for strength gains?
60-70 for novice, 70-80 for intermed, 80-100 for advanced

Why in the hell would you give lower intensitites to someone that has a horrible motor unit recruitment? A beginner will not fire anywhere as many muscle fibers as an advanced lifter. For instance, when doing Dynamic Effort in the conjugate method you would be better off giving an advanced lifter 40% load and the beginner a 10-15% increase in load. Why? You need to get that beginner using the high threshold motor units so his adaptation is better. You'll actually notice that even with that 10-15% difference the advanced and the beginner will have similar percieved exertion.

I'm gonna stop now because I can feel the smoke coming out of my ears.