Way back in 2022, I wrote a blog post about 10 common misconceptions in PE teaching. That post has been incredibly popular and the feedback I have received about it has been excellent. Therefore, just over two years later, I am going to write a follow-up with 10 more misconceptions that, I believe, PE teachers commonly make.
10 more misconceptions:
Misconception 1: Energy is produced aerobically or anaerobically.
PE teachers tend to tell their students the following things (you can read more about this in my blog on ‘Teaching Aerobic and Anaerobic Energy at GCSE-PE Level’):
Oxygen + Glucose ------> Water + Carbon dioxide + Energy
And
Glucose -----> Lactic acid + Energy
Both of these equations are false. In fact, energy is never a product of a metabolic reaction. If you consider that glucose is an energy-rich reactant, both equations are structured to release that energy but in neither case is that energy produced. In contrast, water and carbon dioxide ARE produced aerobically and lactic acid IS produced anaerobically.
A nice way to represent this to your students is to change the shape of your equations. Take a look at this:
Notice the difference between this image and the standard equations used before. Notice that the only reactants are glucose and oxygen and the only products are carbon dioxide and water. Energy is merely released from the energy-rich glucose in this process.
Now, take a look at the second example:
Notice that we have the same concepts but, this time, the process is anaerobic and, crucially, far less energy is released in the process. This equation is so good… so correct… that it should leave a student to ask you “Miss/Sir, so where is the leftover energy?” The answer, of course, is within the lactic acid, much of which will be processed by the body and either utilised or restored.
This is what “good teaching” should do: it should stimulate intuitive thoughts and questions in the learner.
Misconception 2: Warm-up prevents injury.
I have read and heard this misconception in many, many places. Warm-ups definitely don’t prevent injury. Many injuries occur to athletes that have warmed up. Rather, warming up is amongst the good practice behaviours an athlete can use to minimise the risk of injury. Therefore, warming up can be considered an application of the reversibility principle too because it is being done to help an athlete have less time off training due to injury.
Try to help your students have this idea clear and try to correct them when they write this down in their answers.
Misconception 3: Wasting time is gamesmanship.
Let’s get things clear, wasting time in sport is breaking the rules. Therefore, it cannot be gamesmanship. Wasting time, delaying play, feigning injury, etc. are all acts of deviance.
Let’s be reminded:
Gamesmanship is an act, within the rules of a sport, with the aim of gaining the fullest advantage possible in order to make winning more likely.
Therefore, if a sports team tries to play the last few minutes of a match they are leading in, camped in the opposition’s half of the pitch and winning set piece after set piece, this is definitely gamesmanship because the aim is to win and the action is within the rules. However, if a performer in that same team wastes time by refusing to restart play or by deliberately switching the set pieces taker, this is deviant and, where possible, an official should penalise this behaviour.
I find that both PE students and PE teachers confuse gamesmanship and deviance all the time. An act that is outside of the rules, whether penalised or not, can NEVER be gamesmanship.
Please try to help your students make clearer examples of this. Furthermore, consider the interesting conversations that may be possible once the concept and examples are clear (for example, the nuance of sports rule-making or the link between gamesmanship, deviance and commercialisation). You may even be able to extrapolate the differences between a win ethic, where gamesmanship would be entirely normalised and even deemed as functional, and a win-at-all-costs mentality, which is almost always the driver of deviant behaviours.
Misconception 4: Training causes the lungs to get bigger/more alveoli to grow.
It is common in courses like GCSE PE, A-level PE, BTEC Sport or CTEC Sport for students to learn and teachers to teach that a respiratory effect of long-term training is that the lungs get bigger. This is not true. The thoracic cavity cannot realistically be enlarged by training and lung tissue will not grow as a result.
However, it is certainly true to say that long-term training can cause an athlete to better utilise their lungs. For example, all of the following statements are true about long-term training effects on the respiratory system:
So, it’s easy to understand why teachers say that the lungs get bigger but we need to be accurate with our students and ensure that they don’t develop misconceptions.
Misconception 5: Flexion is a decrease in joint angle/Extension is an increase in joint angle.
Worryingly, this is currently written into the specification of one mainstream exam board’s PE/Sport course. I won’t name names. I have raised it with them directly.
The thing is, joint flexion does not decrease the joint angle. Rather, flexion at a hinge joint, specifically, decreases the joint angle. Likewise for the inverse and joint extension. When we are teaching about hinge joints specifically, it’s fine to say this but it is simply not accurate with ball-and-socket joints, as well as some other joint types.
Please be as accurate as possible when describing these things to your learners and expect the highest levels of accuracy back from them too.
Misconception 6: Plasma is another type of blood cell.
I heard this recently in a lesson I observed. Plasma is not cellular. Unlike red blood cells, white blood cells and the cell fragments that we call platelets, plasma is not made up of biological matter. Rather, it is the fluid that the blood cells are suspended (held) in. The plasma helps to transport the blood cells to their areas of need but plasma is not made of cells.
You may be wondering what, then, plasma is. Well, it’s a combination of stuff. Mostly it is water. Literally, water. When you drink your pint of water in the morning, much of it will loosen the blood a little. But there are plenty of other things in plasma too. You already know that there are suspended cells such as red blood cells but there are also loads of proteins such as hormones as well as other clotting agents like fibrinogen. There are also gases such as carbon dioxide and oxygen. You see, not all gases are transported by red blood cells. A little bit of oxygen and quite a lot of carbon dioxide dissolve into the plasma itself. Finally, there are nutrients such as lipids and glucose and some other bits and bobs.
Whilst I tend not to teach this specifically to my PE students, I do mention to them (especially my A-level groups) that the plasma in the blood behaves very differently to the blood cells as it passes the tissues. Picture, for example, blood passing through a capillary bed at the muscle. Capillaries are really tiny and the red blood cells take up almost all of the space of the vessel.
The water from the plasma is squeezed out of the capillary and enters the tissue as something called “tissue fluid” and can reenter the capillary at the exit point. Most students don’t realise this, and it’s really useful when one is teaching about diffusion gradients, short pathways, etc. Once again, I don’t teach the principles of tissue fluid unless I am in an A-level biology class but the awareness is helpful.
Misconception 7: Fartlek is a type of interval training.
Fartlek is continuous training. It is continuous because the forward motion of the performer never stops although the intensity may change between a sprint, run and walk. There is no intermittency, no stop and start and, therefore, Fartlek is continuous.
Do make your students aware of this as it helps them to think about Fartlek as a natural alternative to steady-state continuous training.
Misconception 8: Some cultures discourage females from participating in physical activity.
Wow, this one is a biggy. It’s also a little sensitive. Without naming and blaming, there is currently more than one exam board that will credit answers about engagement patterns when a student writes something like:
“Some cultures such as Asian British don’t value sport, physical activity and PE as highly as others and, therefore, participation levels are lower.”
I have been reading –I believe– widely around this topic and, to my knowledge, there is absolutely no evidence for this belief. It is, in fact, a myth. Apart from the first 95 minutes of the Bend it Like Beckham movie (love that film!), there seems to be little certainty about this but it is definitely marked as correct in at least some PE exams as an answer to some questions.
The thing is, I know for a fact that I do not know if this is true or not. More importantly, I am damn sure that the exam boards definitely don’t know whether it is true. Furthermore, something about it feels really uncomfortable to me. Therefore, I am encouraging you, the PE teaching network, to challenge this myth as it appears there is nothing reliable about it and, potentially, it is damaging and even alienating.
Misconception 9: Thomas Arnold encouraged sports as headteacher of Rugby School.
Anyone reading this who has been teaching A-level PE for a few years will be aware of Dr Thomas Arnold. He was the headteacher of Rugby School between 1828 and 1841 and he is broadly credited for providing the context within which modern sport could develop.
This, to a degree, is true. However, many PE teachers say that Dr Arnold encouraged sports to be played during his tenure. This is not true.
So what happened?
Dr Arnold ascended to his headship at Rugby at a time when the lifestyle of elite public school days was very spartan. Within schools, violence and bullying were common and alcohol use and off-site activities like hunting and swimming (in local rivers) involved trespassing on local land. Dr Arnold, as a very pious and reforming character, looked to curtail these activities and one or two of the ways he did so was to ban off-site activities altogether and to give sixth formers responsibility for the behaviour of the boys in their houses.
Within this context, games such as rugby developed as on-site, controlled activities that allowed the boys to release their masculine energies and to compete and be boisterous without breaking rules.
Dr Arnold, rather than encouraging the games, simply turned a blind eye to that which was not as awful as what went before and, in this context, rugby and other games developed. Maybe, maybe, maybe… Arnold was a genius and he set a trap for the boys knowing that they would invent this game that had never existed until that moment but it is far more likely that he got lucky.
I’m not knocking Dr Arnold. In fact, I revere some aspects of his character and especially his impact as an educational reformer but I just can’t credit him with the encouragement of modern sport as many do in their PE lessons. Fella got lucky!
I thought I would share some of my original online teaching about this concept. This video was recorded by me way back in 2016 and describes, amongst other things, the role of Thomas Arnold at Rugby School:
Misconception 10: Knee flexion is caused by the hamstrings.
I could have chosen any joint for this one because the point I want to make is that there is not one single muscle causing movement at any joint.
I’m pretty sure your students, like mine, learn the relationship between the biceps and elbow flexion, say, or the quadriceps and knee extension. These classic combinations are often rote learned in the minds of students and this can cause an issue.
The thing is that the biceps does not always cause movement at the elbow and the quadriceps does not always cause movement at the knee. As you can tell from the title of this misconception, neither do the hamstrings always cause flexion at the knee. These things are only true if the nature of the contraction occurring is an isotonic concentric contraction (technically, it could also be the case with an isokinetic contraction but I’m going to leave this out of my post).
Where the student’s knowledge will betray them is when, for example, a performer is landing from a jump:
Let’s assume this performer has just landed (left side). We can certainly agree that the knee is flexed. Therefore, many students will argue that this is caused by the hamstrings because they have this fixed connection in their minds. Let’s actually think about this: what actually caused that knee flexion? The answer is the weight force (mass x gravity) acting downwards on the performer as she lands. She needs to control this force and, to do so, she eccentrically contracts her quadriceps muscles to act as a brake and slow her down.
The same could be said of a performer flexing their elbows to catch a medicine ball. This would be an eccentric contraction of the triceps and would have nothing to do with the biceps despite it being elbow flexion.
Students get this wrong all the time and I encourage teachers to help them grasp the intuition better.
Conclusions
So, there you have it. There are now 20 common misconceptions that I have written about once you add in my previous post on ‘Ten most common misconceptions in PE teaching’.
I hope that reading my posts is resourceful for you. I very much enjoy writing them and, whilst you folks keep reading them, I’ll keep doing exactly that.
Please consider adding a comment below. I always reply!
Have a lovely day.
James