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!
