Goooooodmorning,
Fitness is forever evolving. Every
single day there is a new workout, a new diet, a new expert and a new everything that is "suppose" to work. There are so many myths in today's fitness world, its actually really comical sometimes. All fitness takes is a little bit of common sense and consistency. You put those two together and you can probably bet you'll trend in the right direction with your health. But, we all fall victim to "popular trends" sometimes, even myself!
I used to believe a few of them back in the day (back in the day as 10-15 years ago). There some things in health and fitness I thought were completely true. I used to do them religiously thinking they were improving my fitness. Come to find out, after years of great research and
publications, some of these things just aren't true. Science has proven that they don't really work and I'm going to lay out a few of them below. In my opinion, thats how you can seek out a true fitness professional - if they are truthful about THE CURRENT RESEARCH and don't BS things. If something changes, people should say they were wrong about "x", update you and move on. But, thats doesn't really work in todays society (about anything for that matter), huh? Welp, I'll always
steer ya in the right direction and say I'm wrong if I've been proven otherwise. I wish more people took this high road..you know what I'm talking about. Let's look at a few below:
#1. - Fasted Cardio
-I used to believe fasted cardio burned more fat. It was said that when you wake up, there should not be much glycogen left in the muscle (fuel source for muscle) so your body will directly resort to burning fat as fuel. Ehhh, not so much. Our body can store quite a lot of glycogen in the
muscle and liver. We'll still use a good amount of that. Fasted cardio is no better than doing cardio at any point in the day, do whatever you prefer and whats best for you and what you can sustain for your body. Brad Schoenfeld breaks it down here The Myth of
Cardio - he is the leader in muscle hypertrophy research so I trust his word pretty highly😉. He's real important to our field.
#2. - Drinking a protein shake DIRECTLY
after working out
-This used to be a legit HABIT for me. Since I was
probably 16 years old, I used to drink a 25-50g protein shake DIRECTLY after my workout. Like I would bring my protein shaker and little tupperware of protein in my gym bag to the gym. Once I finished my last set, I immediately filled my shaker with water, threw some powder in and chugged a protein shake. It was believed that you NEEDED protein ASAP after a workout to maximize muscle protein synthesis. It was said that we had an "anabolic widow"
and needed to get that protein in as quick as we could. Now, it's still great to have protein (and carbohydrates actually) after a workout. But, it is NOT NECESSARY or life or death. Just get it in as soon as you can. Ideally, you'll be hungry anyways after a workout so try to get some food in you. But, its not the end of the world like I thought and I would have saved myself A LOT of stress back in the day had I known this😂😂.
#3. - Intermittent fasting burned more fat
-Wrong. Sort of like fasted cardio, I used to think the body burned more fat when intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is not eating for a period of time and only eating in a small window. An example would be you don't eat your first meal until 12pm then you finish your last meal by 8pm. Your "window" of eating is between 12pm-8pm and you would be fasting for the remaining 16 hours of the day. The idea was that your body burned excess
fat in the window you were not eating. We now know thats pretty false. It comes down to calories - energy in and energy out throughout the ENTIRE day. Sure if fasting helps you or some type of "window" restricts your food intake, it may work well for you. Most people can't sustain this for a long time. Do what works for YOU. Besides, breakfast is the greatest meal of the day (IMO) so why the ef would you skip that?!
#4. - Isolation ab exercises and body part
splits are superior to ANYTHING
-This couldn't be further from the truth. Sure, if you want to compete in the sport of bodybuilding, you probably need to do body part splits to bring up areas of improvement for competition. But, MOST people do not need to get to that level to achieve great health and
fitness. I used to do countess chest days, back days, arm days, leg days, shoulder days, ab days, etc. thinking I was getting an edge. I used to lift almost everyday each week. My body would never get enough rest as I was constantly in a recovery state. I thought this was ideal. Not really. I'm stronger today than I've ever been lifting either upper/lower body splits or full body splits, only lifting weights 4x per week these days. I'm a lower BF % than I've ever been. My
mobility is the best it's ever been. And I'm never too sore and can always perform the next day. Isolation has its time and place but as long as you are hitting the body from different planes of motion, reps, weights and challenging yourself, you'll be just fine. I believe lifting 4x per week is the caveat as it allows you to push your body just enough, but able to recover well enough for the next training session.
Those are just a few things I USED to believe. I'm sure there are others that will come to my mind at some point, but those are the first four that popped into my head. I stay up to date with current research, trends and everything in fitness. If something changes, I'll update ya. Some of you still believe
cardio burns more fat than anything. And that carbs make you fat. Stop the nonsense. Those have been scientifically proven to be false. Like really false.
Have a great day.
