10 myths about strength training

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker debunks the most common myths that turn people away from strength training and prevent athletes from achieving more.

1. If you stop swinging, muscles will turn into fat

Muscle cannot become fat, just as your bones cannot become muscle or connective tissue. These are different tissues of the body, which simply physically cannot become something else.

But getting fat after stopping strength training is possible. During and even after exercise, the body burns calories vigorously. When you stop exercising, your calorie expenditure drops dramatically. If you don't change your dietary habits and calorie intake, you run the risk of gaining extra fat.

Plus, without training, you start to lose muscle mass in as little as three weeks. One study found that 37.1% of all muscle fibers were atrophied after seven weeks without training.

Thus, your muscle mass decreases, and due to the excess of calories, the body fat grows. This is where this myth came from. The relief body becomes soft and loose, it seems that the muscles have turned into fat.

However, this can be avoided. Of course, without training, you will not be able to maintain muscle mass in the same amount, but if you lower your calorie intake, you will not gain excess weight and maintain an attractive figure.

2. One muscle group should be pumped in one day

Many people still believe that the most progress can be made by pumping one muscle group once a week. However, this training method is not the most effective one.

Because you need time to recover and pump all muscles, this regimen reduces the amount of stress on one muscle group, inhibits progress, and can cause a training plateau.

Instead, try loading three to four muscle groups in a single workout. This way you will be able to load your muscles more often and at the same time not neglect rest. Do high-intensity interval training or circuit training periodically. These techniques help build strength, build endurance, burn more calories, and avoid a workout plateau.

3. Muscles grow only when working with high weights and low repetitions

Research has shown that training with low weights and high repetitions is as effective for muscle growth as training with high weights and low repetitions. The main thing is to do the exercise until the muscles are tired.

Moreover, some experts consider 6-15 reps to be the ideal amount for muscle hypertrophy. Brad Schoenfeld, author of books on bodybuilding and fitness, claims that this number of repetitions creates the perfect balance between muscle tension and metabolic stress, which is beneficial for muscle growth and strength.

In fact, progress can be made by exercising with your own weight. Looking at the relief lovers of calisthenics - a system of exercises with their own weight on horizontal bars, parallel bars and wall bars - it is quite possible to believe in it.

4. You need to strain only with heavy weights

If you are hanging a lot of weight on the barbell, you will have to exert all forces to move it from its place. However, many athletes find that exercise with lighter weights does not require a lot of stress. This opinion prevents them from achieving better results.

By creating strong tension in the muscles, you provide optimal communication between the sensory and motor parts of the nervous system. This means that your body has a better sense of its position in space, which allows the brain to provide more strength and power.

For example, if you grab the bar as hard as you can during a barbell exercise, it will tell your brain to use more muscles. Use this with any scale.

When you work with the bar, grab it as if you are trying to curl the neck with the barbell, in regular squats, strain your buttocks, as if a 100 kilogram barbell is on your shoulders. Do any exercise with maximum effort.

5. Strength training worsens stretching

It is believed that strong muscles are necessarily tough and compressed, so pumped-up people cannot reach the floor with their hands. In fact, research has confirmed that resistance training improves flexibility as well as static stretching.

However, strength training can only improve stretching if you do it at its full range. For example, if you are doing a barbell squat, do it before your hips touch your shins, as in weightlifting, and not in a quarter, as some athletes do.

It's the same with upper body exercises: if you are doing a dumbbell bench press, go through the entire range of motion, stretching your chest and shoulder muscles at the lowest point.

6. Exercise machines are more effective than free weights

Some athletes avoid free-weight training, believing that isolated exercises are better at loading and pumping specific muscles.

In fact, free weights are a must-have for strength training. Exercise machines limit the range of motion, do not allow the development of functional strength, and do not train the interaction of different muscle groups.

What's more, one study found that free weights work better on muscles. A regular squat with weights in the quadriceps noted 43% more activity than a squat in the Smith machine.

7. Slow, controlled movements give better results

Many believe that only conscious and controlled slow movements will help maintain correct technique and increase muscle growth.

This is only half true. The eccentric phase of the exercise, in which the muscles stretch under load (when you lower into a squat or lower a barbell on a bench press), really needs to be slow and controlled.

However, it is better to accelerate the concentric phase. This allows more type II fast muscle fibers to be recruited, which have a higher growth potential.

8. We must be in time for the protein-carbohydrate window

It is generally accepted that in the first 30-40 minutes after exercise, the body is very much in need of nutrients, and from eating food with proteins and carbohydrates, you can get the greatest benefits. Carbohydrates will become fuel for the body, and protein will be absorbed faster and will be used to restore muscle tissue.

However, the study found no link between timing of protein intake. Strength, power and body composition of athletes taking protein supplements at different times did not differ significantly after 10 weeks of the experiment.

Another study to determine if this post-workout anabolic window exists at all found it to be much wider than commonly believed. After a workout, you have about 1.5-2 hours to consume foods rich in protein and carbohydrates.

9. Nothing can be done between sets

It is believed that no exercise should be performed between heavy sets to give the muscles full rest and recovery. However, this does not mean that you need to stand at the window with your phone or just walk around the hall.

If you want to improve your technique and increase your performance, do filler exercises between sets. These are light exercises, mostly dynamic stretches, that will help keep your muscles warm and at the same time increase joint mobility, improving your technique.

10. Strength training is bad for joints

This is a very common myth that turns people away from strength training. It would seem that squats and deadlifts with heavy weights should wear down the joints and cause degenerative changes over time.

However, this is not supported by either research or the experience of aging athletes. For example, in one study, 25 athletes were tested for osteoarthritis and found significant degenerative changes in only five people. This is 20% of the total number of participants, and this is no more than people who do not go in for sports.

Strength training can harm your joints if you don't warm up well, exercise with poor form, or lift too much weight when your muscles are not ready for it.

If you have created a strong muscle corset and follow the technique, you run the risk of earning osteoarthritis and wear out the joints no more than ordinary people who do not play sports.