21 Biggest Myths About Exercise (3 of 4)

Never Work Out With Friends As It’s Distracting

If you bring along a friend to the gym, you may be sucked into conversation. While some people think of this as a huge time waster, keep in mind that tag-teaming can supercharge any routine as well. One study in 2015 found that those who were with their buddies worked out harder than those who did it solo.

This kind of makes sense since having someone else there with you can help you in being more accountable. Not only that but deep down we both know you want to try and impress your friend subconsciously so you’ll work out harder anyway.

Lean Muscle is Different From Bulk

You may have heard talk about “lean muscle” tossed around in the gym before but I’ve got something to tell you.

While that term is certainly common these days, there is no such thing as “lean muscle.”

I turn to Pamela Geisel, MS, CSCS, CPT, an exercise physiologist who told Self in 2017, that the term was nothing but a marketing tactic targeting women. Though the term in question was “long, lean muscle” we still use it for that reason. The term was created for women who were afraid of “bulking up.”

But what’s also worth noting is that all of our muscles are technically lean in nature already. There is no way for us to make them more lean or less lean as there are no exercise regimen in the world out there that can manipulate the length of our muscles.

You Need To Show Up To The Gym Every Day

Common logic dictates if you want to be in better health, you need to exercise more. For some people it means adding gym time into your daily routine.

While that can be sound logic, people fail to realize a few things. First of all, if you’re going to a gym, you’re going to be working out more than usual. The thing with that though is that you need to allow your body to rest up after those sessions.

Those resting sessions are what your muscles use to repair themselves and strengthen themselves. After all, working out is the idea of injuring your body in order for it to repair itself and grow stronger for next time.

That process becomes harder to do if you are more focused on exercising all the time.

Secondly, this resting is used for another purpose. It’s to bring your muscles back but to restore the muscles fibres too. If you are constantly exercising, your muscles are too worn out to grow properly.

Always Do Cardio First

A lot of people think that doing cardio first is important, but that is far from the truth. While this standard across most practices, you’re better off going to your other exercises before cardio.

Why?

Well Max Lowery, a personal trainer, uncovered in 2017 that cardio actually depletes muscle glycogen stores. In English that means the stored energy that you use for explosive activity like lifting heavier weights or doing other tougher activities.

What this means is that doing cardio now means that the training you’re doing for your strength and weight will be less effective.

Lifting Doesn’t Do Anything For Weight Loss

When you think of losing weight or burning fat, people’s immediate thoughts go to cardio as the method. But as I mentioned above, cardio takes a long time for you to see any kind of results if you’re looking to burn fat.

But not only do people focus on cardio, they forget entirely about lifting weights or doing anything with weights. The thing is though, the weight room is probably the best and fastest way to be losing weight. One study in 2019 found that a person weighing 155 pounds burned roughly 112 calories per 30 minutes of weight training.

Compare that to cardio, you’re losing 298 calories per 30 minutes.

Sure cardio is more, but those numbers are still pretty impressive.