Lifting weights is more than a pastime for me. It’s an all-time.. An all-time great. The all-time great. My love for throwing weight around runs, so deep that I want you to love it too. One roadblock to a similar infatuation may come from a wrongheaded misconception you picked up along the way; here we fix that.
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Common Strength Training Misconceptions
Weight training, weight lifting, resistance training, hitting the weights, strength training, or whatever you call this euphoria inducer.. Is a sort of exercise designed to externally challenge skeletal muscle. The goal is to improve your ability to manage excess force on top of what gravity provides.
Forms of resistance can be dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, cables, bands, chains, your own body, odd objects like water bottles or chairs, and the list goes on.
Different strokes for different folks - you could be in it for physical health, mental health, stamina, muscle, fat loss, strength, injury rehab, competition, performance improvement, fun, and/or some combination of the above.
I’m here to clear strength training’s name. I won’t allow any unearned slander; in no particular order..
21 Myths About Lifting Weights:
1. Strength Training Will Make You Bulky
No. This is a mistruth. A mistruth that deters a lot of ladies from stepping foot in the weight room. How many guys do you know want to be bulky, but aren’t? How many people consistently lift weights, yet appear to not do so?
Clearly weight training doesn’t just magically make you big; that requires a concerted, intentional effort. To be bulky one must train specifically, consume sufficient calories, tally the right macros, recover well, and want it. Not a little want either, a big want, because that mountain will take big work to mount.
Piling on.. It calls for so much effort to add significant muscle that many bros and bro-ettes use performance enhancers; if you don’t want it you won’t get it.
Truth
Strength training can heighten your propensity to resist gravity and even burn fat, but it doesn’t make you bulky.. It takes much more for that (how to bulk).
2. Without Performance Enhancers You Can’t Get Big
You call that one a whopper. Can enhancers work? Of course. Depending on what you use you’ll boost the production of certain hormones, while limiting the production of others that improve your performance and recovery.
Is it a requirement to pack on muscle? No. I’ve never used any sort of enhancer: testosterone, TREN, SARMS.. Nothing.
I’ve been able to pack on 40 pounds of muscle. You don’t have to stop at me, many of my clients have bulked successfully.
Those that haven’t had success in the growth department are lacking in essential areas required to grow; namely the calorie department. What you think is a lot of calories may be short of what is needed to gain weight.
Truth
Enhancers could help, but the side effects are vast. You can naturally pack on muscle with a solid plan and consistency.
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3. Weight Training Doesn’t Burn Fat
This is evasion of the truth. Jacks and jills read carefully: weight training burns more calories over time than cardio.
A calorie is a unit of energy. Burn more calories? You can lose more fat.
*A short story*
The process of resistance training uses energy.
Recovering from resistance training uses energy.
Maintaining what was created after recovering from resistance training uses energy.
Therefore your fat burning potential from lifting weights is the greatest good.
Make no mistake, doing low intensity cardio also requires energy, yet once that session is done so is the calorie burning. High intensity cardio will burn calories long after a session, but that calorie burn is session dependent.. Not on how your body is composed this is why lifting beats cardio for fat loss.
Score one for the weights. With added muscle you’ll burn more calories while just looking out the window waiting for the snow to melt (we’ll get through it Texas 🤘).
Truth
Burning fat requires a calorie deficit. Strength training helps create one (how to lose fat and keep muscle).
4. Weight Lifting Is Bad For Your Joints
This tale is tall. There’s been a long-standing belief that strength training causes a negative joint health trend. I can see how one would conclude that from the surface, but this isn’t so.
In reality resistance training will strengthen the muscles around joints, which help relieve and prevent issue potential.
It’s Wolff’s law. Weight training forces adaptation not only in your muscles, but bones, joints, and ligaments adjust to handle the stress. So if your body tangles with this excess force long enough it’ll optimize in response by increasing bone mineral content [1].
Truth
If you have good, bad, or indifferent joints you should lift if the doc clears you, it’ll make them more durable.
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5. It’s Okay To Ignore The Eccentric Phase Of Lifting
It’s not. Check your ego at the car door. The eccentric phase of a lift is the “on the way down” segment.
This portion is often ignored in an effort to lift more heavily and with the belief it’s all about the concentric phase, which is the contraction component.
If you control the resistance eccentrically you’ll boost your gains even without having to increase weight.
Truth
You activate more muscle fibers on the eccentric phase of a lift [2] (best pace for lifting weights).
6. You Can Turn Fat Into Muscle
Not possible. Two different chemical structures and two different development processes.
Fat can help you create muscle by being metabolized as energy.. When in a calorie deficit (consume less calories than you burn) you use some fat for energy (fat loss occurs), but that’s about as far as it goes.
When you lift you tear muscle tissue. With proper protocol i.e. Protein, enough calories, and time to recover.. That tissue repairs better equipped than before; more muscle. That’s how it grows.
Truth
You can lose fat and build muscle, but there is no transformation process.
7. Muscle Can Turn Into Fat
Inaccurate. To flip the coin on the previous misconception, it’s a common belief that if you stop training muscle will turn to fat.
Untrue. If you cease training for long enough detraining will occur, which is when you begin losing your ability to perform at a certain level. It’ll involve a loss of stamina, strength, and muscle.
This doesn’t mean it turned to fat, but if you are detraining, while in a calorie surplus you may gain fat (adipose tissue) during the process.
Truth
Muscle doesn’t turn to fat, it turns to energy if you don’t use it. The body has to work hard to maintain muscle, so if it’s no longer needed it’ll trim the excess.
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8. Women Can’t Train Like Men And Get Results
This one is live from falsification nation. Women and men don’t have to train differently. You can mirror each other. A man can train the way women traditionally do and vice versa.
It’s not about gender it’s about goals. If you’re more focused on lower body shape you’ll hit lower body with more frequency. If you’re more concerned with aesthetic symmetry you’ll pretty much hit every body-part equally. More focused with uplifting a weak body part like calves? You’ll give them extra attention (how to truly build calves).
Muscle is muscle. Hormonal variance toggles the degree, but muscle responds to weight training the same whether male or female.
Truth
You don’t have to change your training because of your gender, train for your goal.
9. You Have To Lift Heavy Weights To Build Muscle
This here is a fable. It’s true that big weight builds muscle, but so does not as big weight. Heavy is relative, so for the sake of commonality.. The term heavy when it pertains to fitness is weight in the strength category.
Different rep ranges emphasize different responses:
Strength 1-5 reps
Hypertrophy 6-15 reps
Stamina 15+ reps
All categories build muscle, to a degree, however the relevant range does the most for its title.
Truth
You can build muscle with challenging resistance in any rep range, still you’ll get the most growth by confronting your muscles in the hypertrophy range.
10. Higher Reps Burn More Fat
I penned a whole column on just this distortion, (why higher reps doesn’t mean more fat burning) it doesn’t mean more or less fat burning.
It’s just another tool in the kit. My motto for switching from a muscle building focus to a fat burning focus is to keep lifting like you want to build more muscle. Only changes should be to your diet and your cardio habits.
Truth
Losing fat is about a calorie deficit, not about did you do 6 reps instead of 24 during a set.
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11. Lifting Weights Ruins Flexibility
My oh my the deceit continues.. Lifting won’t decrease your flexibility.
The real is if you lift with proper form you’re going through the dynamic ranges of motion your body is capable of. When you conduct full range movements you actually increase, or at worst maintain flexibility.
Truth
If you stretch and/or use your body’s dynamism consistently you’ll be flexible; if you don’t you won’t be flexible. For these reasons I prefer dynamic warm ups regardless of the muscle group I’m working.
12. Machine Weights Aren’t For Serious Lifters
It’s a “bro” belief that to hit the machines is to tuck your tail. In the machine division i include anything predetermining the motion you’ll take your muscles through.
Machines can be of great benefit.
It’s still resistance training, so there’s still strength and hypertrophy potential.
Especially when new to lifting, they’ll bolster you learning decent movement patterns for when you use free weights and cables.
Theeen they’re safer for when you want to go extra heavy, but have no spotter.
Truth
Machines can help you isolate some muscle groups even more effectively than free weights, for you can put aggressive focus on that muscle and less on the arc your resistance travels.
13. If You Don’t Change Your Workouts Frequently You Won’t Make Progress
Hyper-volatility is an underreported reason why many fail to reach strength, hypertrophy, and fat loss goals. The belief that there’s a need to keep switching things up is a hindrance.
Take the time to get to know each move.
For best results you should use periodization. This is where you take a period of time to focus on a rep scheme IE hypertrophy before switching to stamina. Eventually you’ll move from stamina to strength and so on.
In periodization you can go from 3 weeks to 3 months under the same conditions. I like to use the same workouts and schemes for a month before i hit myself with the remix. Even after a month, although rep schemes change, i usually keep most exercises the same, but when I feel the urge I’ll change a few.
This gives time to learn a move, improve on a move, and possibly master a move. During all of this your body will be forced to continue adaptation, for as you become more competent with a movement you’re able to safely increase resistance.
Truth
If you keep shifting workouts you’ll never adapt enough to overload (how to progressively overload). You’ll just do something new for the sake of doing something new and without overload your body will remain unconvinced it needs to add muscle.
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14. Your Body Isn’t Enough For Resistance Training
The rumors couldn’t be more wrong. Not only in theory, body weight resistance training works in practice. For beginners of course, but for advanced athletes calisthenics can do enough to build and/or maintain muscle.
I had to fully put it in my arsenal when gyms were closed for covid-19 purposes.
Not that I didn’t know body weight training worked, I wrote body weight training can help you build muscle in 2019. It’s just different when you take your seasoned muscles on a trial run.
Your body is resistance and there are endless body weight techniques you can use to put you in a rep range for channeled results.
Truth
With improvisation you can build a lot of muscle with calisthenics, just prepare your core.. It’ll take a beating.
15. If You’re Not Sore The Lift Wasn’t Good
The lies just won’t stop. Soreness is part of resistance training. When you lift you create microtears in worked muscle tissue. In turn you often develop soreness, it tends to occur hours to days later, which is referred to as delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
The newer you are to lifting the more soreness you’ll experience, but as your muscles become seasoned your degree of soreness will dissipate. This doesn’t mean workouts no longer tear, it means your body has advanced how it responds to the process.
Minus soreness you may think your performance is now subpar, that may not be the case. Your workouts may still bewilder, but more tangible measurements of success are needed.
Did I lift more weight within the same rep range? Was I able to last longer? Am I recovering faster between sets?
Or aesthetic considerations: are my muscles growing? Am I getting more defined (how to use progress pictures)?
Truth
Soreness is arbitrary, so track progress by comparing results over time. This is easily done by keeping a fitness journal (how to use a fitness journal).
16. Older Folks Should Avoid Resistance Training
The opposite is so true your head should hit the Michael Jackson spin. As we age we begin losing muscle tissue and even testosterone dips.
What helps with each? Resistance training ladies and gents.. Resistance training.
Already mentioned its aid to bones and such, then the general health benefits, stress relief, and so on.
Lift for life.
Truth
Older people have more incentive to lift than younger.
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17. You Have To Weight Train For Hours To Get Results
🗣 Noooo. You don’t have to and shouldn’t lift for hours.
There’s a sweet spot around 75 minutes of training that if you surpass your body typically becomes excessively catabolic and you’re no longer benefitted by continuing.
You can get in 20 minute lifts and make progress, but if you went longer you’d get more out of it. If your more leads to hours? You’ll get less out of it.
Worse than temporary hormonal inconvenience is that lifting for too long contributes to overreaching or overtraining, which is a state where your body can’t recover quickly enough for your workload (how to prevent overtraining). All sorts of issues come with overtraining like low libido and insomnia.
Truth
You should plan your workout, execute, and call it a day. Concise lifts work better hormonally and in practice.
18. One Can Pick A Body Part For Fat Loss
Unfortunately ‘tis not the case. You can’t spot reduce fat.
This is my apology to the waist trainer owners out there (why waist trainers don’t work), it’s not possible.
What you can do is emphasize certain muscle groups to influence your shape.
This may come across as spot reduction by altering your dimensions in the chosen area, but fat loss is predetermined.
Your body loses fat in a sort of last-in first-out order. You’ll lose noticeable fat in the places you last gained noticeable fat during the early stages of fat loss
Truth
You have to lose overall body fat to see shrinkage in a particular place.
19. A Weight Belt Is A Must For Weight Training
It’s not a neighborhood, it’s a falsehood 😆. Weight belts are an unneeded luxury, only to be used when recovering from injury (how to treat lower back pain) or to provide extra assistance for some multijointed maximal lift.
When you use a weight belt it serves your core, like training wheels to a bike.
Belts aid in preventing your core from taking on a full load, which will prevent your core from fully adapting to handle the loads you throw its way.
Pros and cons.
Truth
Your transverse abdominis is your natural weight belt. If you learn to use it, external assistance is less needed.
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20. It’s Best To Only Work One Muscle Group Per Day
I’ll correct this misstatement. Newbies get on and believe they need to jump to a socially popular split like:
Monday chest
Tuesday back
Wednesday arms
Thursday shoulders
Friday legs
This channeled isolation is underkill and unneeded in most cases. If your goal is aesthetic symmetry and hypertrophy you’d fare better with a split that focused more on complementary movements rather than body parts, especially early on.
Each body part doesn’t need a specific day, particularly to begin your journey.
Truth
You’d get more out of working multiple muscles in a workout, so that you can work those muscles multiple times per week rather than once.
Note: still necessary to give a particular muscle 24 hours off before directly retargeting
21. Free Weights Are For Pros
Libel I say! Free weights are for everyone. Machines work, but free weights adhere exceptionally to your natural movement.
Everybody has different attributes, but when using free weights you attune the weights to you. This allows the greatest range of motion. More range of motion welcomes more muscle fibers to the party.
If you’re a rookie start light, perfect the movement pattern, then begin adding extra resistance.
Truth
Free weights are king. You can use a spotter or start with lower resistance to build your confidence and competency.
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So, It’s About That Time
Resistance training can add sauce to the life of any earthling. Disallow misinformation to deter you from the beauty weight training is. What other misconceptions can you add? Leave a comment below. Health is wealth and wealth is comfort. Comfort leads to happiness and you’ll get more of that when you put those muscles to use. Be Great.
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