10 Exercise And Fitness Myths That Will Fool Your Workout

Watch Out For These Common Exercise And Fitness Myths

When it comes to keeping healthy, it’s often hard to sort the exercise and fitness myths from the real facts. It seems that everyone these days has an opinion and everyone is a self-appointed fitness expert.

There’s quite a bit of hype about health and fitness. A lot of it comes from quick-fix solutions that aim to sell us something easy, the magic pill, or the latest and greatest product that will make us super fit in record time.

When you’re armed with accurate information, you’ll get better results from your workout. Here are 10 common exercise and fitness myths that you need to know.

Free Download: 10 Muscle Toning Mistakes Women Make

10 Common Exercise And Fitness Myths 

1. If I Workout I Can Eat Whatever I Want

Healthy weight management is all about calories in and calories out. You still have to make sure you burn more than you eat, period. What’s true is the fact that those who workout regularly can eat more than those who don’t because they burn more during the workout and even when at rest because their metabolism is boosted. But, you still have to consider that an apple has 95 calories, while a slice of apple pie has 277.

2. Crunches Will Burn Belly Fat

This is one of the biggest exercise and fitness myths around. Doing lots of sit-ups, crunches or any other forms of exercises that are targeted at your abdominal muscles will not help burn belly fat. These exercises will tone your abs but will not help in burning the excess fat that sits on top of your abdominal muscles. Crunches tone ab muscles, but, in order to burn the fat that covers those muscles you have to perform fat burning exercises and consume less calories that you burn.

3. The More You Sweat, The More Fat You Burn

Not true! Sweat is the body’s adjustment in response to heat. It occurs in an effort to cool you down, and it can just as well be the result of working out in a hot room than from a particular workout. The true gauge of workout intensity and therefore optimal fat burning is target heart rate.

4. The Longer The Workout, The More Effective It Is

You don’t have to spend hours in the gym every day to get fit and healthy. Short workouts of around 30 minutes or less have been scientifically proven to give you all the benefits of longer workouts. Long and punishing workouts are proven to jack up a stress hormone in your body called cortisol. In normal doses, cortisol is great as it actually helps you burn fat. But in high doses from long and stressful exercise, it actually forces your body into “protection mode” and makes you store more fat around your midsection.

5. Cardio Should Come Before Strength Training

Not true. It’s more effective to strength train first because doing cardio first will reduce glycogen levels in the body and can prevent an efficient strength workout. But, doing weight training first will actually increase the production of testosterone (in men) and cortisol (in women), both of which are beneficial to working out.

6. Lifting Weights Will Make Women Bulky

Many women come to this conclusion after seeing photos of female bodybuilders. But, it’s not just lifting weights that have made these women bulky. It’s also from taking supplements and growth hormones and a very particular regimen that takes a ton of effort. Ladies, lift weights, build strength, tone muscle. It’s all good for you and you will not turn into a bodybuilder.

7. You Can’t Lose Weight Without Doing Cardio

To lose weight all you need to do is expend more calories than you consume. How you do this is completely up to you. Many like to do cardio when trying to lose weight. But it’s by no means required, though, it allows you to eat more and enjoy better heart health, stamina, and increased energy levels. Older people benefit from aerobic activity even more because as we age our metabolism slows way down and exercise helps to boost it.

8. To Tone Muscles You Need To be Lifting Weights For High Repetitions 

There is no such thing as “toning muscles,” they can only be built or maintained. The term toned is simply used as a description. Generally, muscle tone improves when the muscle fibers become larger, which is often the result of regular training with weights. If you can lift a weight for more than 15 repetitions with ease it’s time to increase the weight.

9. Cardio Should Only Be Done Early Morning (& On An Empty Stomach) 

If you prefer to do your cardio first thing in the morning before breakfast that’s perfectly fine, but it is certainly not essential for fat loss. You can do it in the afternoon, or late evening. Once again the most important ingredient for fat loss is expending more calories than you consume.

10. Isolation Exercises Are More Important Than Compound Exercises

Not true! Compound exercises are actually vastly superior to isolation exercises when you want to build muscle and they are also important for functional fitness. Isolation exercises only work one muscle group whereas compound movements work multiple muscle groups. This helps with increasing an anaerobic response in the body, because you are engaging multiple muscle groups at the same time, which, means that strength training workouts can help to burn more fat.

Functional fitness is the use of exercise moves that mimic day to day life and train muscle groups to work together. This is where compound exercises serve you best by improving performance in daily activities, and eliminating risk of injury, something especially important as we age. Balance is something often overlooked by people when they design their fitness regimens. Balance training also allows for healthier aging, can go a long way to avoiding the typical falls seen in seniors, and is something that is a by-product of many compound exercises.

Free 4-Minute Bodyweight Exercise Video

Most folks who have lost weight know you have to exercise to burn fat, stay in shape, reduce stress, eliminate health risks, and get the body you desire. What very few people realize is that you may be exercising too much. And this isn’t one of those exercise and fitness myths! Short workouts of around 21 minutes have been scientifically proven to give you all the benefits of longer workouts. Check out this Free 4-minute Bodyweight Workout video that shows how to burn more body fat in 4 minutes than a typical half hour boring treadmill session.