20 Biggest Training Myths

**min0 lee** · 11-12-2005, 06:49 PM

What do you guys think about Fred Hatfield, he's been around for a while.

Can you ever ensure that you will continually make gains? That's one of the toughest questions to answer.

By Fred Hatfield, Phd.

So you'll go out and seek the answer, and here's where you will run into an incredible number of myths that exist in the bodybuilding subculture. Many of these misconceptions have been around for years, decades even. Well, let's make you a bit more knowledgeable.
These myths and my advice regarding them are presented in no particular order of importance, potential harm or time they waste. All should concern you, so take heed!

1. Pullovers will expand your ribcage
Back in the 50's, pullovers were a common exercise because of the lack of top-notch equipment. It was believed that you could make your ribs "bow" outward, thereby deepening your chest. Nonsense! Pullovers are okay as a lat exercise, but in general, do nothing but aggravate your shoulder joints. Want a big chest? Do bench presses. Want big lats? Do pull-downs and pull-ups!

2. Women who weight train get big like men
Nowadays some top competitive female bodybuilder's physiques rival many a man's. Yet these women are the exception. They have great genetics, and no doubt a naturally high level of the male hormone testosterone - that's what made them big. A vast majority of women can't achieve that size or muscularity; they simply don't have the testosterone for it. What women can expect from bodybuilding is less fat; firm strong muscles; and great health and fitness.

3. Muscle turns into fat when you get old or stop lifting
Regardless of your age, if you don't use your muscles on a regular basis, they'll get smaller from disuse. This atrophy process is caused by your body reclaiming some of the protein from which muscle tissue is made. If you continue to eat a lot of food, just as you did while training, you'll become fat. But muscle can't be converted to fat. Fat is stored from the food you eat because you're eating more than you need.

4. Change your toe and foot position to target different areas of you quads.Four muscles compromise your quadriceps, but they tend to function as one because they share a common tendon of insertion, the quadriceps tendon. This tendon kind of encases your patella (kneecap) and becomes the patellar tendon as it inserts into the tibia. The origin points of three of the very long quadriceps muscles are relatively close together above your hip (the fourth muscle originates farther down your thigh). Positioning your toes in or out as you do leg extensions or squats, or taking a wider narrower stance as you squat, will do very little to isolate any one of the quad muscles.

5. Train your abs a lot to lose the fat.
This is called spot reduction, which is impossible. Fat is certainly burned while you train, but here's the catch: fat is reclaimed from all over your body before it's reclaimed from any given body site. Of far greater importance is the fact that by reversing the effects of disuse on your muscles and returning them to normal size (or super-normal size), their higher need for calories will amplify your caloric burn rate - your metabolic rate - 24 hours a day! That will burn more fat generally, but never from one place exclusively.

6. Women need to focus on toning.
The word "toning" has become a source of misunderstanding over the years. As you use your muscles against resistance, which is a stress situation, they remain in a state of partial contraction, even at rest. This partial state of continuous contraction gives your muscles a firm feeling that we call tone. In reality, everyone who trains with weights has tone. So, just like men, women should concentrate on getting stronger and making their previously unused muscles return to normal size (even super normal size).

7. Using free weights builds size while machines shape and define a muscle.
Used correctly, both machines and free weights provide the required source of resistance to build muscle size, a clean diet provides definition. Learn how the machines in your gym and the dumbbell/barbell exercises can work for you, then use one or the other or both to best meet your needs.

8. You can/should train your abs, calves and forearms every day.
While you can train any muscle every day, you won't get away with it for very long! Even though slow-twitch muscles, such as your forearms, abs and calves, are somewhat more resistant to fatigue in comparison to other muscles, such as your chest or quads, they still need rest. Basically, if you plan on getting as big as possible, you need to train every muscle hard and heavy. This kind of training requires plenty of rest, even if you're talking abs, calves or forearms.

9. The best training system is push/pull or legs separately, etc.
Bodybuilders are often heard saying something like, "I train biceps on back day because I use biceps when training back." At face value, such regimens seem to make sense, but do they really? No. If you train your biceps on back day, one of two things will happen - if you always do your back first, you may either overtrain those muscles or undertrain your biceps. Naturally, the opposite is true if you reverse the order. Consider each bodypart separately for its unique recuperative abilities and vary the order of your bodypart exercises.

10. High reps build definition; low reps build bulk.
Again, dieting provides definition and weight training builds muscle size! For the greatest size possible, you'll have to lift heavy and lighter weights, do fast and slow movements, do high and low reps... and everything in-between. Though I'd have to agree that emphasis on heavy weight would be more productive in terms of building size, the point is that you simply shouldn't train only one way. Gains can be best attained by training in many different ways.

**min0 lee** · 11-12-2005, 06:51 PM

11. Squatting will make your hips wide.Your skeletal structure, not a particular exercise or your gluteal muscularity determines the width of your hips. No amount of squatting will alter you skeletal structure. This myth probably came from the fact that many of the great squatters in history had wide hips. That's what made them great! Too bad, because squatting is the single best exercise any beginner can possibly do.

12. Deadlifts, good mornings and rows are bad for your back.In all the world of weight training, there's no such thing as a bad exercise. If you use proper technique, you'll find only good, better and best. More people get hurt from using poor technique than anything else uses. In most back exercises, the key is to maintain your spine's natural curvature - that's the position of strength. If you round your back off, you're inviting trouble. When you do these exercises, focus on keeping your back straight, your shoulders back and your chest out. Have someone watch you and give you feedback.

13. When you do crunches, suck in your stomach; otherwise your abs will pooch out.Actually, when your abs grow stronger, they tend to flatten because of their improved tones. While it's okay to stabilise your body a bit by taking in a breath and holding it while you crunch, here's a better way to do it: Prestretch your abs (arch your back a bit by putting a pad or rolled-up towel behind your lower back) before contracting them in the crunch movement, thereby increasing the range of motion and time the abdominal muscles spend contracting.

14. Squatting will hurt your knees, especially if you go too deep.With good technique, squats are good for your knees. In fact, squatting will keep your knees healthy, as long as you don't bounce into the bottom position - this sort of ballistic shock can be bad. Common problems include doing squats before you're schooled in proper technique or trying to do heavy squats before you build a solid foundation in all the smaller synergistic and stabiliser muscles.

15. The gym should be hot, because unless you sweat, you won't get a good workout.Well, not exactly. Research suggests that slightly warmer temperatures, about 65-75 degrees F, are better for intense training than cold temperatures. Once you're sufficiently warmed up, however, the temperature doesn't seem to make much of a difference. But one thing's for sure - if you train in very hot and humid conditions or all bundled up in sweats, heat exhaustion can be a real and dangerous possibility.

16. A gap in your biceps can be corrected with a lot of preacher curls.The gap you see between your biceps and forearm while doing a biceps pose is a genetic trait causes by a long biceps tendon. You can't build muscle on top of tendon, so forget it! What you can do is turn your fist toward the mirror and watch the biceps elongate right before your eyes, filling the gap!

17. You should breathe out while lifting the weight and breathe in while lowering the weight.Well, for your musculoskeletal system to provide stabilising support so you can lift the weight more efficiently, you really do have to hold your breath during the rep. The held breath forces your diaphragm to contract, thereby creating greater intrathoracic pressure. The pressure inside your thoracic and abdominal cavities helps to stabilise the entire shoulder-girdle complex and torso respectively, helping you to move the weight more efficiently. A note of caution, however, at some point, you should expel the pressurised air in preparation for the next inhalation. This should be done when the weight has moved about two-thirds of the way through the range of motion. Otherwise, the pressure inside your thorax can cause you to black out. This phenomenon is termed the "Valsalva Manoeuvre."

18. Aerobics are best for burning fat.This myth of fat burning vs. carbohydrate-burning exercises irks me no end! When you do low-intensity aerobic exercise, fat break down contributes to about 50% of your energy needs. Yet the more intensely you exercise, the lower the percentage contribution of fat oxidation. When you compare high-intensity aerobics to low-intensity aerobics, however, more total calories are actually expended during high-intensity work and the total amount of fat utilised is greater even though the percentage is smaller! The caloric deficit is what contributes to weight loss, not the percentage of fat utilised during exercise.

19. The nautilus or high intensity training principle of only one set to failure is highly effective.Wrong! Not only is it inappropriate for serious bodybuilders, but it isn't good for even the casual fitness enthusiast. Your body simply needs more stimulation to grow and get strong than you can get out of one set to failure. Research galore has proven this fact.

20. Be sure to stretch before you train.Many people confuse warming up and stretching, as well as stretching and flexibility training. You'll see it at your local gym or out at your local park: People are contorting their bodies and placing ligaments, tendons, joints and muscles under severe mechanical stress in the hopes of increasing flexibility and performance and decreasing injury potential. Yet attempting to stretch these tissues before exercise or a general 5 to 10 minute warm-up is like trying to stretch cold toffee, so forget about decreasing injury. And very little evidence suggests that stretching before training or competition increases performance; in fact, some shows that prolonged stretching will make you weaker. It's much better to do an activity-specific warm-up.
If you're getting ready to bench, for example, start with light weights, move through a full range of motion and gradually increase the weights you're lifting with each set. While no active stretching per se takes place, the specific movements done with lighter weights will loosen you up to go heavy in later sets. Putting your pecs in positions only a swimmer or gymnast might find useful isn't only meaningless for bodybuilders but potentially injurious. Now, if you want to work on your flexibility, do so after your workout when your muscles are warmed up and much more pliable. Flexibility training is far more productive when muscles are in a mildly fatigued state, and that toffee is far less likely to break when it's warm!

Any disagreements?

**P-funk** · 11-12-2005, 06:52 PM

I think I may have read it before.

Hatfield is a pretty smart guy though.

**min0 lee** · 11-12-2005, 07:02 PM

Originally Posted by P-funk

I think I may have read it before.

Hatfield is a pretty smart guy though.

It was published in February 2002.

**BigDyl** · 11-12-2005, 07:21 PM

.

**Triple Threat** · 11-12-2005, 07:52 PM

I've had people tell me #12 and #14, usually right after I do a set of one of them. My typical comment is "Really? I'd better be real careful then" and then I proceed to walk away.

**ST240** · 11-12-2005, 11:23 PM

16. A gap in your biceps can be corrected with a lot of preacher curls.

I hate that damn gap... The only thing you can do is make your forearms bigger to fix it. And thats not much of a fix.

Thread: 20 Biggest Training Myths

Thread Tools

Display

20 Biggest Training Myths

Similar Threads

Biggest protein myths debunked

30 OF BODYBUILDING?S BIGGEST MYTHS EXPOSED and DEBUNKED

The Five Biggest Weight Loss and Fitness Myths

7 Myths of Women's weight training

The 7 Biggest Muscle Myths

Posting Permissions