WTF Personal Trainers?!?

ChristieisReady

So, for months, I've been fed the line at my gym that runners burns muscle, that you don't want to work out too hard, or you'll burn muscle, too. Turns out, this is only true if you're pressing HARD at the over 2-3 hour mark. Damnit all, how am I supposed to lose weight if no one can agree on anything? Best time to work out, best foods to eat before, best way to work out-- it changes with every person I ask.

I'm just going to do my thing from now on and see how it goes, because obviously, there is not enough concrete evidence (studies in a standardized setting with 70+ subjects and an acceptable margin of error) one way or another on this crap.

oOLiveYourLifeOo

This is how my trainer put it to me - when you work out, you lose muscle. It doesn't matter what you are doing. The only way to build muscle is to replenish your body with protein after a workout. This gives your muscles the nutrients it needs to build new muscles so you can burn more calories!

29bubbles

It does get confussing.... but the bottom line is making it to your goal and doing what works for you. If you enjoy running... do it.. it's buring calories... and in the end that's what will get most people to where they want to be. If you are training for a body building thing or trying to put on muscle for something...then take a differnt route like lifting and adding some cardio.

Maybe a new trainer is in order? Not all trainers are going to be the right match for you and your goals. Maybe your trainer is not really understanding or listening to your goals and is overwhellming you with information that you don't need right now.
That's just my 2cents... hang in there and don't be afraid to change trainers.

summerblunden

Burn muscle? WTH does that mean? I am a certified athletic trainer, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, and I work in a physical therapy clinic, and I have never heard this term. When you work out, to the point of soreness, you create MICRO tears in your muscle, and that is why you feel sore. When those micro tears heal, they heal stronger, which builds muscle strength, and depending on the type of workout you are doing, and also build larger (not more!) muscle fibers.

You never lose or gain muscle, ever. Your muscle fibers grow (hypertrophy) and shrink (atrophy) with your work load, but you will never lose muscle fibers, unless someone goes in and cuts them out.

Runners are so lean because of the type of workout they do. Runners, especially elite runners, are generally composed of lean (slow twitch aerobic) muscle fibers, and the type of workout they do is definitely not a workout which will hypertrophy their muscle. They are doing all fat burning, endurance running. This has nothing to do with "burning" muscle.

Sure, at some certain point in a workout, if you are doing an extreme endurance run (like marathon ++++) without proper hydration, fitness and nutrition, your body has to get its energy from somewhere, so as a LAST resort it will break down muscle fibers. But believe me, you will not get to this stage, your body will give you plenty of warning before you get there, if you are in fact able to push through the pain, fatigue, and not pass out.

As a general rule (sorry to all of those personal trainers out there), personal trainers don't know what they are talking about. They have a high school diploma and have taken a weekend course. If you ARE looking for one, look for someone certified by the NSCA as a CSCS, or at least someone with a bachelors degree in Kinesiology, Exercise Science or some field like that. Then at least you know they have taken anatomy, and an exercise physiology course.

Sorry, a little hot button topic for me. In a nutshell, don't worry about any of that, go to the gym, work your tail off, you will be fine.

jlcanon

If you go running or you are doing vigorous activity you are not burning muscle. If that was the case these marathon runners wouldn't have toned muscles...they would be skin and bone and that is not the case.
If your body is consuming muscle its because the body has switched to survival mode because there isn't enough fat on the body to use as energy. Fat is stored energy and the body uses that to fuel itself during a workout. Eating some carbs before a workout can give you some added energy.

An ideal amount of time to workout is between 60 to 90 minutes a day. The more you workout the more you need calories. Protein helps build muscle so make sure you are getting enough protein.

So I don't know who your trainer is, but it doesn't sound like he or she is giving you correct information. You should get a new one. I am a trainer and I would never give my clients information that I couldn't back with evidence. The body just doesn't respond to exercise the way your trainer is telling you.

ChristieisReady

Thank you! Thank you especially to summerblunden, that was excellent information!

summerblunden

Thank you! Thank you especially to summerblunden, that was excellent information!

You are SO welcome. I hate that there is so much bad information flowing around out there!!! Feel free to ask away, and if I don't know the answer, I'll let you know, or find out!!

david1956

I think from observation that it is simple where the "burning muscle" myth comes from. Most guys, or at least younger ones, in a gym want to increase size. And, except perhaps for ectomorphs, it is pretty simple to eat a certain way, push some weights, and superficially bulk up. So, many then deliberately avoid any real cardio-vascular exercise for fear they will lose muscle. They simply don't understand that something bulky that looks like muscle and true lean muscle are two different things. So it's really difficult to convince them that in losing 1/2 inch off their biceps they may actually have greater muscle density, be much stronger, and not be carrying a lot of fluid and fat around their muscle. They have a fear of losing size and weight, and if they do they are convinced they are losing muscle. Anecdotally I observe this kind of thing all the time at the gym. Then those same people are puzzled when a lean 67kg guy, very fit and strong in every sense of the word, casually walks up and benchs twice what they can. It's actually a total confusion as to what people are really losing when they think they are losing muscle. Fact is, it largely revolves around ego, because most males think size matters and that means if a 17" bicep is now only 16 1/2 inches then the program must be wrong and they're losing muscle. Who wants to admit it may have been as much fat as muscle?

LotusF1ower

Burn muscle? WTH does that mean? I am a certified athletic trainer, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, and I work in a physical therapy clinic, and I have never heard this term. When you work out, to the point of soreness, you create MICRO tears in your muscle, and that is why you feel sore. When those micro tears heal, they heal stronger, which builds muscle strength, and depending on the type of workout you are doing, and also build larger (not more!) muscle fibers.

You never lose or gain muscle, ever. Your muscle fibers grow (hypertrophy) and shrink (atrophy) with your work load, but you will never lose muscle fibers, unless someone goes in and cuts them out.

Runners are so lean because of the type of workout they do. Runners, especially elite runners, are generally composed of lean (slow twitch aerobic) muscle fibers, and the type of workout they do is definitely not a workout which will hypertrophy their muscle. They are doing all fat burning, endurance running. This has nothing to do with "burning" muscle.

Sure, at some certain point in a workout, if you are doing an extreme endurance run (like marathon ++++) without proper hydration, fitness and nutrition, your body has to get its energy from somewhere, so as a LAST resort it will break down muscle fibers. But believe me, you will not get to this stage, your body will give you plenty of warning before you get there, if you are in fact able to push through the pain, fatigue, and not pass out.

As a general rule (sorry to all of those personal trainers out there), personal trainers don't know what they are talking about. They have a high school diploma and have taken a weekend course. If you ARE looking for one, look for someone certified by the NSCA as a CSCS, or at least someone with a bachelors degree in Kinesiology, Exercise Science or some field like that. Then at least you know they have taken anatomy, and an exercise physiology course.

Sorry, a little hot button topic for me. In a nutshell, don't worry about any of that, go to the gym, work your tail off, you will be fine.

Thank God for somebody speaking a bit of common sense! :flowerforyou:

I too, have been sick and tired about hearing "don't do this, you will burn muscle", "don't do that, it burns muscle". I'm with the author of the post I have quoted above on this. It is only just lately I have been hearing this sort of rubbish too, trouble is, it is like the whispers in one person's ear and pass it on. By the time it gets to the tenth person it is nothing like its original statement but something farfetched.

Sometimes I fear too much science is taking away the pure fun and joy out of exercise and weight loss programmes in general and half of it is pure claptrap, the other half, be careful where you take the advice from!

Azdak

In addition to the gargantuan amounts of misinformation out there about fitness, often certain terms are loosely thrown about without a common understanding of what they mean.

In this case: what does "burning muscle" mean? I think this phrase comes from the fact that, during higher-intensity, long-endurance steady-state cardio (example: a 90-120 minute run), the body can start to derive as much as 15% of energy from amino acids. Since many people only associate amino acids with muscle---there you have it--"burning muscle". This is an incorrect assumption, which I will get back to.

The other common mistake is that people use extreme examples and generalize them inappropriately to the average person. In this case, bodybuilders tend to exert an inordinate and disproportionate amount of influence when it comes to exercise recommendations--I guess because they are the most obnoxious and aggressive. Not only is bodybuilding as much a cult as it is a science, they tend to obsess over minutiae that, even if it relevant to themselves, means absolutely nothing to anyone else. A bodybuilder who is compulsively watching over every gram of muscle, and who has trained him or herself to 90+ % of their genetic potential will see an adverse effect (by their standards) from doing "excessive" steady-state endurance cardio exercise. However, that, once again, is absolutely irrelevant to the average exerciser--and even most advanced exercisers.

The third mistake is to make the assumption that what happens physiologically during an exercise session is somehow a discrete event, unrelated to what occurs during the other 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, etc. (BTW, the "fat burners" make this same mistake).

Physiologically, our bodies rarely operate on an "on/off" principle. Metabolism consists of many dynamic processes, and changes that occur usually are as a result of a change in an ongoing equilibrium. Amino acid turnover is constantly taking place in our bodies--"muscle", if you will, is being built up and broken down all the time. Increasing muscle mass is a result of increasing the "anabolic" side of the equation so that it is greater than the "catabolic" side.

Bottom line: "burning muscle" is one of those pithy phrases that "trainers" like to use to make themselves sound cool and cutting edge. For 95% of the people on this site, it means absolutely nothing and trying to follow it will do more harm than good.

iplayoutside19

I'm just going to do my thing from now on and see how it goes, because obviously, there is not enough concrete evidence (studies in a standardized setting with 70+ subjects and an acceptable margin of error) one way or another on this crap.

Exactly. With the exception of the general rule of "calories in, calories out" there is all kinds of crap out there. And each "crap camp" has their nazi's.

You have the right mind set, It's the mind set I have. Find what works for you and go with it, and when that stops working, and it will. Find something else that works until you reach yoru goals. You will have to do some research on your own, but if your BS detector is going off, there's probably a reason.

iplayoutside19

...and I'm sure there some good personal trainers out there who know what they're talking about. And I'm reading a book right now by a couple of PT. But the majority of them are just like Financial Advisors, Insurance Agents, and Used Car Salesman....they spend 90% of their time looking for new clients, and trying to sell "supplements" & "programs" to their current clients instead of researching or training.

DizzieLittleLifter

Burn muscle? WTH does that mean? I am a certified athletic trainer, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, and I work in a physical therapy clinic, and I have never heard this term. When you work out, to the point of soreness, you create MICRO tears in your muscle, and that is why you feel sore. When those micro tears heal, they heal stronger, which builds muscle strength, and depending on the type of workout you are doing, and also build larger (not more!) muscle fibers.

You never lose or gain muscle, ever. Your muscle fibers grow (hypertrophy) and shrink (atrophy) with your work load, but you will never lose muscle fibers, unless someone goes in and cuts them out.

Runners are so lean because of the type of workout they do. Runners, especially elite runners, are generally composed of lean (slow twitch aerobic) muscle fibers, and the type of workout they do is definitely not a workout which will hypertrophy their muscle. They are doing all fat burning, endurance running. This has nothing to do with "burning" muscle.

Sure, at some certain point in a workout, if you are doing an extreme endurance run (like marathon ++++) without proper hydration, fitness and nutrition, your body has to get its energy from somewhere, so as a LAST resort it will break down muscle fibers. But believe me, you will not get to this stage, your body will give you plenty of warning before you get there, if you are in fact able to push through the pain, fatigue, and not pass out.

As a general rule (sorry to all of those personal trainers out there), personal trainers don't know what they are talking about. They have a high school diploma and have taken a weekend course. If you ARE looking for one, look for someone certified by the NSCA as a CSCS, or at least someone with a bachelors degree in Kinesiology, Exercise Science or some field like that. Then at least you know they have taken anatomy, and an exercise physiology course.

Sorry, a little hot button topic for me. In a nutshell, don't worry about any of that, go to the gym, work your tail off, you will be fine.

*CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP*

david1956

In addition to the gargantuan amounts of misinformation out there about fitness, often certain terms are loosely thrown about without a common understanding of what they mean.

In this case: what does "burning muscle" mean? I think this phrase comes from the fact that, during higher-intensity, long-endurance steady-state cardio (example: a 90-120 minute run), the body can start to derive as much as 15% of energy from amino acids. Since many people only associate amino acids with muscle---there you have it--"burning muscle". This is an incorrect assumption, which I will get back to.

The other common mistake is that people use extreme examples and generalize them inappropriately to the average person. In this case, bodybuilders tend to exert an inordinate and disproportionate amount of influence when it comes to exercise recommendations--I guess because they are the most obnoxious and aggressive. Not only is bodybuilding as much a cult as it is a science, they tend to obsess over minutiae that, even if it relevant to themselves, means absolutely nothing to anyone else. A bodybuilder who is compulsively watching over every gram of muscle, and who has trained him or herself to 90+ % of their genetic potential will see an adverse effect (by their standards) from doing "excessive" steady-state endurance cardio exercise. However, that, once again, is absolutely irrelevant to the average exerciser--and even most advanced exercisers.

The third mistake is to make the assumption that what happens physiologically during an exercise session is somehow a discrete event, unrelated to what occurs during the other 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, etc. (BTW, the "fat burners" make this same mistake).

Physiologically, our bodies rarely operate on an "on/off" principle. Metabolism consists of many dynamic processes, and changes that occur usually are as a result of a change in an ongoing equilibrium. Amino acid turnover is constantly taking place in our bodies--"muscle", if you will, is being built up and broken down all the time. Increasing muscle mass is a result of increasing the "anabolic" side of the equation so that it is greater than the "catabolic" side.

Bottom line: "burning muscle" is one of those pithy phrases that "trainers" like to use to make themselves sound cool and cutting edge. For 95% of the people on this site, it means absolutely nothing and trying to follow it will do more harm than good.

There's some stuff in this comment that I wholeheartedly agree with and relate to pet peeves of mine. It mentions "genetic potential". I think that this is something that people totally lose sight of, that they will always be genetically who they are, full stop. And that by adopting healthy diet and exercise habits they will move somewhere closer to their own optimal physique, nearer their potential if you like.

Although we can build more muscular physques by approriate training, and "sculpt" to some degree, we will simply not transform into someone else. If you took some body-building guru promising "you too can build a physique like this" (and usually in ridiculously short lengths of time)... let's say one of them might have peddled his "secret" to 10,000 people. I would defy any one of them to show me a shred of evidence that even 0.1% of those people attained anything remotely approaching body-building results... and the simple fact is the overwhelming majority could spend the next century in a gym and not do so because they are trying to attain something that for their genetic makeup is impossible.

Women fear they will sprout enormous muscular physiques weight training, guys waste their time for years looking for the secret to massive muscle size yet are continually frustrated, people are scared their muscles will evaporate if they do cardio. If we become stronger and fitter we will simply develop, crudely speaking, the physique that is optimal for us. Yes, we can to some extent control certain specifics within that.. but muscle is something we were born with and it simply doesn't come and go by the truckload. People destroy their enjoyment of what they're attaining by obsessing over crazy theories. The whole point to becoming fit is to enjoy life, and to enjoy being who we uniquely are.

Tonyv01

You never lose or gain muscle, ever. Your muscle fibers grow (hypertrophy) and shrink (atrophy) with your work load, but you will never lose muscle fibers, unless someone goes in and cuts them out.

Runners are so lean because of the type of workout they do. Runners, especially elite runners, are generally composed of lean (slow twitch aerobic) muscle fibers, and the type of workout they do is definitely not a workout which will hypertrophy their muscle. They are doing all fat burning, endurance running. This has nothing to do with "burning" muscle.

Solid information, thanks so much for sharing