10 fitness lies exposed...

[wnied]

I found this article on another site and thought it was pretty interesting, and since I've seen some of these fitness no-no's posted as advice in threads, I thought I would post the article to clear some of them up.


10 Fitness Lies

Enjoy,
~wnied~

 

[Viper GTS]

8. Muscle weighs more than fat. FALSE!

If I place one pound of muscle on a scale and one pound of fat on a scale, they will both weigh one pound. The difference is in total volume! One pound of muscle may appear to be the size of baseball; one pound of fat will be three times the size and look like a squiggly bowl of JELL-O.

Umm... So what's his point?

Any genius should realize the "lie" refers to density.

Viper GTS

 

[machintos]

3. You can gain 20 pounds of muscle in a few months. FALSE!

Ummm, I gained about 20 pounds of muscle in about 3 months... so... TRUE!!!

 

[Argo]

Awesome link dude.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Originally posted by: machintos
3. You can gain 20 pounds of muscle in a few months. FALSE!

Ummm, I gained about 20 pounds of muscle in about 3 months... so... TRUE!!!

I doubt it was pure muscle.

 

[Crimzon]

Originally posted by: KnightBreed

Originally posted by: machintos
3. You can gain 20 pounds of muscle in a few months. FALSE!

Ummm, I gained about 20 pounds of muscle in about 3 months... so... TRUE!!!

I doubt it was pure muscle.

Yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but I doubt so too. Your max's may have gone up, and you may look more toned than before, but you cannot gain 20 lbs of pure muscle in 3 months. It's hard enough gaining 20 lbs period.

 

[PoPPeR]

i'm 17 and dont think i have 20 pounds of muscle period!

 

[machintos]

I started with 140 pounds (I'm only 5'5") and 11% body fat.

Lean muscle mass = 124.6
Fat mass = 15.4 lbs

Now I'm 160 lbs with 6% body fat

Lean muscle mass = 150.4
Fat Mass = 9.6 lbs

So I gained about 25 pounds and lost some fat.
Not to mentioned that my bench press went from 100 lbs for reps up to 185lbs for reps.

 

[machintos]

For those of you who don't believe me.... o well....

 

[dquan97]

Originally posted by: PoPPeR
i'm 17 and dont think i have 20 pounds of muscle period!

C'mon, even I have about 21lbs!

 

[Amused]

2. A lot of cardio is the most efficient way to lose body fat. FALSE!

Excessive cardio will strip muscle mass and body fat. This is definitely not the most efficient method for losing body fat. Once you begin stripping muscle mass, your body becomes less efficient at burning body fat. Muscle is metabolically active, which simply means it stimulates the metabolism.

For each pound of muscle you put on, you will burn up to 50 additional calories per day. If you strip muscle mass, all you accomplish is sabotaging your efforts to efficiently reduce body fat.

I remember pointing this out to someone recently. If you want to gain muscle mass, you need to do lower intensity and lower impact cardio.

If you want to lose fat and look "cut" quickly by doing high intensity cardio you're going to have to realize you'll lose some, or at least not gain any muscle mass while you do it.

Illustrated here:

9. You can put on a lot of muscle and lose a lot of fat at the same time. FALSE!

You can put on muscle and lose some fat in minimal amounts. However, the body functions best when it has one goal at a time. If your goal is to put on a lot of muscle, then make that your number one objective. If your goal is to lose significant body fat, then your focus should be on preserving your much earned muscle mass.

In 2001, prior to starting my training for one of my bodybuilding shows, I weighed 164 pounds (I compete as a bantam or lightweight) at 15.7 percent body fat. In 2003, prior to starting to train for a show this June, my weight was 169.5 pounds at 12.6 percent body fat. As you can see, I put on some muscle and lost some fat. The change was significant but realistic. As I prepare for my show in June, I will attempt to preserve what I?ve earned as I reduce to approximately 3 percent body fat.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: machintos
I started with 140 pounds (I'm only 5'5") and 11% body fat.

Lean muscle mass = 124.6
Fat mass = 15.4 lbs

Now I'm 160 lbs with 6% body fat

Lean muscle mass = 150.4
Fat Mass = 9.6 lbs

So I gained about 25 pounds and lost some fat.
Not to mentioned that my bench press went from 100 lbs for reps up to 185lbs for reps.

Let me guess, Creatine?

I'll bet you lose ten pounds of that if you went off of it. It's mostly water weight.

And I'm a bit suspect at your 11% or lower body fat claims. What are you using to measure it?

 

[ed21x]

running alot really DOES give you tone and definition, and so does lifting smaller weights. Why are they trying to lie to the public?

 

[Spoooon]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: machintos
I started with 140 pounds (I'm only 5'5") and 11% body fat.

Lean muscle mass = 124.6
Fat mass = 15.4 lbs

Now I'm 160 lbs with 6% body fat

Lean muscle mass = 150.4
Fat Mass = 9.6 lbs

So I gained about 25 pounds and lost some fat.
Not to mentioned that my bench press went from 100 lbs for reps up to 185lbs for reps.

Let me guess, Creatine?

I'll bet you lose ten pounds of that if you went off of it. It's mostly water weight.

And I'm a bit suspect at your 11% or lower body fat claims. What are you using to measure it?

Depending on where he works out, it might be accurate. I know my gym will do it for you. It's more accurate than using those calipers at home.

 

[Syringer]

Originally posted by: ed21x
running alot really DOES give you tone and definition, and so does lifting smaller weights. Why are they trying to lie to the public?

Doing aerobic activity will get you a toned look, which is what running and lifting small weights does.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: ed21x
running alot really DOES give you tone and definition, and so does lifting smaller weights. Why are they trying to lie to the public?

Running a lot cuts your body fat, but it can also cost you muscle mass, especially in your upper body. Sure, you'll "look" more "cut," but you wont get any bigger. As I said, you can "cut" or you can add mass, but trying to do both at the same time will only wear you out and frustrate you.

Have you ever seen a marathon runner who looked like a body builder? Of course not. The two are anathema to each other. You can either be a body builder, or a marathon runner... but not both. Marathon runners are extremely thin, and have very small muscles for a reason... because they run so damn much.

Lifting lighter weights is pointless unless you're trying to preserve mass only. You're just taking longer to do what you could have done in a shorter amount of time with more effort. Lighter weights may help you preserve what mass you have, but you wont gain much, if any.

He's not lying, he's simply pointing out fact. Ask any natural body builder how they put on mass, and they'll tell you exactly what this guy is telling you.

 

[BD231]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: ed21x
running alot really DOES give you tone and definition, and so does lifting smaller weights. Why are they trying to lie to the public?

Running a lot cuts your body fat, but it can also cost you muscle mass, especially in your upper body. Sure, you'll "look" more "cut," but you wont get any bigger. As I said, you can "cut" or you can add mass, but trying to do both at the same time will only wear you out and frustrate you.

Have you ever seen a marathon runner who looked like a body builder? Of course not. The two are anathema to each other. You can either be a body builder, or a marathon runner... but not both. Marathon runners are extremely thin, and have very small muscles for a reason... because they run so damn much.

Lifting lighter weights is pointless unless you're trying to preserve mass only. You're just taking longer to do what you could have done in a shorter amount of time with more effort. Lighter weights may help you preserve what mass you have, but you wont gain much, if any.

He's not lying, he's simply pointing out fact. Ask any natural body builder how they put on mass, and they'll tell you exactly what this guy is telling you.

He speaks the truth, when I was playing football in highschool gaining muscle was IMPOSSIBLE with all the conditioning. I'd get to a certain point and all I could do was maintain muscle, nothing more. Once I stoped the running but kept lifting exactly the same I gained 18 pounds in 4 months, I know that's not ALL muscle weight, but at least 80 to 90% of it was as I noticed nothing but ripp-i-tude durring the growth.

 

[InFecTed]

Originally posted by: ed21x
running alot really DOES give you tone and definition, and so does lifting smaller weights. Why are they trying to lie to the public?

Running helps, I agree. But small weights are a big waist of time. Heavy weights and enough time to recover and lots of running, that's the key to good definition and tone.

 

[Analog]

8. Muscle weighs more than fat. FALSE!

If I place one pound of muscle on a scale and one pound of fat on a scale, they will both weigh one pound. The difference is in total volume! One pound of muscle may appear to be the size of baseball; one pound of fat will be three times the size and look like a squiggly bowl of JELL-O.

Gee, let me guess, he's a physics major???????? If I put 1 lb of lead on a scale and 1 lb of cotton, wow! they weigh the same!!!!

 

[VBboy]

What are this writer's credentials? I can write an article on how sex improves the ozone layer, but...?

 

[NakaNaka]

WHat he said about high reps low weight was wrong. That is the best way. Here's why. Yes, if you want to gain sheer muscle mass, you should do high weight and "tear" your muscle. However, this hurts like hell and will bulk you more than looking good. If you want to spend time in the weight room (a couple years) go low weight high reps.

 

[Renob]

I doubt it was pure muscle


There is no way it was lean mass. No way.

 

[MadRat]

I studied the studies on the effects of exercise and this isn't entirely accurate.

1. They are wrong. Muscles respond by shortening when put into overload via long endurance workouts. You have to realize we are talking extreme numbers, closer to one hundred than the ten to twenty reps that most beginners use. Powerlifters that use few but heavy weights increase the girth of the muscle as a response as the muscle tries to build phosphagen storage. The shortening of the muscle, without the bulking, gives it a more defined look. The response of the muscle is limited to your natural enzyme response level, not necessarily the number of reps in your workout. If you don't have the enzymes condusive to endurance then your muscles don't necessarily respond like they did for the soloflex guy. Thats a fact, Jack.

2. Matters what they mean by "alot of cardio". People that do endurance training burn calories long after the workout, much longer than someone just teasing their phosphagen and glycogen stores.

3. Hahahahahaha. They ignore the effects of anabloics...

4. Sort of true. They didn't mention ketosis which is the real danger. You do need to decrease the caloric intake to lose weight.

5. I had no idea this was a "myth" to people out there...

6. Dead on for once. The Adkins diet does counter some of the intuition to this claim, though. High protein diets are effective.

7. Women do not have the hormonal or enzymic levels like a man. Flo Jo, it ended up, was taking huge amounts of anabolics.

8. This one was dumb. The premise of the "muscle weighs more than fat" is on "density" not pound for pound. The simple fact is that muscle consumes calories, even at rest, faster than fat does. A person that weighs 200 pounds and is 5% fat is much leaner than a 200 pounder with 20% fat. Of course the 5% guy is much thinner! But the premise of the claim is 200 pounds is 200 pounds??

9. Total wank bull in this guy's claim. The body is not good at one thing. The body does load up on enzymes that sometimes compete for the same nutrients, yes, but losing fat and gaining muscle can be done simultaneously! This guy is using subjectives when the effects are measurable objectively. Plain and simply he's full of crap.

10. Its not protein you need for the building blocks of muscle, its amino acids. To merely eat large amounts of "pure protein" is a slow painful way of destroying your neurological and skeletal systems. For you guys that consume large amounts of Joe Weider's protein mix, its just the same. You need to eat tiny amounts of specific amino acids that the body is slow to produce, not huge amounts of protein. We're talking tiny amounts as in the size of a tic tac per week would do if its purified! The high protein diet will only illicit calcium blocking and some other rather nasty natural responses if done to the extreme. Plus the high protein diet makes you crap funny...

 

[StageLeft]

His points may not be totally accurate but I'd say that overall they are pretty accurate, at least insofar as the average person needs to know. Although there may be some difference in high reps vs. low not just in endurance and strength but also in shape (which would be for people's defining goal), for the average person I think these differences are probably not major. I've always believed that if you want to look defined and you're not hitting up any bodybuilding competitions you need high muscle and low fat, and the best way to get high muscle is with lower reps than 15. You can have the most perfectly built muscles in the world but if your bodyfat is 20% you won't look very cut. Alternatively you could do 2 rep sets with pathetic form for the rest of your life and as long as you don't blow your body apart and you do build some muscle if your bodyfat is 5% you're gonna look pretty cut.

3. Hahahahahaha. They ignore the effects of anabloics...

I think that was deliberate Without a supplement like creatine or steroids or super-human genetics on a person who's never worked out before and has a top class weight trainer starting them off he is right that 20 lbs of REAL Muscle can't be gained in 3 months.

You can [not] put on a lot of muscle and lose a lot of fat at the same time.

I read this almost everywhere and in my "heart" I do believe it. If you have two months and first month put on 4 lbs muscle and then second month go for fat loss and lose 8 pounds by doing two different goals at once you'll probably make off better for muscle gain/fat loss than somebody who tries both at the same time.

However for the past two months I've been at 1700 calories/day, except for about 2 slack days a week where I hit 3500 calories and I've lost 12 pounds - 8 of which is real fat (rest is water!) and at the same time I've put on a significant amount of strength, so I know that the two can be done successfully, though I'm not sure as successfully as if I'd done one goal at a time.

My thoughts on why it can actually work at the same time is that on a loss day my body is probably doing its best to maintain muscle stores, since I'm on high protein and recently worked the muscle, so it maintains muscle and loses fat fast, then on the gain days it has such a big influx of nutrients that it piles on muscle (and some fat - but overall week to week my calories are too low to do anything but lose it), so week to week I'm losing fat and on the loss days maintaining muscle, and on the gain days gaining it. It's a thought anyway and I also realize I just pretty much contradicted myself so maybe in my "heart" i agree with madrat afterall!

Oh and of course if you take a chubby weak guy you can have him 6 months down the road thinner and more muscular. I think at the exact same time the body can't do both - I mean that's fairly clear if you're at a major loss for calories you won't be putting on muscle, and if at a major plus for calories won't lose fat - but just because you can't do both literally at the exact same time it doesn't mean you can't experience both fat loss and muscle gain over the same day or week.

 

[Beau]

*sniff* *sniff*

Anyone else smell the load of shiat in that article?

I think the steriods have gone to this guy's brain.

Madrat has hit it right on the money here.