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- Oct 20, 2005
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Here is a good post i found in a online newsletter.
The Myths of weight training
Just like old wives tales, Santa Claus and the Boogie man in the
closet weight lifting myths die hard. The extreme confusion out there
when it comes to building a healthier, fitter, stronger and more
muscular body is rampant. When I enter any given gym I see the
majority of people doing a few things right and many things the wrong
way.
If they were doing things right they wouldn't look the same month
after month year after year, with no real strength gains or
improvement in overall endurance. I blame the lack of improvement
predominantly on the myths of weightlifting.
If your goal is to maintain the same body that you joined the gym with
then it doesn't really matter how you train, you could go to the gym
and sit on the machine and read a newspaper and maintain your results
why workout to do that.
Of course that's probably not why you joined up, for one reason or the
other you saw in yourself better health, fitness, strength, lower body
fat and yes curved muscles. So what happened, where did you go wrong?
Weren't you on the road with the sun shinning above? What made you
turn down that trail into the woods?
It probably started with all the nonsense that you read about in the
latest muscle magazine, about how you could take this and that miracle
concoction and turn your 99lb skin and bones into a 225lb Hercules, or
how you could lose all the body fat you wanted by training with light
weight and high repetitions, or how you needed to live in the gym,
training 5-6 days a week for hours in order to reach your goal.
You might have taken this advice to heart, fell for it hook line and
sinker, and ending up on someone's dinner table as part of a fish and
chips dish, or in other words making no progress. Well it's not
entirely your fault, unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation in
the field of weight training and fitness, a lot of people either with
the best of intentions and no real understanding or a lot of people
who push product without any real concern if it works or not.
So how does a person sift through the nonsense and arrive at the stuff
that actually works? Well there is much to learn, and I won't put it
all into this newsletter, I would recommend that you implement the
following though:
1) If something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
Ripped abs in 6 weeks? Lose 20 pounds of pure fat in a week. Take
supplement X and become just like the latest bodybuilding champion.
Whenever you see advertisement like this your suspicion meter should
go off; don't believe the hype. Following a well balanced diet, along
with sufficient rest and a sound exercise program will allow you to
make your best progress without breaking your wallet and being conned
into buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a guy you met on the street.
2) The harder the exercise the better the result. This is not always
true but in general terms it applies. For example if you have to
choose between doing barbell squats or that nice new inner thigh
machine in the corner, choose the squat it will produce more overall
results in less time. Remember that proper exercise is a stress that
causes the body to stimulate gains in muscle mass, strength, endurance
and fat loss. Unfortunately the body doesn't want to change it would
rather stay the same as it is, in order to change it you must demand
that it change. Harder exercises such as the squat stress the body
more and thus demand a greater response in positive changes.
3) Training with light weights is not the best way to go to lose body
fat and keep it off. Light weights don't challenge your body enough,
and an unchallenged body doesn't make changes. Light weights are any
weight that allows you to comfortably complete a set whether it is
made up of 1 repetition or 100. Whatever repetition range you choose,
you must struggle for the last few repetitions of the set in order to
produces the best results. In fact best gains are made by taking a set
to the point at which no additional repetitions are possible. Yeah
it's hard work, but results will come quicker because of that.
4) Weight training every day is not the best way to go. If you are
training with weights every day to build new levels of muscle mass and
strength you are overtraining if you are not superhuman or on growth
drugs. This applies even if you train different muscle groups on
different days; it applies because the nervous system must recover as
well as other systems in order to allow for new progress or
super-compensation. Most trainees will make great progress
weight training 3 times a week on non-consecutive days, others will
need 2 times a week max, and a few will need to limit their weight
training to once a week. If you are weight training properly you
should be getting stronger every time you train, if you are not then
you are either overtraining or not training hard enough.
The application of these myth busters will allow you to reach your
goals in much less time than the typical in gym trainee.
RC
The Myths of weight training
Just like old wives tales, Santa Claus and the Boogie man in the
closet weight lifting myths die hard. The extreme confusion out there
when it comes to building a healthier, fitter, stronger and more
muscular body is rampant. When I enter any given gym I see the
majority of people doing a few things right and many things the wrong
way.
If they were doing things right they wouldn't look the same month
after month year after year, with no real strength gains or
improvement in overall endurance. I blame the lack of improvement
predominantly on the myths of weightlifting.
If your goal is to maintain the same body that you joined the gym with
then it doesn't really matter how you train, you could go to the gym
and sit on the machine and read a newspaper and maintain your results
why workout to do that.
Of course that's probably not why you joined up, for one reason or the
other you saw in yourself better health, fitness, strength, lower body
fat and yes curved muscles. So what happened, where did you go wrong?
Weren't you on the road with the sun shinning above? What made you
turn down that trail into the woods?
It probably started with all the nonsense that you read about in the
latest muscle magazine, about how you could take this and that miracle
concoction and turn your 99lb skin and bones into a 225lb Hercules, or
how you could lose all the body fat you wanted by training with light
weight and high repetitions, or how you needed to live in the gym,
training 5-6 days a week for hours in order to reach your goal.
You might have taken this advice to heart, fell for it hook line and
sinker, and ending up on someone's dinner table as part of a fish and
chips dish, or in other words making no progress. Well it's not
entirely your fault, unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation in
the field of weight training and fitness, a lot of people either with
the best of intentions and no real understanding or a lot of people
who push product without any real concern if it works or not.
So how does a person sift through the nonsense and arrive at the stuff
that actually works? Well there is much to learn, and I won't put it
all into this newsletter, I would recommend that you implement the
following though:
1) If something sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
Ripped abs in 6 weeks? Lose 20 pounds of pure fat in a week. Take
supplement X and become just like the latest bodybuilding champion.
Whenever you see advertisement like this your suspicion meter should
go off; don't believe the hype. Following a well balanced diet, along
with sufficient rest and a sound exercise program will allow you to
make your best progress without breaking your wallet and being conned
into buying the Brooklyn Bridge from a guy you met on the street.
2) The harder the exercise the better the result. This is not always
true but in general terms it applies. For example if you have to
choose between doing barbell squats or that nice new inner thigh
machine in the corner, choose the squat it will produce more overall
results in less time. Remember that proper exercise is a stress that
causes the body to stimulate gains in muscle mass, strength, endurance
and fat loss. Unfortunately the body doesn't want to change it would
rather stay the same as it is, in order to change it you must demand
that it change. Harder exercises such as the squat stress the body
more and thus demand a greater response in positive changes.
3) Training with light weights is not the best way to go to lose body
fat and keep it off. Light weights don't challenge your body enough,
and an unchallenged body doesn't make changes. Light weights are any
weight that allows you to comfortably complete a set whether it is
made up of 1 repetition or 100. Whatever repetition range you choose,
you must struggle for the last few repetitions of the set in order to
produces the best results. In fact best gains are made by taking a set
to the point at which no additional repetitions are possible. Yeah
it's hard work, but results will come quicker because of that.
4) Weight training every day is not the best way to go. If you are
training with weights every day to build new levels of muscle mass and
strength you are overtraining if you are not superhuman or on growth
drugs. This applies even if you train different muscle groups on
different days; it applies because the nervous system must recover as
well as other systems in order to allow for new progress or
super-compensation. Most trainees will make great progress
weight training 3 times a week on non-consecutive days, others will
need 2 times a week max, and a few will need to limit their weight
training to once a week. If you are weight training properly you
should be getting stronger every time you train, if you are not then
you are either overtraining or not training hard enough.
The application of these myth busters will allow you to reach your
goals in much less time than the typical in gym trainee.
RC
