• From myths about an empty stomach helping to drop calories to common exercises that
are actually useless, we count 15 things you've always believed about exercise that simply
aren't true 15 - Stretching,
• Many believe stretching before you begin a workout to be crucial in order to prevent
injury and muscle spasms - but the opposite is true
• By stretching before a strenuous workout, you're actually destabilising your muscles
and making them MORE susceptible to injury - stretching by itself is fine, but not right
before a workout session • If you're looking for some other way to
prepare for a workout, try warming up with a little treadmill running or biking - that
way you'll get your blood pumping and your body ready for more rigorous exercise
14 - Sit-ups/Crunches, • The myth goes that doing a few sets of
sit-ups or crunches a day will strengthen your abs and make you lose fat, neither of
which is true • A sit-up is a very basic exercise that
only puts strain on one tiny part of your body, which means, sure, you'll strengthen
your abs, but very slowly - and since the rest of your body isn't being used, those
abs will be covered in a thick layer of fat because your sit-up exercise is only burning
less than 2 calories per session • In order to actually see your flashy abs,
you're going to need to incorporate squats, full-body weights and on-your-spine toe touches
at the very least 13 - Squats,
• People are always nervous about doing squats - the idea of putting all that pressure
on the knees couldn't possibly lead to anything good
• But like with all exercise training, you're building up the muscles to be stronger - I
was actually diagnosed with some mild osteoarthritis in one of my knees a couple of years ago,
but now that I've been doing squats everyday my knees are more than fine - today I can
crunch a cow's face in with my knee and have it squirt milk from its ear
• If you do work out with squats though, make sure you're squatting low, to the point
where your thighs are parallel to the ground - or even lower than that if you can, otherwise
the exercise is pointless 12 - Treadmill,
• Most would say that spending 15 minutes on the treadmill will help drop the pounds,
and while it IS true, the reality is you're way, way better off with interval and weight
training • Running and biking are good warm-up exercises,
but straining your body on weights pinches and pulls every muscle in your body - just
as sit-ups are inferior to more focused weight training, so too is cardio to weights
• That's not to say it's a waste of time - you're much better off running on the treadmill
than nothing at all, but compared to healthy eating and interval weight training, you'll
reach your weight goal much slower 11 - Empty Stomach,
• Some people feel that by exercising on an empty stomach, your body will bypass your
stomach and instead tap into your fat stores to burn it much quicker
• While it's true that if the body is deprived on nutrients that it'll use body fat, working
out is different - when your body has an empty stomach, it'll instead burn into your muscles
which totally renders a fat-loss diet ineffective • Furthermore, the lack of nutrients circulating
through your body actually leads to a sub-optimal workout since your body is craving one thing
and losing another 10 - Gym Membership,
• For a great many people, the illusive idea of working out sits atop its vast pedestal
at the peak of a distant mountain - to make the trip to a gym, preferably with friends
to use all the equipment for a 5 hour mega session - that's certainly what I thought
it was like when I was younger • But you should consider this: you don't
actually need to go to the gym to work out - you already have most of the equipment you
need: a rug, a chair, a wall and a timer app for your phone
• You can get a full body workout at home, and if you feel like enhancing it with equipment,
then feel free to invest in a $40 weight set - much less expensive and less of a hassle
than visiting that gym every day 9 - Exercise Routine,
• The general consensus with those that aren't interested in bulking up or dropping
tonnes of weight is that, well, if I don't have the time or I can't be bothered to work
out hard every day, there's no point • In reality, you don't need to work hard
every day - if you can spare 30 minutes, or even 10 minutes with minimal downtime - you'll
look better, you'll feel better, you'll end up healthier and live longer too
• If you're absolutely strapped for time per day and can't fit in an exercise routine,
at the very least walk or ride your bike to work, take walks on lunch breaks, lift weights
with one hand and brush your teeth with the other - combine activities and fit in what
you can 8 - Weights on Treadmill,
• Speaking of combining activities, some believe that carrying weights on a treadmill
means they're doubling their calorie burn because now you're engaging more parts of
your body • And yes, it is true, you'll gain a slight
extra burn, it still isn't worth it purely because the risk of injury is high - with
your body moving up and down, you'll find yourself with frequent elbow and shoulder
injuries • If you ARE interested in extra calorie
burn, consider bumping up the speed level on your treadmill to something that pushes
your body to breaking point 7 - Swimming,
• Many would suggest swimming as a legitimate exercise, and while it does indeed tone your
muscles, relieve tension and even increase lung capacity - you won't find much weight
loss here • It's simple if you think about it: we're
always fighting against gravity to stand up, but when you take that element away like you
do with swimming then you're not working as hard in your exercise than you would if you
were doing it on land • You would have to exercise for many times
more hours in the water just to get the same results in a standard workout - if you're
more interested in weight loss than swimming because you enjoy it, stick with treadmills
and bikes 6 - Eating,
• There's a lot of confusion when it comes to dieting for an exercise routine - most
think that eating healthier is the way to go
• The reality is: your exercise burns a certain number of calories per day, if you're
eating tonnes of vegetables per day and you're not burning that equivalent amount of calories
during exercise, you will continue to get fatter
• Think of it like this: if you eat 2 meals a day, you'd need to exercise until both meals
were burnt off, say, 1400 calories - 3 meals, you need to exercise longer, especially if
the food was calorie-ridden like a Big Mac - you'd need to work off upwards of 2200 calories
5 - Pain, • There's the old expression, no pain no
gain, and a good deal of people take this to mean they must exercise until they're bleeding
internally • At no point should workouts be painful
- sure, you might be sweating, breathing hard and have burning muscles, but in no way should
you keep going when you have sharp pains in your elbow or chest
• Pain is your body's way of saying, "hey man, STOP, you are actually dying, and I don't
like that" 4 - Fresh Fruit,
• Fruits are essential when it comes to exercise, they're loaded with nutrients including
vitamin C - but strangely enough, fresh fruit aren't so great when compared to frozen fruit
• By the time they've hit the supermarket shelf, they've probably been sitting around
for weeks and by that point they've lost most of their nutrients, whereas those sold at
specialist stores and markets are typically fresh and ripe with all kinds of goodness
• Frozen fruit is picked and stored at the same time, solidifying all the nutrients until
the day you decide to unthaw it 3 - Machines,
• A lot of people swear by the machines at their gym, perfectly built to work out
certain areas of the body and automatically putting your body in the correct position
• But more often than not, the person working out on the machine only knows the basics of
how it works, "put arms here, push forward, repeat", and they don't know that the machine
needs to be adjusted to accommodate their weight and height
• This results in a subpar workout even though you're putting as much effort in as
possible, and can even lead to serious injury if used over a long period of time
2 - Yoga, • If someone has back pain, you might find
they get prescribed yoga in order to help build up their muscles
• And while it is true, especially for lower back pain that yoga helps build a stronger
core and works on the muscles - it entirely depends on the type of pain
• If the back problem is something more serious like a ruptured disc, yoga won't help
- in fact, it'll have the opposite effect and make the injury worse until you end up
in the hospital - always contact your doctor before you start up a new exercise routine
1 - Spot Reduction • There is a myth known as spot reduction
that if you work on one notoriously fat part of your body, say the stomach or the thighs,
that you'll be able to reduce the weight in that specific area fast
• But this is just nonsense - fat is all over your body, you have a percentage body
fat that is all tied together, not a series of separate unrelated "fat zones" scattered
across your limbs and body parts • If you want to lose the belly fat, you
need to understand that you'll have to lose the fat across every inch of your body, and
that some exercises do this faster than others, such as squats and shoulder presses being
infinitely more useful than crunches