Ah, yes, fitness myths – the misinformation that somehow survives despite the ever-growing popularity of science-based exercising. Be it from your average gym bro or a nutrition “tone-up-in-30-days” guru, you have almost certainly stumbled upon dramatic headlines and articles warning you about all sorts of gain killers and injury-inducing movements.
Well, as it turns out, with the power of the internet, we now have the ability to check on these common “statements” and put them to their long-deserved rest.
Let’s talk about the 5 oh-so-very-common fitness myths and why we need to bust them once and for all.
Table of Contents
What Is a Fitness Myth and Why We Need To Talk About It?
When we say fitness myth, we are referring to widespread exercise misinformation that somehow managed to survive within athletic circles. These myths are most commonly spread either by inexperienced gym rats or “fitness influencers” who want to sell you something.
You can recognize a fitness myth by the dramatic min-max approach that either instills fear or awe right away. Usually, due to lack of evidence, a fitness myth will be tucked into a blanket statement that can’t be followed by logic or sound evidence. In the worst case, people who spread these will try to rationalize the faulty logic with more BS and pseudo-science. Lastly, a fitness myth will almost always try to play on your emotions, with the myth-perpetuator trying to sell you on something in the end.
For example – If you want a six-pack, you need to do a lot of sit-ups and crunches to make your abdominals pop. In reality, however, ab visibility mostly depends on body fat percentage, aka a diet consisting of strict caloric intake.
5 Fitness Myths We’re About to Bust
1. Flexible People Don’t Need Mobility Work
Whoever tells you this (and at some point a gym bro probably will), you can tell that they have no clue what they’re talking about. Flexibility and mobility aren’t the same thing, even though they do involve muscle stretching.
Essentially, flexibility is the ability to stretch beyond the range of motion, usually with external help (a therapist, bands, Swedish ladder, etc.). It helps with myofascial release and can give you an extra hand with muscle recovery.
Mobility, however, is getting strong in the ROM (range of motion) position. It means that you control the movement while leading your body to the ROM limits. Lifters need mobility to lift better, runners need mobility to run more efficiently. Hell, everyone needs mobility work if they want to stay, well, mobile, well into their old age.
So, if you’re flexible, do not skip on mobility exercises.
2. You MUST NOT Go Knees-Over-Toes When Squatting
Ah, yes. “Keep your knees over your feet while you squat and NEVER let them go over your toes”. Unfortunately, this is still taught even in PE classes at schools worldwide. And it can’t be more wrong. What’s even worse, you risk injury by forcing your knees to stay over your feet while descending into a squat.
At Hybrid Athlete, we talk a great deal about the Knees-Over-Toes training methodology. It involves mobility and strength exercises that help you develop better biomechanics for every athletic discipline out there. It is really important to allow your joints to go to their full ROM while squatting, which includes ankle dorsiflexion, aka knees over toes.
Here’s a list of KOT classics to help you with healthy squatting:
3. DOMS Is a Sign Of High-quality Training
“If your muscles aren’t sore the day after, did you even train, bruh?”
This one is the favorite fitness myth of your regular gym rat.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (aka DOMS) is that tight, painful feeling you get in your muscles the day (or two) after a plateau-breaking session. It’s a reaction to new stimuli, whether it’s intensity or volume, and it’s most definitely not something you should feel after every session.
The soreness and tightness come from the micro-tears in the muscles that you targeted with the extra intensity. It develops 24 to 48 hours after the training session, and it can take up to 5 days to go away. However, DOMS is not and should not be a measure of training quality, unless you’ve changed your programming recently. And if you experience it often, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and adapt the intensity of your workouts.
4. Resistance Training Will Make You “Too Bulky” (this one is for you, ladies)
A lot of old-school aerobic trainers advise female gym beginners to stay with light weights to not get too bulky too fast. This myth is kind of funny, especially to professional bodybuilders, because they chase that mass for years and can’t get “too bulky”.
Of course, people new to resistance training do experience newbie gains in the first six months or so, but after that, building muscle requires a lot of planning and discipline.
So, dear ladies, those 1kg pink weights are good to start with, but make sure to ditch them and progress up the rack as your bodies adapt. We promise you, you won’t get too bulky, or at least not for a good number of years. And if you do, please contact the IBFF ASAP, and you will make millions!
5. Cardio Kills Your Gains
Lastly, we have the lazy powerlifter’s copium. “I don’t do cardio because it’ll kill my gains and ruin my lifting numbers”.
First of all, the heart is a muscle (albeit not a regular one). Second of all, “cardio” isn’t just to keep your heart rate up for no reason. Cardio training helps your body adapt to large oxygen needs. It also helps you train your lungs to keep up with said needs. On top of that, it keeps your cardiovascular system in sync with your body while you train.
However, this myth has a dash of truth. If you focus on cardio before resistance training, you can technically lose some gains. Basically, this way, you lose the energy needed for anaerobic training (i.e. lifting). So, i a sense, too much cardio can kill your gains, especially if prioritized right before resistance training.
So, if you’re not training for a marathon, save the treadmill for after the weights. It will help you with your gains-chasing by making more blood-oxygen available in the following lifting sessions.
On the other hand, if you want to be a hybrid athlete who optimizes for lifting AND running, you need a different approach to both.
Exercising is Not About Searching For All-Encompassing Solutions - It’s About Adaptation
Well, we can safely say that most fitness myths are slowly becoming a relic of the past. However, thanks to the echo-chamber nature of the internet (and the snake oil vendors that prowl on newbies), there’s no harm in busting them with some knowledge.
Definitive and absolute statements are a rarity in the world of fitness, and if someone tries to scare you with a wild statement like “women get too bulky from weight training”, the best thing you can do is scroll past/change the channel.
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