1.Workouts Should be at least an Hour Long:
If you aren’t supplementing with steroids, your body is not able to handle the stresses of a workout lasting much longer than an hour. Though you may feel as if you are doing yourself a good, the reality is that you are placing too much stress on your body. Too much stress can leave you tired and over trained, robbing you of hard-earned muscle gains.
2.The More You Work out, the More you’ll Grow:
No, no no. This is one of the most damaging myths that ever reared its ugly head. 95% of the pros will tell you that the biggest bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to over-train–and this happened even when they were taking steroids. Imagine how easy it is for the natural athlete to over train! When you train your muscles too often for them to heal, the end-result is zero growth and perhaps even losses. Working out every day, if you’re truly using the proper amount of intensity will lead to gross over training. A body part, worked properly, i.e. worked to complete, total muscular failure that recruited as many muscle fibers as physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.
To take it a step further, even working a different body part in the next few days might constitute over training. If you truly work your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure, doing another power workout the next day that entails heavy bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout, your whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the blow you’ve dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected to heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It can’t, at least not without using some drugs to help deal with the catabolic processes going on in your body [and even they're usually not enough.
Learn to accept rest as a valuable part of your workout. You should probably spend as many days out of the gym as you do in it.
3. Muscle Will Turn to Fat if you Stop Training.
Muscle can’t turn to fat anymore than fat can turn to muscle. They are two completely different substances. This myth gets it biggest boost from jealous types who wouldn’t know a barbell if they tripped over it. It doesn’t help matters either when bodybuilders and others athletes gain fat when they retire from bodybuilding training. It’s not that their muscles have turned to fat but that their muscles have lost tone and begin to sag, giving the appearance of fat. Trust us your muscle won’t turn to fat if you stop training. Of course why stop training? Training is the key to fat loss, building muscle, and overall health.
4.You Should Only Rest 45 Seconds in Between Sets.
That's true if you're trying to improve cardiovascular health or lose some bodyfat. But in order to build muscle, you need to allow enough time for the muscle to recuperate fully (i.e. let the lactic acid buildup in your muscles dissipate and ATP levels build back up). In order to make muscles grow, you have to lift the heaviest weight possible, thereby allowing the maximum number of muscle fibers to be recruited.
If the amount of weight you lift is being limited by the amount of lactic acid left over from the previous set, you're only testing your ability to battle the effects of lactic acid. In other words, you're trying to swim across a pool while wearing concrete overshoes. When training heavy, take [at least!] two and three minutes between your sets. Notice I said, “when training heavy.” The truth is, you can’t train heavy all the time. Periodization calls for cycling heavy workouts with less intense training sessions in an effort to keep the body from becoming overtrained.
5.Situps Are the Quickest Way to Get Great Abs.
This is one of the biggest mistakes made by weightlifters and bodybuilders. Oftentimes, most of their routine is pretty good and they see decent results, but when they go to work out their abs they just do endless amounts of crunches. They do most of their work in the 8-12 rep range, but then go and do 50 sit-ups. If you want to build your abs, work them out like anything else. Do weighted sit-ups or use a machine; anything to get you into the 8-12 rep range so you can actually BUILD your abs. One more thing though, building your abs is one thing, but seeing them is another. The ONLY way to see your hard earned abs is to have a lower body fat percentage, meaning more diet and more cardio.
6.You Must Eat More to get Big
Now, contrary to the point above, others think that if size is their goal, then life should become a 24-hour buffet. They eat everything and anything in sight, in the hopes that it will help spark new muscle growth.
What these individuals need to realize is that, yes, they do require more calories however, the body can only assimilate so many of those extra calories into lean muscle tissue. After that, the remainder will go toward fat mass. Your P-ratio is what determines the amount of surplus calories going to fat and the amount going toward lean muscle mass. Your P-ratio is partly influenced by genetic make-up — which is something you can’t change — but the changeable factors that affect are your workout program, your nutritional intake and the timing of your meals.
So if size is your goal, you need to make sure that you are eating enough to get growth in the first place, but not so much that with the additional muscle mass, you get a great deal of fat mass as well. Continue Reading ->
I feel myself very fortunate to read this book. “Wings of fire” is an autobiography of the former president of India Dr. A. P.J. Abdul Kalam. In this book he tells us the story of a Muslim boy, who had big dreams about his future and what inspired him to become an eminent scientist. The narration is simple, direct and shows how a boy with humble background from a remote corner of India could dream of aeronautics, rocket science and missiles. In this book he touches so many things like his family and the cordial relationship between Hindus and Muslims.
