Are you hitting the gym regularly and still not getting the desired results? Or are you a beginner and have recently joined a gym? In either case, your first step to achieving a perfect body and being a part of the fitness buffs club starts with avoiding bad advice. Popular versions of fitness fictions and and late night fitness commercials can often be a misleading trap which make your workouts not only more strenuous but also useless. So here’s debunking 10 popularly followed workout myths. Although these facts will not help you get a chiseled body tomorrow, it definitely will go a long way to put you on the right track and help find ways of meeting your fitness objectives.
Getting drenched after your cardio workout or afternoon run doesn’t mean that you’ve burnt extra calories. Sweat has nothing to do with weight loss. In fact it is your body’s way of getting rid of heat. Fat remains oxidized inside the body, and its not going to vanish just because you’re sweating.
Crunches undoubtedly strengthens muscles of the abdomen area but it hardly makes lose you lose that muffin top. A slim mid section comes with a lean body. Everyone has abdomen muscles, you just need to lose the fat to make them pop – and crunches don’t help!
Even though most running injuries generally affects the knees, running in itself doesn’t harm them. Quite in contrast running helps in thickening the cartilage of your knee cartilage. This is the reason experts advice regular jogs in addition to a full body workout. So the next time you go for a run, be rest assured your knees are safe!
Age does have an effect on the body, but that does not mean body development stops. With regular workouts, you’re still a training child at 40. Moreover, you can build muscles at 40 despite hormonal deficiencies, but in this case a prior health check up can help.
This is a concern many women express when asked to train with weights. Women have smaller muscles in the cross sectional areas, resulting in smaller muscle gains and also their hormonal status, which obviously differs from men. Masculinization in females are a result of excessive androgenic hormones, and female weight lifters in the media take steroids to build bigger muscles. Without use of such steroids, lifting weights can possibly not make you look like a man. Instead it cuts your fat, tones you up and helps you get closer to your desired shape.
Lower hormone levels and less athletic activity causes metabolism to slow down as one gets older. But this doesn’t mean you cant stay fit after 30. A healthy diet and moderate exercise can enable you to stay in shape. But an untrained body is even more evident as you get older.
Yoga does not make you lose weight, though it does have other benefits. It does not help burn as many calories as a regular cardiovascular workout but instead focuses on improving flexibility, balance, strength and also helps keep the heart safe. Only practicing hot yoga helps in weight loss, not all its forms.
This is not a complete myth. Aerobics does help in boosting metabolism, but not even close to what you might expect. The fact is that it helps you to burn only 20 extra calories for the day – which hardly counts as fat loss.
Swimming helps in improving lungs and better breathing, also helps in toning muscles but it does not help in losing weight. This happens because the buoyancy of the water helps support the body and results in a far less strenuous workout as compared to running where you need your own steam. Its always nice to take a dip in the pool, but remember that extra lengths don’t make you lose extra calories.
Soreness occurs due to chemical inflammation in the body. If you’ve completed your workout and still feel fine then your energy expenditure was probably just right. Complete your goal and you’re good to go – soreness does not help you lose weight or gain muscles.
