PHYS30005: Muscle and Exercise Physiology

2 x 15% Multichoice/fill in the blanks from options tests, 1 x 10% 500 word assignment.

Okay so I didn't enjoy this subject nearly as much as I thought I would. I'll get to that, but first the pros of the subject.
Firstly, the subject is very well assessed. There is rarely a dodgy question or assessment of something that wasn't taught or presented, study the material and there really isn't any reason not to do well. Secondly, Gordon Lynch is amazing, unfortunately he didn't take as many lectures as he usually would in the subject but the ones you have him for are incredibly well taught. He also teaches what I consider the more interesting aspects of this subject which is anabolic agents, muscle injury, degeneration, regeneration and muscle plasticity. All of these lectures were incredibly interesting even though I thought they were somewhat simplified. What I mean is that the lectures may teach what adaptive changes a muscle may make to certain stimuli but doesn't really elaborate on how this happens. Eg: we learnt that in response to endurance exercise, muscle will get smaller, make more mitochondria, make blood vessels etc but NONE of this is really explained how, there were hints at explanation but certainly nothing explicit. I have no idea if this is because we don't know or if its because its just not part of lecture series but either way, it's something I wish they had.

Moving on to my 2nd problem with this subject. Mark Hargreaves. Mark unfortunately has one of the worst lecturing styles I have seen, he uses fewer slides than most and fills them with graphs (I am not kidding, every single slide will be graphs except 1 or 2). This would be fine if he actually explained the graphs. Half the time he forgets to tell you what is on the axis and so you are left wondering what is actually increasing with what. His lecture content could actually be reasonably interesting. He just presents it very poorly and his lectures lack a theme I guess. I come out of his lectures asking myself what did I actually learn with a thousand physiological responses to memorise whereas other lectures I come out with an overall conclusion and only 100 or so things to learn. Anyway that's just my 2 cents, other people find hargreaves okay. For me he was unbearable and ruined the subject.

Also, just remember that the first 15 lectures are essentially on what happens to various physiological measures when you increase intensity or duration or bother. By physiological measures I mean, oxygen, calcium, glycogen, fat, protein and then the factors that cause them to do whatever they do. I guess for me, I didn't really expect this aspect of the subject to be so detailed and I did find a lot of it quite boring

Like I said though, assessment is fair and IMO easier than my other subjects (well atleast my biomed one)
Subject could be a 4 with better lecturing, but as it is, I would not do it if I could go back in time.
PM me for any questions

Yes with screen capture

Mixture of a fair few lectures but 20 or so of the lectures are taken by Mark Hargreaves and Gordon Lynch.

No idea.

3/5

Don't need any textbook, there isn't one anyway. If anything you will be referring to science papers.

3 lectures a week

2014 - Semester 1

H1

Two tests = 15% each, Assignment = 10%, Exam = 60%

Overall I found this subject really interesting and enjoyable. The subject was a great learning environment and you could really see the coordinators had gone out of their way to provide a subject that taught students about the latest cutting-edge research in the area. There were two main lecturers for the subject, Gordon Lynch and Mark Hargreaves, who taught muscle physiology and exercise physiology respectively. Muscle physiology covered topics such as muscle injury and repair, growth promoting agents for muscle and adaptations of muscles to training. Exercise physiology covered topics such as the various fuels (carbohydrates, fats etc.) used during exercise and responses to exercise. There were various other lecturers covering other topics in the field, with many presenting information on the research they were conducting. These were really interesting and really gave insight into what doing honours in physiology would be like.
I really enjoyed this subject and found it really interesting. Extremely glad I chose this subject as it was the the main reason for me switching from a Human Structure and Function major to a Physiology major. Highly recommend this subject.

Yes, with screen capture

Gordon Lynch, Mark Hargreaves, Rene Koopman, Kristy Swiderski and various others

Yes

4.5/5

-

Three lectures per week

2012, Semester 1

H2A 78

There are 2 MCQ tests worth 15%, an assignment (mentioned above) worth 10% and the exam worth 60%.

I thought this subject was pretty good. It is quite interesting and we learn about things such as sarcopenia, muscular dystrophy, muscle development, adaptations to training, performance enhancing drugs etc. (have a look at the handbook for more info). All the content is taught by researchers, and if you are contemplating honours in physiology this could be a good subject to do, as there seemed to be a lot of recruitment by the lecturers for honours students. Some problems i had with the subject was contradictory information at times between lectures and lecturers. There is also quite a lot of information presented, but doable if you can understand the key concepts. The subject is a lot more challenging than i think a lot of people anticipated, but i thought that overall it was quite a good subject and i enjoyed it.

Yes, with screen capture.

Yes. About 10 years worth, although the course has changed a little during this time so you would have to look for the relevant questions.

3.5-4/5

I think they recommended a textbook, however i didn't use one. The subject is based a lot around the lecturers research and current understanding of much of the content taught changes quite rapidly, so textbooks may be out of date anyway.

Weekly 3 x 1 hour lectures (except once every 3 weeks or so where there would only be 2 lectures for the week). There was also a workshop but this was kind of pointless since we were given an assignment that we could do at home.

H1