#10 - Toning shoes—walking shoes with a specially rounded

[Luke Haqq]

Hi bilingli!

To start, there's a bit of speculation going on in the reasoning you provide. There'd need to be more traction and support for this in the stimulus, or a lengthier unpacking of it in the answer choice, for it to resolve the paradox.

More to the point, the paradox is about major leg muscles. The paradox is specifically that the toning shoes themselves don't increase the amount of exercise that major leg muscles receive, yet people who use them still experience strengthening their leg muscles.

Answer choice (A) is about small, underused muscles, and thus on its own is not directly related to the paradox at hand that deals with major leg muscles. It's possible that the two could be related, but again this would need to be spelled out in the answer choice or stimulus.

[lsc2024]

The reason I didn't like this one, is because the stimulus itself say "...major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise that those of" other people, in ordinary shoes. So, if walking is considered exercise (as it often is), but neither party's leg muscles gets more exercise than the other, then what else could it be? If it's the case that toning shoe people's leg muscles strengthen due to the shoe, but not because of more exercise, then the cause cannot be that toning shoe people walk more. I chose B, since it is not referring to any kind of exercise, and seems like a plausible explanation. Anyone want to point to where I went wrong in my logic?

[Adam Tyson]

Looks like you are misinterpreting that claim, lsc2024. When they tell us that "the major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of people walking in ordinary walking shoes," that's looking at the effect of walking in one or the other type of shoe on that person's muscles. Walking 100 yards in special shoes does exactly the same thing as does walking the same 100 yards in regular shoes. But it tells us nothing about how much walking those people do! The toning shoes aren't doing anything extra to exercise the muscles, but the person wearing those shoes might do something different than someone wearing regular shoes.

[miriamson07]

I initially eliminated answer choice C because I interpreted the phrase "major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of people walking in ordinary walking shoes" differently.

This is how I interpreted it: major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes are not exercised more than major leg muscles of people walking in ordinary shoes.

To me, it seems that the original phrase can be interpreted in two ways.
1) the way I interpreted i t
2) the EFFECT (on major leg muscles) of walking in toning shoes is no more than the EFFECT of walking in ordinary shoes.

My question is, is it technically correct to interpret the phrase the way I did? In which case, I would need to be able to see the second interpretation as well in order to select the right answer?

Thanks! I want to make sure that I'm not interpreting the English incorrectly. If it's the case that my interpretation is valid too, I know I just need to work on seeing multiple interpretations.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi miriamson,

The wording that you cited is indeed tricky and did confuse many test takers.

The statement "the major leg muscles of people walking in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those (meaning major leg muscles) of people wearing ordinary walking shoes" is comparing the rate of muscle exercise per unit of walking. In other words, it's comparing how much the leg muscles are worked out while walking as a rate rather than the total amount.

For example, if I said "the major leg muscles of people walking with ankle weights receive more exercise than those (meaning major leg muscles) of people not wearing ankle weights," this would mean walking with ankle weights causes the muscles to be exercised more per unit of walking (i.e. per step, per mile, etc.). However, the total amount that any individual exercises their muscles would vary depending on how much walking or other exercise that person does.

The stimulus is not saying that "people who walk in toning shoes exercise their major leg muscles no more than people who walk in ordinary running shoes." If that had been the intent of the statement, it would have been worded differently, comparing the people performing the exercise rather than the muscles receiving the exercise, and likely would have used the words "on average."

[benndur]

The wording in this question is truly awful. It was one only got two questions wrong on this section, and supposedly this is quite an easy one. I like many others immediately ruled out C) because of the stimulus:

"Toning shoes-walking shoes with a specially rounded
sole-are popular with fitness enthusiasts. Research
shows that the major leg muscles of people walking
in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of
people walking in ordinary walking shoes. Nevertheless,
many people experience a strengthening of their major
leg muscles after switching to toning shoes"

If the phrasing was something like,

"Research
shows that the major leg muscles of people walking
in toning shoes receive no more exercise activation than those of
people walking in ordinary walking shoes."

Or

"Researchshows that the major leg muscles of people a person walking
in toning shoes receive no more exercise than those of
people a person walking in ordinary walking shoes."

This would have been a trivial question. But this phrase is so misleading. While I understand the intended meaning in, retrospect, this sentence could just as easily describe a scenario where groups of people who use each type of shoe had their major leg muscles examined, and there being no difference between the two groups, suggesting similar levels of exercise between the two.

While I recognize that every question on the LSAT is carefully crafted, I truly wonder if the wording in this question was unintentionally misleading.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi benndur!

You could be right that it's unintentionally misleading. It's possible that it might even be intentionally opaque.

I also understand that sometimes things on the LSAT could be rephrased better. If worded differently, often the answer might be easier to get. Nevertheless, (C) really does resolve the discrepancy in this stimulus. As Jeff notes, there's a claim in the stimulus about the rate of muscle exercise being no different for those who use toning shoes versus those who use ordinance walking shoes. (C) resolves the paradox that many still experience a strengthening of their major leg muscles by switching to toning shoes, because (C) means the total amount of walking was greater for people who switched to toning shoes.

[benndur]

Hi Luke!

Oh I completely understand how and why C) resolves the paradox. It makes plenty of sense that getting more exercise would give you stronger legs, I just meant that I had immediately ruled it out because saying that the paradox would be resolved by something which the stimulus had (ostensibly) directly outlined did not occur seemed clearly wrong.

I instead went with B) "Muscles in the leg adapt to the rounded shape of toning shoes almost immediately" because given the rather ambiguous meaning of "adapt[ing] to the rounded shape" here, I could imagine a situation where this explained how their leg muscles got stronger without them getting more exercise: their legs "adapt[ed]" to the rounded shape by becoming stronger in a way that their legs don't appear to be getting more exercise, ex: the rounded form makes their leg muscles stronger through recruiting/activating more muscle fibers (leading to stronger legs), yet because they "adapt" to this, they don't show any greater fatigue/levels of exercise "

Clearly that was wrong and way too much overthinking but the mental gymnastics were only employed as a result of the poor wording causing me to discard C) as obviously wrong.