8 Myths and Truths About Fitness
1. More Exercise is better
No, you don’t need to spend two hours on the treadmill and then another two hours weight training. Because guess what? There is such a thing as over training. The key is balance and specificity to your body. You want to find a balance between healthy eating, cardio, and resistance work.
When you over train, you risk injury and creating new imbalances in your body that will cause you major problems down the road. If you’re injured, you can’t train and you start losing all that hard work you’ve put in. Whether your goal is sports performance, weight loss, or fixing an existing issue or imbalance, the answer is the same: find a plan that’s well-rounded so you have a balanced amount of cardio, resistance, and mobility work.
2. Exercise just one spot
Do you have that one area on your body that just drives you crazy? Do you spend all of your time in the gym just doing inner thigh exercises to tighten and get rid of the fat there? If you do, it’s time to stop. “Don’t stop working the muscle but stop overdoing the one area. Spot training doesn’t exist.
Yes, you can create muscle in the area you are working but you will never see the results if you don’t lose the fat that’s surrounding it. The way to get to this goal is to change up your training program and challenge the muscles in different ways to force your body to get out of the rut. Then you will start seeing real change!
3. Stop spending all your time running or on cardio machines! You need weights to change your muscles. You’re more likely to lose muscle tone and strength if all you do is cardio. The resistance will help you tone and tighten, and you will look leaner, stronger and healthier without looking bulky.
4. We’ve all seen the impressive Instagram posts and totally understand how it seems like yoga is meant for people who have Gumby-like flexibility. But the truth is that even the least flexible people should embrace yoga. Yoga helps you gain flexibility. If you are stiff, that is a reason to start practicing. So, get on those yoga pants and get started in a beginner class!
5. The myth that you need more protein
When’s the last you ever heard someone complaining about being sick from a protein deficiency? Probably never. And Brown feels that the over consumption of protein has contributed to obesity and heart disease. Why? The meat industry.
“Because animal protein is generally high in saturated fats, it is one of the main causes of detrimental conditions like heart disease and morbid obesity,” Brown explains. “But because animal agriculture is one of the largest businesses in America and farmers want to make their money, this goes unheard and we’re brainwashed into thinking that we need more meat and more protein—when really our bodies are not designed to handle a high daily protein intake.”
6. Running should not be exhausting
You think of taking up running and images of breathlessly going uphill or miserably pounding the sidewalk might fill your head—but it doesn’t have to be that way. The vast majority of running a person performs should be a fairly easy effort and conversational pace. Runs should be ended before the runner feels like they absolutely must end the run due to fatigue. Keeping the workouts easier and shorter allows the runner to run more consistently, frequently, and recover better.
7. Soreness is a part of good workout
Most believe that muscle soreness is caused by lactic acid but it’s actually more of a contributing factor. Micro tears and damage in muscle tissue are what causes soreness, strength and conditioning coach, functional medicine practitioner and sports nutritionist. Doing an intense workout can cause soreness and is typically delayed between 24-48 hours.
8. More Sweat more burned calories
That would be inefficient. You will either fatigue and have to reduce your intensity due to what’s known as thermal breakdown, or if you are highly conditioned, your body will level off temperature regulation breaking somewhat even with caloric burn. Even taking all of this into consideration, the desired source of calorie burn would ideally be fat. But there are many factors at play that unless you have sophisticated equipment to measure you can’t really be sure how much fat you are burning. We do know that you’re burning some but how much is difficult to tell and more sweat is not a reliable metric.
