Whether you want to tone up, slim down, or boost your mood, you’ve likely taken a stab at tweaking your fitness routine.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of fitness advice out there that won’t help you meet your goals and could actually do more impairment than good.
Here’s an overview of some of the most enduring workout myths and misconceptions, as well as the real science that lets you meet your fitness objectives in a healthy way.
Myth: To stay in shape, you only need to work out once or twice a few weeks .
Truth: Once or twice a week won’t cut it for sustained health benefits.
“A minimum of three days per week for a structured exercise program” is best, Shawn Arent, training exercises scientist at Rutgers University, recently told Business Insider. “Technically, you should do something every day, and by something I intend physical activity only move. Because we’re procuring more and more that the act of sitting counteracts any of the activity you do.”
Myth: The best time to work out is first thing in the morning .
Truth: The best time for a workout is whatever day allows you to workout most consistently. Ideally, you want to attain physical fitness a daily habit, so if late-night journeys to the gym are your thing, stick with it. If you prefer a morning running, do that instead.
Don’t have a preference? Some research suggests that working out first thing in the morning might help speed weight loss by priming the body to ignite more fat throughout the day.
Myth: Weight lifting turnings fat into muscle .
Truth: You can’t turn fat into muscle. Physiologically speaking, they’re two different tissues. Adipose( fatty) tissue is found under the skin, sandwiched between muscles, and around internal organs like the heart. Muscle tissue which are able to further broken down into three main forms is acquired throughout the body.
What weight training really does is help build up the muscle tissue in and around any fat tissue. The best way to reduce fat tissue is to eat a healthy diet that incorporates veggies, whole grains, lean proteins and somewhat paradoxically healthy fats like olive oil and fish.
Myth: Puzzles and plays are the best ‘brain workout’ around .
Truth: Plain old physical exercise seems to beat out any type of mental puzzle available, according to a wealth of recent research. Two new studiespublished this spring suggest that aerobic workout the specific activities that raises your heart rate and gets you moving and sweating for a sustained period of time has a significant, overwhelmingly beneficial impact on the brain.
“Aerobic exercise is the key for your head, just as it is for your heart, ” wrote the authors of a recent Harvard Medical School blog post.
Myth: Exert is the best behavior to lose weight .
Truth: If you’re looking to lose weight, you shouldn’t assume that you can simply “work off” whatever you eat. Experts say slimming down almost always starts with significant changes to your eating habits.
“In terms of weight loss, diet plays a much bigger role than exercise, ” University of Texas exercise scientist Philip Stanforth tells Business Insider.
That told, being active regularly is an important part of any healthy lifestyle. And when it comes to boosting your mood, improving your recollection, and protecting your brain against age-related cognitive decline, research proposes exercise may be as close to a wonder drug as we’ll get.
Myth: Sit-ups are the best behavior to get 6-pack abs .
Truth: As opposed to sit-ups, which target only your abdominal muscles, planks recruit several groups of muscles along your sides, front, and back. If you want a strong core especially the kind that would give you 6-pack-like definition you need to challenge all of these muscles.
“Sit-ups or crunches strengthen merely a few muscle groups, ” write the authors of the Harvard Healthbeat newsletter. “Through dynamic patterns of movement, a good core workout helps strengthen the entire placed of core muscles you use every day.”
Myth: Weight training is for men .
Truth: Weight developing is a great way to strengthen muscles, and got nothing to do with gender. That told, females produce less testosterone on average than humen do, and studies suggest that hormone plays a role in determining how we build muscle.
Myth: It takes at least 2 week to get ‘out of shape.’
Truth: In most people, muscle tissue can start to break down within a week without regular exercise.
“If you stop teaching, you actually do get noticeable de-conditioning, or the start of de-conditioning, with as little as seven days of complete remainder, ” Arent told. “It very much is an issue of use it or lose it.”
Myth: Operating a marathon is the ideal style to get fit .
Tru th: Not ready to conquer a marathon? No problem. You can get many of the benefits of long-distance operating without ever passing the five-mile mark.
Running fast and hard for only five to 10 minutes a day can provide some of the same health outcomes as running for hours can. In reality, people who run for less than an hour a week as long as they get in those few minutes each day read similar advantages in terms of heart health compared to those who run more than three hours per week.
Plus, years of recent research suggest that short explosions of intense exert can provide some of the same health benefits as long, endurance-style workouts and they likewise tend to be more fun.
Myth: Keeping a food diary is a reliable lane of monitoring and controlling what you feed .
Truth: Even when we’re making an effort to be awareness about what we’re putting into our bodies and how active we’re being, we often commit ourselves more credit than we deserve.
“People tend to overrate their physical activity and underestimate how much meat they feed, ” says Stanforth. “They consistently think they’ve worked out more and consistently think they’ve eaten less.”
Myth: Athletics drinkings are the best route to re-hydrate after a workout .
Truth: Most athletics guzzles are just sugar and water. Instead, experts recommend refueling with plain old sea and high-protein snack, since investigates propose protein helps recondition muscles after a workout.
Read the original article on Tech Insider. Copyright 2017.
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