Busted! 4 Harmful Muscle Building Myths That Your Trainer Did Not Tell You About...

If this is your first time in trying out a body building program seriously, congratulations! This is a start to a great healthy life and keeping yourself looking fantastic! But, one warning : you need to be careful to whose advice you are taking from! Losing weight, keeping fit as well as bodybuilding are multi million dollar industries that are growing every year due to an increasing number of people who wants to look great.

Many of the trainers who are always advising you to take expensive pills or powders are out to make money and are mostly ignorant about bodybuilding. You have to be careful or you may end up believing some lies that may be fatal to your efforts in building muscles. Here are some common myths that you should take note of :

Muscle Building Myth 1 - You will only be able to build muscle when you can achieve a "pump" during your workout. If you want more muscle, then you need to achieve an even greater pump. For those of you have just started out, what we mean by a "pump" is the feeling that you get as your blood becomes trapped inside the muscle tissue during weight training.

When that happens, muscles will swell up and this will cause your body to feel bigger and tighter. I bet this sounds like a fantastic feeling to have. It is... But the sad truth is that a pump does nothing much to help your muscles grow!

You should only gauge your workout by the concept of progression. So in order to progress and be sure that you are doing your workouts right, you have to see if you can lift more weight or perform more reps than you did in the previous week.

Muscle Building Myth 2 - When you build muscle, you become slower and stiffer. This one goes back to the old days. That was when people described bodybuilders as being "muscle bound" and "bulky". Get ready for this... building much lean muscles may in fact help speed you up!

Without muscles, you literally become immobile. Muscles are responsible for every single movement you make - from dancing to running to throwing. So by building stronger muscles, the more force they can exert. If you have strong muscular legs, you can run faster than a scrawny guy. Have you ever see those Olympic sprinters' legs? Similarly, when you have stronger, more muscular shoulders, you can throw farther!

Having strong muscles is like akin to having more able muscles.

Muscle Building Myth 3 - You must only use perfect form on all your exercises. Using good form in the gym is definitely encouraged but obsessing over the perfect form on every exercise may be too much. If you are constantly trying to perform every exercise using flawless form, there is a chance that you may hurt yourself. And you are also reducing the total amount of muscle stimulation you can achieve.

When you exercise, try to move naturally instead. You can try adding a very slight sway in your back when you perform bicep curls, or using a tiny bit of body momentum when executing barbell rows. Just relax a little, and move your body naturally. Thus, if you obsessed over perfect form too much, you may lose more than you gain.

Muscle Building Myth 4 -  Your muscles will only grow if you "feel the burn!". This is another major misconception in the gym. What is meant by "burning" This sensation refers to the effect that you can from intense weight training. When that happens, it is simply the result of lactic acid (a metabolic waste product) that is secreted inside the muscle tissue.

Increased levels of lactic acid have nothing to do with muscle growth and may actually slow down your gains rather than speed them up. In order to limit the lactic acid produced, you can reduce the number of reps for your exercises. Try 5-7 reps instead.

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Comments

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 at 6:27 PM, by Sean Wesley
A well presented article. We would welcome such inclusions in our own directory.


Sean Wesley
http://www.articlefountain.com

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