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Dispelling Myths about Resistance
Training
By: Randall Gartman
Myth 1: (Women especially) I will
get big and bulky if I lift weights; I think all those veins look
ugly.
Truth 1: Fitness and bodybuilding
books have misled you, pure and simple. You will not get all “Veiny”
lifting weights; those veins are only noticeable when your body
fat is really low. In order for women to get bulky, a woman must
have either an enormous amount of testosterone flowing through her
body or she must be pharmaceutically enhanced. Most women don’t
have a lot of testosterone flowing through their bodies and all
those women you see in bodybuilding books are usually taking some
form of drug. Men, usually want to look muscular but they aren't
interested in looking all “veiny” and big like Arnold
Schwartznegger. Here again, in order for you to look like as bulky
as Arnold, you will need to get fit through modern chemistry and
your body fat will need to be around 3%. If you are a natural bodybuilder,
you can get pretty big but you probably won’t look like Arnold.
Myth 2: All I want to do is tone
up my muscles and not get any bigger. I just want to work my thighs
and belly to tone them up and get the fat off.
Truth 2: I have highlighted the
word Tone because you cannot Tone a muscle. Tone actually describes
a color. Your muscle can either atrophy (shrink) or Hypertrophy
(get bigger); that is all a muscle can do. If a muscle fiber is
called to work from the brain, it can’t work at 50%. The brain
tells the muscle fiber to work at 100% so if you work at 50% of
your capacity not all of your muscle fibers are working. However,
the muscle fibers that are working are going all out. This “all
are none” principle is crucial because it helps you to understand
that your body’s body fat cannot be spot reduced by working
the specific muscle but you can make a body part bigger. Getting
rid of fat requires a proper combination of exercise and good food
management because when your body loses fat, it loses fat everywhere.
Myth 3: I just want to turn this
fat into muscle
Truth 3: You cannot turn fat into
muscle!!! You can only burn calories that reduce fat storage cells
through food management and exercise or you can develop muscles
through progressive resistance and exercise. Muscle and fat have
two entirely different molecular structures within the body so the
only thing you could say is you want to get rid of the fat and build
some muscle.
I have worked with people that initially think they
don’t want to build any muscle and they only want to lose
weight. The only problem with that concept is, their muscle
helps keep the weight off. I have also worked with people
that have built muscle underneath their fat so they think they are
just getting fatter because they are getting bigger and their weight
scale registers higher poundage. First of all, muscle weighs more
than fat so the scale is not the best source for indicating results.
Also, once the person’s metabolism kicks in, the fat will
disappear with the help of this new muscle. The only true way to
measure a person’s results is by testing their body fat. Usually
when I have a person that is very overweight, they have a tendency
to quit a resistance program because they think they are getting
bulky. The only thing that is truly happening is the body is building
muscle underneath the fat. Let’s take a look at real scenario.
Let’s say a male person is 6”, weighs
298 lbs and has a body fat % of 52%. That means that over half the
person’s body weight consists of fat. Suppose that person
only lost body fat without building any muscle. This person would
be a sickly looking bean-pole at 148 lbs. Now, let’s take
that same person and add 22 lbs of muscle and give them a body fat
percentage of 10%. They would roughly weigh about 188 lbs. Do you
know what kind of person you would be looking at? You would
be looking at the body of a PERFECT male model. You wouldn’t
be looking at a bulky professional bodybuilder would you? Now that
we have dispelled a few myths about building muscle, your questions
should be, how much muscle do you want to build or how much fat
do you want to lose?
Excerpt from Empowering Physical Mastery
by Randall Gartman
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