Straight talk about fitness

This is a interesting article I just came across:

Straight Talk

From Raquel, M.A., C.S.C.S.

Fitness is a lifestyle, not a quick goal to reach for an upcoming reunion, birthday, cruise, etc.

If you can’t do 20 pushups, you shouldn’t be trying to bench press 200lbs. Learn how to lift your bodyweight first.

If you can’t maintain full range of motion every rep, reduce the load you are lifting and perform full range.

You can’t spot train. If you want to lose the tricep jiggle or love handles,you must engage in a combination of aerobic and resistance training in conjunction with a balanced diet. Hey, no one said it was easy, but it is do-able if you’re committed.

There is no such thing as upper and lower abs. There is only ONE muscle called the rectus abdominis (RA) without a division separating the upper from the lower musculature. During exercise, there is absolutely no way you can recruit muscles fibers from a lower portion of a muscle. When the recruited muscle fibers contract, the entire muscle fiber contracts, not just one end or the other. This phenomenon is known as the all-or-none principle. Just like it doesn’t make sense to train lower biceps, you can’t train lower abs either period!

Most of the time, the exercises you hate are the ones that work the best.

The more lean muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest. Ladies, lift some real weight please.

Working out shouldn’t grant you an entitlement program: I can eat whatever I want because I had a great workout today.

100 crunches a day will not give you washboard abs. Crunches are worthless anyway. You must lose the excess fat sitting on top of the muscle. We all have a six pack waiting to come out.

The only way to train balance is to be unbalanced.

The “fat burning zone” is very misleading. You will burn a larger percentage of fat in relation to carbs when you are working at a lower intensity, but you will also burn fewer TOTAL calories and less total fat. The battle of the weight loss game all comes down to total calories burned and has little to do with what percent of fat vs. carbs are used for fuel. You’re better off exercising at higher intensities to burn more total calories. Higher intensity is subjective and differs for each individual. The best bang for your exercise buck it to do interval training.

For you guys, the chest muscle is comprised of two muscles (aka pectoralis major and minor). You can’t train upper from lower or inner from outer pecs. Just do a variety of exercises so the muscle is stressed from different angles.

Train multiple muscle groups to get faster results vs. having just a chest day, shoulder day, bicep day, etc. I can’t believe people are still living in the dark ages training one muscle per day. Men, please check out Michael Boyle, Mark Verstegan, & Alwyn Cosgrove on how to get the most out of your training.

If you stop working out, your muscles will NOT turn to fat. Muscle and fat are two different types of tissue. Physiologically, it is impossible for one to become the other. If you are eating more than you’re burning off, then the net result is weight gain due to the fat cells becoming larger in size.

Want to be better at everything you do? Don’t ignore your core. You can train it every day. Rotate static and dynamic core stabilization exercises (see my post on this).

Weight training does not make females bulky. Females lack adequate amounts of testosterone, the hormone that promotes muscular growth and size. Weight training will help you get lean muscle tissue and become a better fat burner.

If you can talk on the phone or read a magazine, then you are not working out.

Does muscle really weigh more than fat? You can not compare two substances unless you define the volume and density. Muscle has more density than fat tissue. (Physics 101: Density is not the same as weight.) Muscle takes up 1/3 less space than fat. The correct way to state the muscle v. fat debate is “muscle is heavier by volume than fat.”

If you do not warm up, you are basically asking for an injury.