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13 Common Myths About Exercise

It’s list time. How many of these exercise myths do you believe?

Exercise Mythsexercise myths

1. Sit-ups will help you lost fat around your stomach.

  • You lose body fat all over your body, not just in one spot. Doing only sit-ups will give you strong muscles under layers of fat.

2. Out of shape or old people lack energy to exercise.

  • Regular exercise like joggling actually increases your energy. If you haven’t worked-out in a while, start slowly and steadily work to higher fitness goals.

3. Exercise turns fat into muscle.

  • Fat is fat and muscle is muscle. They will not magically change into one another. When you exercise you burn fat and tone your muscle. The fact that it happens at the same time probably led to this myth.

4. If you exercise and don’t lose weight you’re doing something wrong.

  • Actually, you might initially start to gain weight. You burn fat but build muscle which is more dense than fat. If you aren’t losing weight and you’re exercising then you are probably gaining muscle. Keep at it and your weight will go down too.

5. Weight training will make you muscle-bound.

  • Not unless you try to look this way. Reasonable weight training will help tone and strengthen your muscles. This makes it easier to burn fat.

6. Eat more protein to increase muscle mass.

  • Not really. You probably eat more protein than you need already. In fact, forget about supplements. They don’t really help and they could actually be harming your kidneys.

7. It’s best to exercise in the morning.

  • Time of day doesn’t matter when it comes to exercising. The only thing to consider is that if you exercise just before going to bed, it might make it harder to get to sleep.

8. Stretching after exercise can prevent muscle soreness.

9. People with high blood pressure shouldn’t lift weights.

  • As long as it’s not done excessively people with high blood pressure can lift weights. Make sure you breath properly which means exhaling when you lift and inhaling when you are resting. Of course, you should see a doctor before beginning a weight-lifting program.

10. You need extra salt after sweating heavily.

  • No. You would have to perspire more than a gallon and a half of water just to lose the amount of salt you normally eat in a day. That would be over 13 pounds of sweat!

11. Exercise machines are better than free weights.

  • Both can be effective. It just depends on how well you use them.

12. Exercise is dangerous.

  • Not really. No matter how poor of shape you are in, as long as you start out slow and don’t overexert yourself, you can avoid injury. A gradual increase in intensity is key.

13. No pain, no gain.

  • It makes for a cute rhyme but it’s not true. Stop exercising if you feel serious discomfort or injury. At times running will be painful but that’s just the price you pay to be a world-famous juggling runner or to keep a joggling streak alive.
This Post Has 7 Comments
  1. Can’t believe people still think doing situps alone will make their belly fat disappear.
    Great list – thanks for sharing.

  2. I like your balanced, thoughtful approach to fitness. A lot of people don’t exercise because they think is has to be tortuous or they think they have to do really high intensity work outs to receive any benefit. The truth is that if they found some activity that they enjoyed that got them moving, the benefits would be tremendous. Move your body people! Do something besides watching TV. Just do it.

  3. That’s a great list.

    It’s #4 which really causes me the most trouble. If I take a week off running, then I nearly always lose weight. If I start running again after a break, I put weight on.

    The fact that running makes me want to eat more might just have something to do with it, though.

    I ran seven miles this morning, so now is not the time to consider dieting. Maybe I’ll get onto that, just as soon as I’ve re-stocked the fridge …

  4. I know what you mean. My weight doesn’t seem to be affected much by the amount that I run. You’d think joggling everyday would lead me to lose a little weight.

  5. i’ve been training since 11 age in martial arts, im 22 years old now and i know a thing or two about this.
    people dont have motivation to fit themselves, cause best methodes are the painful ones and takes incredible patience. take my advce…. DONT DO WEIGHTS. do healthy pushups situps pullups, i know it doesnt sound easy…

    you want a strong body? forget about weights, you will ruin your joints in process. and gain unproportionaly large useless muscle mass.

    warm up with stretching punching and kicking a bag, old school situps and pushups pullups will strenghten your entire body drasticaly. your stamina will go through roof… keep increasing intensity, when most people excersise they breathe wrong which is the problem. weights will not give you endurance and speed, quite opposite.

    im doing stretching pucnhing kicking for 10 minutes. then followed by 120 pushups then 800 situps then 120 pushups in end. you acctualy feel easyer doing pushups after 800 situps. … by now im warmed up and ready to go for real training. my warmup takes around 30 minutes. the longer time you spend straining your muscles with own body weight the more core strength you will get, you cannot achieve this on machines.
    human body is amazing.
    i my friend starting with 30 pushups and double ammount of situps. 4 times a day…. after 2 months her intensity was increased 4 times….. not to count training i was doing with her after. and her body got in better shape in 2 months than her friends doing weights instead of using own body weight.

    my father is old marine. and you would be amazed what 50 years old man can do….. just cause he’s been doing pushups situps pullups his whole life.

  6. This is great info. Is it true that we should put off the fan when we exercise. I believe even this is a myth. Please share your thoughts.

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