5 myths about sports and fitness that science refutes

1. To lose weight in some place, you need to download it

Many people still continue to pump their abs to flatten their belly and squat to make their legs slimmer. And while any exercise is more beneficial for weight loss than none, exercising one zone to remove fat from it is a completely ineffective approach.

Scientists have tested whether abdominal exercises can somehow change the size of fat cells on the abdomen. For the study, they took samples of the participants' adipose tissue from the abdomen, back and buttocks, and then gave people a training program for a month.

During the experiment, the participants made 5,000 folds per abs. And it didn't get anywhere.

People did not change their weight, total fat, or abdominal relief. The fat cells on it also remained unchanged.

And it's not even that the fold is not the most effective movement for the press. In another experiment, participants performed seven different exercises to pump the abdominal muscles and did not get any results over six weeks: they did not lose weight, did not reduce waist circumference and fat volume.

It is also useless to swing the hips in an attempt to make them thinner. In one study, three months of exercise on one leg did not help reduce body fat compared to an untrained limb. Moreover, even though the participants lost weight during the experiment, more fat was lost from the upper body, whose muscles did not receive any load at all.

To reduce hip and waist circumference, to remove the tummy, sides or extra volume elsewhere, you need to spend more calories: do high-intensity interval training with exercises for all muscle groups, arrange long cardio sessions, as well as strength training with heavy multi-joint movements like squats. pulls, pull-ups and presses.

This exercise burns a lot more calories than endless creases or squats, and unlike them, it actually helps you lose weight.

2. Running is bad for your knees

Many people avoid running because they consider it harmful to knee joints. In theory, repetitive stress from hitting the ground can actually damage the structures of the joint, but in practice, for some reason, runners suffer less knee pain than people with a sedentary lifestyle.

For example, a review of 28 scientific studies showed that physical activity, in particular running, does not harm the internal structures of the joint. Conversely, if done regularly, it promotes cartilage health and protects against osteoarthritis much better than walking or other exercise.

Runners are less likely to suffer from osteoarthritis of the knees than people with a sedentary lifestyle. Moreover, this also applies to athletes covering long distances - those whose knees are regularly subjected to very heavy loads.

You can say: "It's just that these are people in good health, so they run without problems with their knees." But there is another study that randomly selected more than 2,500 ordinary people, rather than professional runners. They were followed for several years and found that the participants who were involved in running were less likely to complain of knee pain than those who did not. Moreover, the study also involved older people - about 60 years old with overweight (BMI - 28, 5).

In another experiment, scientists followed 50-year-old runners and healthy, unsportsmanlike people for 20 years. The former not only lived longer, but also experienced fewer movement problems.

Running appears to be beneficial even for older adults with osteoarthritis. At the end of an eight-year study, participants who did this exercise had less knee pain, and medical tests showed that their arthritis did not progress.

More scientific work suggests that middle-aged people with various knee problems also benefit from running. After four months of the marathon training program, their knees were less damaged than at the start of the study.

This is not to say that running cannot cause injury or pain, but most of the negative effects of running come from overuse. If you choose the right amount of training, such activity will not harm even sore knees.

3. To lose weight, you need to train in the fat-burning heart rate zone

You can often hear that in order to lose weight, you need to exercise in the so-called fat-burning zone - 60-70% of the maximum heart rate. To determine this intensity, without measuring the heartbeat, you can navigate by sensations: at such a pulse, a person is able to talk without stopping activity and without gasping for breath.

On a heart rate of 130-140 beats per minute, more fat is actually used for energy than carbohydrates. But when the heart accelerates to 150 beats per minute or more, the body switches to glucose to get fast fuel.

But it should be borne in mind that the number of calories burned means much more than the form in which they were utilized. If you use up a certain amount of fat, but the energy balance remains positive, carbohydrates will be stored in fat cells.

This also works the other way around: if you exercise at high intensity and burn carbs, your body will break down your fat stores and use them for fuel when you are low on energy.

For the same duration, intense workouts are more effective for losing weight than quiet workouts in the fat-burning zone. In the first variant of activity, more calories are spent, which means that extra pounds will go away faster.

In addition, high-intensity exercise creates an oxygen demand, which allows you to burn additional calories even after you finish training, and also helps to quickly get rid of visceral fat, which accumulates in the abdominal region and increases the risk of dangerous diseases.

4. "Wolf" appetite after training will block all the lost calories

There is some truth in this statement, but not all physical activity increases the feeling of hunger and makes you pounce on food. It all depends on their type, intensity and characteristics of a particular person.

For example, strength training does not increase hunger or force people to eat more than normal. This is true for both experienced athletes and beginners.

Exercising with weights does not alter the levels of hormones responsible for appetite and satiety. What's more, they increase testosterone production, and improve insulin sensitivity, which is beneficial for fat loss and weight control.

When it comes to aerobic exercise, it’s not so simple. In some studies, exercising did not affect appetite or portion size, or even suppressed hunger after exercise. Other scientific works prove the opposite. True, this applies primarily to beginners.

People who are not accustomed to physical activity, after hard exercise, can indeed eat more and choose higher-calorie foods.

Scientists suggest that this is due to the nature of the use of nutrients during training. One study found that the more carbohydrates the body burns during exercise, the larger the serving after exercise.

During aerobic exercise, beginners consume mainly carbohydrates, and as they become more trained, their bodies switch to fats. This theory correlates with another study in which women after a high-intensity workout increased their portion of food so much that they completely overlapped the calories they burned.

Perhaps this is again due to the use of nutrients during activity: the higher the intensity of the exercise, the more carbohydrates and less fat the body burns. In the same study, there was another group of women exercising at low intensity. Their calorie intake did not increase after exercise.

At the same time, other studies show that exercise still has a good effect on eating behavior. For example, a 60-minute workout can help reduce the risk of overeating later in the day by half that of not being active.

Every 10 minutes of exercise reduces the risk of overdoing the amount of food after it by 1%. Moreover, light activity protects against overeating better than more intense exercise.

Also, several studies at once confirm that exercising in the morning helps, control appetite and choose healthier foods during the day.

It can be concluded that the myth under consideration has grounds, but is far from true for all conditions:

Physical activity can increase your appetite if you are a beginner and / or do high-intensity exercise.
Strength training, low-intensity aerobic programs, and morning exercises do not increase calorie intake regardless of gender and training status.

5. If the muscles do not hurt, they do not grow

Overuse can damage the muscle fibers, leading to inflammation and soreness for the next 48 to 72 hours after exercise. This condition is called delayed muscle pain, or sore throat.

Some people regard this pain as an indicator of growth and assume that if the soreness did not occur, the workout was ineffective. This is fundamentally wrong: in order for a muscle to grow, its fibers need mechanical stress, which occurs when you do strength exercises.

Receptors in the cell membrane respond to this and trigger a chain of molecular reactions that ends with increased muscle protein synthesis. This protein is used to build muscle fibers, which translates into muscle growth in volume.

To start a chain of reactions, the mechanical stress must be significant, but not necessarily excessive, leading to fiber damage and dyspepsia.

Protein synthesis increases without pain - and it is in such conditions that the most intense muscle growth is noted.

Moreover, severe damage to muscle fibers, such as during heavy eccentric exertion, can even lead to loss of muscle mass. Not to mention, with this kind of pain, you won't be able to effectively engage and re-stimulate protein synthesis until the inflammation subsides.

This is confirmed in practice: with the same volume of loads, the percentage of muscle mass gained does not differ depending on whether people suffered from delayed muscle pain or did not experience it at all.