"The philosophy of running is the philosophy of holism... to function as you are supposed to function, to achieve your personal best."            
                                                                        - Dr. George Sheehan

 

A rapidly growing discipline, exercise physiology is a branch of physiology that deals with the functioning of the body during exercise.  Physiology is a branch of biological science concerned with the function of organisms and their parts.  Since the human body follows nature’s laws of structure and function, the study of exercise physiology is intertwined with other disciplines, such as anatomy, biochemistry, molecular biology, endocrinology, and biophysics.

While I was pursuing my Ph.D., people asked me all the time why I was doing so if I wanted to be an entrepreneur.  You certainly don’t need a Ph.D. for that.  After all, you can count the number of coaches, personal trainers, and freelance writers with a Ph.D. on one hand.  I chose to pursue a Ph.D. for a few reasons, but mainly because I wanted to acquire a level of freedom and independence that I thought I would not have had without the degree.  I love learning, and I believe that knowledge is power.  But pursuing a Ph.D. isn’t just about acquiring knowledge.  It’s also about developing your own ideas and adding to the body of knowledge that already exists.  It’s about becoming a scholar.  For me, pursuing the Ph.D. was about developing a higher level of understanding and thinking so I can play with the “big boys” and so I can offer the best service to my athletes and clients.  Whatever career opportunities my future holds, having gone through that rigorous academic process allows me to operate on a higher level.

As I learned over the seven years it took to obtain a Ph.D., there is a large transformation that takes place over a number of years between a master’s degree and a Ph.D.  What changes is that you go from reading the research of others to being one of the researchers.  You go from reading the works of other scholars to being one of the scholars whose work is read.  You go from reading the novels of others to writing your own novel.  You go from being on the outside looking in to being on the inside.  You go from watching the poker game to sitting at the table with your own set of chips.  Despite all the stress, frustration, and anxiety that accompanies the pursuit of a Ph.D., that’s pretty darn cool.