Whether you’re a beginner or an elite body builder, chances are you may have encountered some or all of these myths at some point in your life. Though most of the misconceptions around the gym are fairly harmless, they are still unacceptable if believing them blocks your fitness progress.
1. ‘You can turn fat into muscles’
This would be so cool and amazingly convenient if true, except it’s not because your body fats and muscles are completely different types of tissues, and so have very different sets of physiology.
Body fats are your body’s reserved energy, and your body is so efficient in conserving energy. When you accumulate excess calories from the food you eat it is stored in your body for future use, in the form of body fat.
Muscles are active tissues that burn calories, yet follow a different process of breaking down and rebuilding of muscle cells through protein synthesis, resulting in muscle growth.
Although you can decrease your body fats and gain an increase in muscle mass at the same time, there is no way to transform your fats magically into your muscles.
2. ‘More training, more gains’
While it is true that you have to train hard and train consistently, training too much and too often will actually impede your progress.
Excessive levels of workout and improper phasing of your routine may result in overtraining and can actually cause a decline in your performance. Feelings of fatigue, injury and demotivation are common signs of overtraining. It is important to be aware of these signs and to take time out to rest and recover.
Overtraining also results in elevation of levels of cortisol in your body and cause a decrease in the overall testosterone levels especially in men. *ooooohhh you certainly don’t want that to happen!*
3. “You should do more cardio to burn more fats”
Well, it is true that cardio and other aerobic exercises are effective in decreasing fats, but this will not be 100% effective in the long term.
After spending lots of hours in cardio there will be a point where you will hit the “wall”. This is due to the fact that long durations of the low and steady phases of cardio aerobic exercise will actually promote muscle loss, but not do much about fat loss.
If you want to lose more fats, try mixing your program with high energy demand exercises such as High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or straight up Weight Lifting. High energy demand exercises over a short amount of time will equal to higher stored energy consumptions, which in turn equals fat loss.
4.”Sit ups will burn your belly fat”
The truth is, you won’t be able to choose which part of your body will lose fat – nature will follow its own course on that. What actually happens, is you are toning down the muscles underneath the fat tissues and that will change your profile in that area.
Your belly fat will be the last thing your body will burn when it needs energy to consume. You can’t lose fats, no matter how many sit ups or flanks you do, so you need a more systematic training program and nutritional plan to keep your body fat percentage in check and eventually chip some of those fats away.
5. “Weights makes me look bulky or manly”
I think if there’s a bro science, this will be the equivalent to sis science.
Gaining serious lean mass that will make you look like a man in terms of body size proportion will take time, and requires specific, progressive training programs.
The reason for incorporating weight training into your fat loss program is to simply achieve higher metabolic rates, and thus a reduction in your body fat percentage as it is consumed by the increased metabolism.
There are more factors to consider, rather than just the type of exercise. Exercises are only as good as the type of nutritional diet that you provide along with them.
Remember, progress is by science, and in order for us to exceed our own physical limitations we must first exceed the limitations and false beliefs that are imposed on us. Filtering what is true from what is tradition may actually give us an edge, and provide better options for improving ourselves.
