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Debunking The Common Workout Myths

It may sound silly but there is a right way to do exercise. If going to the gym is all that we do and we still can’t see results, there is a chance that we have fallen into following ill advice. Exercising wrongly forfeits all our hard work, making it just a total waste of our time. Though results may still be visible, it will not be as evident as when we are doing it right.

That is why this article is going to discuss the most common exercise myths that we have been believing and doing for so long. Assessing ourselves and how we do these exercise is the key to learn from it, so let’s try to list all the misconceptions that are being practiced and incorporate some changes to see significant results.

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If you’re doing your exercise wrong, then you’re just wasting your time in the gym.

Sweating means burning

This notion is wrong in every angle. Though we sweat when we workout, it should not become the basis of how much calories we’ve burned. This is because sweating is a physiological response to heat and the attempt of the body to cool down that heat. The temperature of the place we are working out in is also a contributor to sweating. The other explanation for it is because fat doesn’t get excreted out of the body through sweat.

 Weights can make us bulky

This is true for the men out there but not for the women. We always hear it through the grapevine where ladies avoid doing weight training for the fear of having a bulky biceps. This is as outdated as the cellular phones with keypads. Women will not get bulky providing they get the right amount of weight training. This is because women have lesser testosterone level, a hormone that makes men more prone to bulking up. In fact, incorporating weight training into our cardio can speed up the process of losing weight.

Weight training should be done before cardio. If we run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, chances are our muscles will be too sore to do weights training. Since weights require less movement, it will not leave our body super sore and we can still do cardio.  So ladies, pick those weights up and do more.

 Exercising everyday

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Everyday exercise doesn’t mean that you’re losing weight faster.

Though this sounds healthy, this is not a recommendation and an assurance to expedite the weight loss process. We exercise to break down muscles to make it stronger and firmer. Our bodies can’t have a proper rebuilding process if we let our bodies rest. This is the reason why some experience sore muscles all the time. This means that we are overworking them and not giving them proper downtime. Though we can still exercise 7 days a week as long as we also do soft routines like yoga. It’s advised to do 3-4 days of an intense workout while the remainder will be spent either taking a day off or indulging in low-intensity workouts.

 Spot-training

We have been told that we can reduce fat in certain areas of the body- this is what they call spot training. Our body cannot detect whether we are trying to lose in specific regions, it doesn’t work that way. Our fat cells are distributed in our body and it can draw fat cells from other areas. We can spend the whole year doing crunches and still going nowhere, no abs and pronounced oblique. This is why spot-training doesn’t work. It’s impossible to make our bellies, legs, and arms firmer without losing overall body fat.

 Yoga is an intense workout

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Yoga is an excellent exercise for meditation and proper breathing.

It may feel that way due to the many difficult positions that need flexibility but it is not the best exercise for weight loss. Yoga targets more our flexibility and balance, not the muscles. A 50-minute session will only burn about 270 calories, compared to doing HIIT and cardio that will burn 500-600 calories within that time. This is because it doesn’t require a lot of oxygen compared to other cardio workouts.  But that doesn’t mean that we should avoid Yoga. It still has many benefits like meditation and proper breathing. We can do Yoga on our day offs in the gym but we still want to squeeze in a low-intensity exercise.

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