Weight Training Myths
The vast majority of myths about weight gain are mostly passed down from "gym talk" and so-called experts who know nothing about the body's workings.
Myths that lead to wasted time, frustration and if are taken blindly as truth, can really set back your progress in the gym. Don't believe everything you hear in the gym when it comes to exercise and weight gain, do the research yourself.
Simple, basic principles apply to all weight and muscle gain such as progressive overload, variable frequency of reps and high intensity workouts. Lets take a look at some of the most common weight gain myths.
High repetitions burn fat while low repetitions build muscle
Progressive overload is needed to make muscles bigger. Meaning that you need to perform more reps than you did for your last workout for that particular exercise.
Better still; use the low reps to build muscle, which will elevate your metabolism and burn more calories (less fat).
If you take a week off you will lose most of your gains
Taking one or two weeks off occasionally will not harm your training. By taking this time off every eight to ten weeks in between strength training cycles it has the habit of refreshing you and to heal those small niggling injuries. By having longer layoffs you do not actually lose muscle fibres, just volume through not training, any size loss will be quickly re-gained.
By working out you can eat what ever you want to
Of course you can eat whatever you want, if you don't care how you want to look. Working out does not give you an open license to consume as many calories as you want. Although you will
burn more calories if you workout than someone who doesn't, you still need to balance your energy intake with you energy expenditure.
Vegetarians can't build muscle
Yes they can! Strength training with supplementation of soy Protein Isolate has shown to increase solid bodyweight.
Studies have shown that athletic performance is not impaired by following a meat free diet, and people strength training and consuming only soy protein isolate as a protein source were able to gain lean muscle mass.
By eating more protein I can build bigger muscles
Building muscle mass involves two things, progressive overload to stimulate muscles beyond their normal levels of resistance and eating more calories than you can burn off.
With all the hype about high protein diets lately and because muscle is made of protein, it's easy to believe that protein is the best fuel for building muscle, however muscles work on calories which should predominately be derived from carbohydrates.
If I'm not sore after a workout, I didn't work out hard enough
Post workout soreness is not an indication of how good the exercise or strength training session was for you. The fitter you are at a certain activity, the less soreness you will experience after. As soon as you change an exercise, use a heavier weight or do a few more reps you place extra stress on that body part and this will cause soreness.
Weight training encourages muscle growth and the more lean muscle mass we possess, the more fat we burn though an increased and elevated metabolism.
No pain no gain
This is one myth that hangs on and on. Pain is your body signalling that something is wrong. If you feel real pain during a workout, stop your workout and rest.
To develop muscle and increase endurance you may need to have a slight level of discomfort, but that's not actual pain.
Taking steroids will make me huge
Not true, strength training and correct nutrition will grow muscle. Taking steroids without training will not make you muscular.
Most steroids allow faster muscle growth through greater recovery, while others help increase strength which allows for greater stress to be put onto a muscle.
Without food to build the muscle or training to stimulate it nothing will happen. Most of the weight gain seen with the use of some steroids is due to water retention and is not actual muscle.
I can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time
Wrong. Only a few gifted people with superb genetics can increase muscle size while not putting on body fat. But for the average hard gainer, they have to increase their muscle mass to its maximum potential and then cut down their body fat percentage to achieve the desired shape.
This was an exerpt from Gary Matthews book "Maximum Weight Gain in Ten Weeks" that I found quite interesting, hope you do too!