Spend 10 minutes at the gym and you’ll hear a lot more than grunting and loud music. People will actually tell you how to work out! It’s as if everyone who goes to the gym, more than 3 days a week, think they’re some sort of professional trainer. They walk around confident as can be, going from one machine to another.
When I first caught gym fever, I wanted advice from my fellow gym enthusiasts. My mother, my friends, trainers at the gym, even the 80 year old woman on the treadmill; they looked like they knew what they were doing so I thought they could help me.
Their advice made sense but it turns out, the information they gave me might not have been as helpful as they had intended. Here are 10 myths, you may hear, when it comes to working out:
Crunches are the best ab exercise. Not true! According to Health Magazine, crunches aren’t the number one way to flatten your tummy.”Since they don’t burn off a lot of calories, they don’t help in a major way with fat loss,” I was shocked! Doing 100 planks would give you better results than 100 crunches. Of course, 100 crunches sounds far easier than holding 100 planks; but I guess that’s the point.
Lifting weights makes women look bulky. Yes, if all you’re doing is lifting the heaviest weights all day. Lifting 10 to 15 lbs every other day at the gym isn’t going to make you the next hulk. Trust me, lifting weights was the only thing I did for a month and my arms didn’t form much muscle. They definitely got more toned but I didn’t become a bodybuilder over night.
You didn’t have a good work out if you didn’t sweat. I’m very happy to learn that isn’t always the case. Life has informed me to not associate sweat with calories burned. “The truth is, no matter how much or little you sweat, it doesn’t always correlate to calories burned or how hard you’re working. Thank god! I wonder if a majority of the people at the gym know that; they’re always drenched in sweat!
Soreness is a good sign. If your muscles are tired and you can’t bend your legs without screeching in pain, you must’ve had an amazing workout the day before! Or at least, that’s what I always thought. If I wasn’t sore I took it as a sign that I didn’t work out to my fullest potential. But, being sore may not always mean something. Every body is different and pain is not a tell-tale sign of a killer workout!
Exercising is the best way to lose weight. False. It’s more about what you eat than what you do. Who would’ve thought? No more can I justify eating an entire pizza to myself because I had a hard workout that morning. According to an article published in The New York Times, “Exercise has many benefits, but there are problems with relying on it to control weight.”
