EXERCISE MYTH DEBUNKED
Toning, shaping or sculpting are the three common exercise goals. Toning refers to making your muscle tighter when you are not working them, shaping refers to changing the shape of your muscle, and sculpting refers to building your muscle while reducing body fat, so it shows.
Testosterone is the driving force behind muscle growth, and they are really hard to build. It takes men years of hard training and proper diet, maybe even with the help of supplements to build muscle. Women have approximately one-sixteenth of the testosterone of an average guy couldn’t build a lot of muscle even if they tried.
Some people are under the illusion that certain exercises will make long, lean muscles like a dancer’s while others will result in bulky gains. Whether you do weight training, Pilates or yoga, muscle shape will come out the same, with the difference being that strength training will grow your muscles faster than Pilates or yoga.
Without well-trained muscles, your body will never look the way you want, no matter how little fat you’re carrying.
Let’s debunk four other popular exercise myths for you.
Muscle Growth Myth #1 : The more you exercise, the better.
Have you heard the myth that grinding away for hours in a gym every day and the magic will happen? Don’t believe it. Doing tons of sets, or doing exercises in bad form, pushing yourself too hard will lead to a lack of results, frustration, discouragement, and confusion. Many people have quit due to one of the mistakes mentioned.
A couple hours of intense weight or resistance training can make you weaker, you are breaking down too much muscle here. In this case, less is more.
Muscle Growth Myth #2 : Repetitions with lightweight will help you grow muscle
If you are doing a ton of repetitions with light weights to tone your muscles, your muscles won’t look any different than they currently are.
Building a great body is a pain in the butt. It takes considerable time, effort, discipline, and dedication. If you don’t want to exert too much effort, then there will be no gains. Eventually, you probably will quit out of despair and frustration.
Muscle Growth Myth #3 : You have to keep pushing.
The burning sensation you feel after each workout is the buildup of Lactic acid, which is released as a muscle burns its energy stores. It tells the body to start producing muscle-growth hormones, but too much of it impairs muscle growth and causes tissues to break down.
Moderate burn is good.
Muscle Growth Reality #4: Resting period is not important.
Do you know muscles grow during the recovery period—the period between workouts of the same muscle groups.
If you wait too few days before training a muscle group again, you can lose strength and muscle size. If you allow your muscles enough recuperation time (and eat correctly), however, you will experience maxi-mum strength and size gains.
Muscle Growth Reality #5: You have to hit a gym to get fit.
Most of gym machines and contraptions are good for training size but are not very cost-effective in general, they fail to simulate key core and stabilization muscles. There’s something oddly effective about the exercises that allow the body to move in a free range of motion and paved the way to functional fitness.
