I asked you yesterday about some of my favorite fitness myths and gave you a list of some common urban advice I’ve seen bantered about with regards to fitness and getting in shape. I asked you which ones were true and which ones were false. Here’s a refresher for those of you may have missed the original blog on this topic:
True or False:
If you want to lose belly fat, then you need to do sit ups and crunches to make that happen.
There’s an easy way for everyone to lose weight, you just have to find the one the works for you.
If you can’t work out 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, there’s no point in even trying to exercise.
You can determine your workout’s level of difficulty by how much you are sweating.
If you lifted weights regularly and then stop, all that hard earned muscle will quickly turn to fat.
Stretching isn’t that important to your workout because you don’t burn excess calories doing it.
The more intense your workout, the better it is for you.
You need to be exhausted at the end of the workout, physically spent, to have achieved a successful plateau.
The older you get, the more you will develop fat and the harder it is to develop muscle.
The answers to all of these statements are false. In fact, these are some of the most commonly and hard-headedly held onto fitness myths out there. I’ve been told by more than one person about each of these and even when I tell them that I write about fitness and research it and talk to the experts, they are adamant that these statements are true.
Let’s take a look at a couple of these myths – A, for example where it says if you want to lose belly fat, you need to do sit up and crunches. That’s false. Sit ups and crunches will tighten and strengthen your abdominals and you might even have a six pack if you do them often enough, but that will not burn off the excess layer of fat laying on top of the muscles. The truth is, if you want to lose belly fat, then you need to a cardio program combined with a muscle-toning program that allows you to burn excess calories while developing muscles that will consume even more calories.
As for C, that’s a bunch of poppycock. If you can’t work out 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, then you should do nothing? That makes about as much sense as saying if you can’t eat three meals a day then you shouldn’t bother eating at all. The simple fact is – any physical exercise that you do is going to be beneficial. Currently, I’m restricted to just 15 minutes of strolling a day, that’s nowhere near my peak performance, but I’ll take it – because some activity is far better than none.
As for G, the more intense you work out, the better it is for you? Not really. Your level of intensity should be based on a variety of factors including your current level of physical fitness and what your overall goals are for your fitness program. If you want to lose weight, then you don’t need high intensity so much as a longer time period spent exercising. Fact, if you are walking for 60 minutes a day at a comfortable pace, you are far more likely to walk the next day and the day after that and the day after that. If you do 90 minutes of high intensity, pulse pounding, sweat dripping and exhausting labor, you are less likely to exercise the next day.
Remember the tale of the tortoise and the hare? I’d rather be the tortoise and get to my destination on a sure path than run all out only to fall flat on my face before I reach my goal.
What are some of your favorite fitness myths? Send them in, I’ll debunk them if they aren’t true.
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