Originally Posted by seely
No they are good trainers, and it was free... its for a cycling trip I am going on. They want to make sure we don't die on the trip and are in reasonably good shape before we go. The stairclimb was just to guage our recovery from a short intense workout as I understand it. I think our professors had told them not to give us our results, but the trainer gave me mine and just said she couldn't really comment on them. I'm thinking its because they don't want us to go into the trip with any preconceived ideas or something. The goal of the trip is to learn about biochemistry, fitness and nutrition and the role they play in an active persons life (hence why we are biking 700 miles). I think we also do this as a before/after thing so we can see some improvement when we get back. I just asked because I don't know anything about heartrates and was hoping someone could shed some light, sorry if it kinda rubbed you the wrong way.
For testing general fitness, as I said, it is not a horrifying manner to do so. BUT if you are trying to use these values for cycling, that's a NO- and they are BAD trainers if they can't make your results crystal clear to you and explain the results to you so that you have confusion on what these test results show. She SHOULD really comment on them. If she can't, then she probably DOESN'T know what the results mean, and that's why she really can't comment. It's incompetence, and it shouldn't be tolerated, even if it's free.
There is definitely a better way to conduct this trip to learn about biochemistry, fitness and nutrition- they are really being about as non-scientific as it gets when you use general fitness tests for cycling, and you have no clear manner to test your theories and come to some solid conclusions. At the very least, they should give you better testing methods that are a bit more scientific than this. A stair and step test is not going to change within a weekend. No one is going to be that fit in a short amount of time to see a difference unless you are tested scientifically (and even then, you will not see any real results in a weekend either).
What rubs me the wrong way is the incredible incompetence of people who are supposed to be professionals who do more harm than good, then leave the person being tested with more questions than answers. And one day, you will seek the advice of another professional, and that person will be left to clean up the mess of the idiot you were working with on the stair and step test.
Koffee