"Now
THERE was a valuable exercise to perform!
Especially if you have any 70 year old place kickers or soccer players! I guess they probably could control the variables better with a one dimensional machine exercise and they could do sitting down"
I totally agree that the choice of exercises in most scientific studies could be better i.e. more use of free weights etc, however one of the problems faced when trying to design a study like this is that many of the subjects have not peformed any training of any sort so would need to be taught how to squat etc before any testing could take place etc.
The main reason for the research is too establish if the muscle will respond to the given exercise and then looking at the mechanisms behind the response.