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30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 16 - 20)
MUSCLE MEDIA
2000 EXPOSES 30 OF BODYBUILDING’S BIGGEST LIES THAT STAND
BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS!
By T.C. Luoma and Bill Phillips.
(Originally
printed in the October/November issue of Muscle Media 2000)
16 -- If you do
hundreds of sit-ups a day, you will eventually achieve a
narrow, washboard-type midsection.
There is no such thing as spot-reduction. Doing thousands
and thousands of sit-ups will give you tight abdominal
muscles, but they will do nothing to rid your midsection
of fat. Thigh adductor and abductor movements will give
women's thighs more firmness, but they will do nothing to
rid the area of fat, or what is commonly [and erroneously]
called cellulite. Nothing will rid the body of fat, unless
it is a carefully-orchestrated reduction in your daily
energy intake; in other words, if you burn more calories
than you ingest (or do that in conjunction with a nutrient
partitioning agent. See #8)
17 -- Training like a powerlifter --deadlifts, heavy
squats, bench presses--will make your physique look
blocky.
Blockiness, like baldness or a flat chest, is a genetic
trait. If you were born blocky, then powerlifting will
simply make you a bigger blocky person. The only way to
offset a blocky appearance is to give special emphasis to
the lats, the outer muscles of the thighs, and to a
fat-reducing diet which will keep the midsection as narrow
as possible. With these modifications, you will give your
body the illusion of a more "aerodynamic" appearance. The
truth is, powerlifting exercises are excellent for
bodybuilding.
18 -- High repetitions make your muscles harder and
more cut up.
Although there is some evidence to suggest that high
repetitions might induce some extra capillary intrusion
into a muscle, they will do nothing to make the muscle
harder or more cut up. If a completely sedentary person
began weightlifting, using either low reps or high reps,
he or she would experience a rapid increase in tonus, the
degree of muscular contraction that the muscle maintains
even when that muscle is relaxed, but that would happen
regardless of rep range. The only way that high
repetitions would make a muscle more cut up is if, by
doing a higher number of reps, your body as a whole was in
negative energy balance, and you were burning more
calories than you were ingesting. The truth is, heavy
weights, lifted for 5-8 reps per set, can build rock-hard
muscles. You just have to get the fat off them to see how
"hard" they are.
19 -- Instinctive training is the best way to promote
gains.
If bodybuilders followed their instincts, they'd go home
and pop open a Bud [much prefer Toohey's Red myself!].
Instinctive training is a wonderful catch-phrase, and it
might even work for drug-assisted athletes since the very
act of opening up a Bud would probably induce muscular
growth in them. However, in a natural bodybuilder, the
approach to long-term, consistent gains in muscular mass
has to be, shall we say, a bit more scientific. Research
results conducted by exercise physiologists recommend a
systematic approach such as the one encompassed by
periodization where the bodybuilder, through a period of
several weeks, lifts ever-increasing pre-set percentages
of a one-rep lift. This heavy period is also periodically
staggered with a lighter training phase 'cycle'.
Ultimately, the percentages increase, the maximum one-rep
lifts increase, and lean body mass increases. There is
nothing instinctive about it.
20 -- Women need to train differently than men.
On a microscopic level, there is virtually no difference
between the muscle tissue of men and the muscle tissue of
women. Men and women have different levels of the same
hormones, and that's what is responsible for the
difference in the amount of muscle a man can typically put
on and the amount of muscle a woman can typically gain.
There is absolutely no reason why either should train
differently than the other sex, provided they have the
same goals. The only difference in training might be as a
result of cultural, sexual preferences. A woman might
desire to develop her glutes a little more so she looks
better in a pair of 'Guess' jeans. Conversely, a man might
want to build his lats a little more so that he fits the
cultural stereotype of a virile man.
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 1 - 5)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 6 - 10)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 11 - 15)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 21 - 25)
30 Of
Bodybuilding's Biggest Lies (Parts 26 - 30)
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