Fitness Tips That Can Ruin Your Workout

I remember most of my time in the gym is spent trying to confirm or refute ‘perceptions’ on the wrong or right things to do during a workout.

It’s easy to be a victim of fitness wrong tips. Breaking it down further, your gym partner gives you an exercise guideline, which you pass on to many of your acquaintances. Your daughter’s trainer advises you on the best abdominal exercise technique that will flatten your belly in 48 hours, which you share with many other parents because you’re convinced the advice must be true coming from a professional. 

Most of what you hear about exercise are not fact-based, but stuff thrown down from Anne, passed on to Mary, pushed to Akin and Tom, and so it goes on.  Experts agree that in the fitness industry, there are loads of half-truths and unconfirmed reports which are likely to prevent you and your family from getting the best and safest workout.

While some myths won’t hurt you, a load of others can actually hurt you because they frustrate your workout and at times lead to injury. Unconfirmed stories about fitness begin due to the fact that we respond differently to exercise. Consequently what seems reasonably possible for one person may not hold true for another, so at times you need to search for your own 'exercise facts’ - the things that are true for you. To help put you and your family on the path to a healthier, safer, and more pleasurable workout, find below the myths and the facts when it comes to popular exercise instructions.

Jogging on a treadmill is kinder to your knees than jogging on a hard path.

Jogging is a fantastic workout, but it can affect the knees. However since it’s the impact of your body weight on your joints that causes the discomfort, it’s the same result whether you jog on a treadmill or on concrete. The best way to reduce knee impact is to vary your workout. The trick is to blend jogging with other cardio exercises like aerobics, an elliptical machine, or riding a stationary bike.  This will lessen the impact on your knees and save them from injury.

Abdomen crunches will remove stomach fat.

It’s important to take with a pinch of salt everything you see and hear on television adverts. What abdominal-crunching device does is strengthen the muscles around your waist and give you a better posture. To be able to see those six packs on your abdomen has a lot to do with your whole body fat.  You need to lose the belly fat too see those belly muscles.

Doing stomach crunches won’t help you spot decrease, say experts. You can’t pick specific areas of your body to lose fat. For you to burn fat, you must set aside a workout that takes in cardiovascular and strength-training activities. This will help reduce your whole body fat composition, as well as the area around your waist and tummy. 

Aerobics will continue to burn fat hours after workout4 Top Picks

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This is a true assumption, though the calorie burn is not as much as you presume. Though your metabolism is in high gear and continues to burn fat, the amount is statistically insignificant. Actually all you burn is only about 20 calories for the whole day. So don’t depend on a post workout fat burn as major towards your caloric burn.

Swimming helps lose massive weight.

Despite good review of swimming as fantastic all body exercise, in terms of being able to increase lung capacity, muscles tone, and help cream off excess tension, the fact is that unless you swim for hours a day, swimming may not help much in your weight loss program. The reason is because the resistance of the water supports your body so disallowing you from working out as it would if you were moving your whole body, during jogging for instance.  The fact that you feel very hungry after swimming may really make you eat more than you normally would, hence likely to derail your eating plan.

Yoga relieves various types of back pain.

True yoga helps relieve back pain but not necessarily the best for various types. Yes if your back pain is muscle-related, then yoga can help with the stretches and specific positions. It can also help build a stronger core, which for many people is the answer to lower back pain. However if the back pain is due to a ruptured disc for instance, yoga is unlikely to help, but may actually worsen the injury resulting in more pain.   Inform your doctor if you have any back pain before commencing any type of exercise program.

No sweat means you’re not working hard enough.

This belief is so entrenched that you see some people refuse to wipe off the sweat, and would rather let it drain all over the gym equipment, while those who are not sweating struggle to work up a sweat. Sweating is your body’s way of cooling down and not essentially a sign of physical exertion. You can actually burn a sizable amount of calories without sweating. Go for a walk or do some light weight training. 

You’re not overdoing exercise if you feel OK.

If you’re starting or returning to exercise program do it slowly. Don’t do too much too quickly. The tendency is to think because you’re alright while working out means you’re not overdoing it, until a couple of days later when you can’t stand up due to an agonizing pain on your knees, or can turn your neck without grimacing. No matter how great you feel when you’re back to exercise, after a long absence, it’s important to take things slow irrespective of your fitness level previously. You may not feel the pain now, but will with time, and when you do this could end your workout program again.

Exercise equipment is safer

While it looks as if exercise equipment inevitably places your body in the right position, thus assist you in doing all the movements properly, this can only be if the equipment is adjusted correctly to fit your weight and height. If you don’t have a trainer or a partner to make out the right setting for you, you can run into mistakes meaning a high risk of injury working on an equipment the same way you will if working with free weights or doing any other type of non-equipment workout.

If you don’t feel pain, you don’t gain.

We all have different thresholds for pain, so if it hurts, stop, rest, and wait to see if the pain will go away. A fitness activity shouldn’t hurt while you’re doing it, and if it does, then either you’re doing it wrongly, or you already have an injury, so you should stop. The myth ‘no pain, no gain’ has the most potential for injury. True there’s some degree of soreness a day or two after working out, which is very different from feeling pain while you are working out. If it doesn’t go away, or if it begins again or increases after you start to work out, see a doctor.

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