Top 10 Workout Myths - BUSTED!! (How Many Did You Believe?)

Stop believing in workout myths and finally get your workout to work!

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. COM. You’ve all heard of them. Hopefully you haven’t listened to them.

I want to go through today the top 10 biggest fitness myths, or the worst training advice that you could ever get or really, Jeff Cavaliere’s pet peeves, today in one video so that I can help you to make sure that you stay on path and to avoid all the bullshit when it comes to fitness. So, without further ado, let’s get this list rolling. Ok. Number 1 and most near and dear to my heart, you’ve probably heard it, ‘You can’t build muscle and burn fat at the same time. ’ Guys, anybody that tells you this doesn’t understand the basics of nitrogen balance.

They don’t understand how the body actually works. I’ve done a complete video dispelling this myth on how to bulk and cut at the same time. Guys, yes. We’re not talking about adding 30 pounds of muscle in the next 2 months because frankly that’s an impossibility for most people. So those guys that want to expound on that and tell you you should be adding 30 pounds of muscle, you’re not adding 30 pounds of muscle.

You’re likely adding 30 pounds of bulk of which maybe 4 to 5 pounds of that is muscle. And at the end of the day, you’re wasting a whole heck of a lot of time. If you want to see that video, make sure you click on this and go take a bigger look in depth at what I’m talking about. But that is right at the top of my list. Number 2.

Crunches are a good way to get a 6-pack. The key word here, guys, is get a 6-pack. Now, I’m not one of those that actually thinks Crunches aren’t a good thing. I’m a physical therapist. I actually do believe in the value of Crunches.

That said, the way to ‘get’ a 6-pack is not going to be through doing 6-pack ab exercises. Guys, the way to get a 6-pack is to get your nutrition in check first and foremost. I’ve done videos on how to get a 6-pack. I’ve talked about the best 6-pack ab exercises. None of that matters if you’re going to sit there and eat Twinkies all day long.

It’s not going to help. You’re still going to have a lot of fat covering up that covered 6-pack. So, guys, if you want to get a 6-pack, yes, Crunches are part of the equation, but not the first part. Get that diet of yours in check first. Next up, Number 3.

‘The fastest way for you to lose fat is with Cardio. ’ No guys. The fastest way for you to stay fat is to think that the fastest way to lose fat is with cardio because you can never outrun a bad diet. Once again, if your diet’s not in check, you’re going nowhere fast. As you can see in my example, if you want to eat a bacon double cheeseburger, that’s going to cost you 1240 calories.

You’re going to have to run on a treadmill for 2 hours and 12 minutes just to get back down to baseline. We all know that in order to lose some weight, you’re going to have to create a lower deficit. You’re not going to do it, guys, if you’re just getting yourself back to baseline here. You might even run out of hours of the day to get yourself there. So, first and foremost, guys, nutrition, nutrition, nutrition.

Number 4. ‘Stretching before a workout is important to preventing injuries. ’ No. Stretching before a workout might cause an injury. Guys, we’ve talked about this in depth, again in other videos on our channel.

There’s a different goal here. Stretching is about increasing the tissue length. Trying to increase tissue length before training is actually something that could disturb the motor patterns stored for the movement you’re about to perform. That’s not a good thing especially if you’re trying to step underneath a heavy squat rack, into the squat rack for a heavy squat. You might want to start thinking about changing the mobility of your tissue before you go into a heavy squat.

That’s a whole different story. Mobility and stretching are 2 different things. Mobility before a workout, good. Stretching before a workout, static stretching before a workout, not very good. Next up, Number 5.

‘If you’re not sweating, or puking, or fill in your word here, you’re not training hard enough. ’ Guys, that’s straight old-school BS. First of all, sweating is a measure of our body’s regulation of our own tissue temperature. Some guys will have a naturally higher body temperature. And those guys are more susceptible to sweating when they elevate their body temperature through exercise.

I happen to never, ever, ever sweat in my workouts. Once in a rare occasion will I sweat. And anybody that owns the ATHLEAN XERO Program has seen me sweat. That being said, puking, another thing guys, as dictated by things really out of our control. Our VO2 max is in our control.

It’s one thing that we can do to help our body improve the efficiency with which we use oxygen. That is a much better reason, if you want to go back to one of our other myths, for working on your conditioning or cardio. Improving your cardiovascular health with conditioning and cardio is a great thing to do. Relying on it to burn body fat is not the best thing to do. Improving your body’s ability to use oxygen will leave you less susceptible to feeling like you want to puke because you’ll have adequate oxygen to still deliver to your stomach when it’s trying to be directed through the blood flow to your working muscles when you’re training.

If you don’t have good VO2 capabilities, you’re going to have a redirection of that blood from your stomach to your working muscles leaving very little to your stomach making you feel nauseous and wanting to puke. So, again, these are things that aren’t really necessarily a gauge of how hard you’re training for the effectiveness of those for your workouts, it’s just a matter of either how well-conditioned you are here, or what your natural body temperature is. Number 6 and another favorite of mine, ‘More is better when it comes to working out. ’ ie. ‘Overtraining is a good thing.

’ Well, it depends on who you want to listen to. I’ve done plenty of videos talking about how overtraining is the worst thing that a natural lifter could do. If you haven’t seen those videos, guys, you have to watch them. I’ll put them both up over here for you. In my world, overtraining is always a bad thing because in my world, we’re putting the science back in strength and defining overtraining the way it’s supposed to be defined.

We’re using the scientific definition of overtraining. We’re using the 36,000 studies that document overtraining in real athletes. Not those that want to make you believe that it only occurs in a very, very, very, very small percentage of people that train. That’s not true. We’re talking about common conditions going past that threshold of what’s necessary to cause a positive change, and bludgeoning it to death until you make that a negative change.

Overtraining. You can’t go into a doctor’s office and have them tell you, ‘You have cancer. And by cancer, I’m saying you have a cold. ’ It doesn’t work. It doesn’t sound right, and we know that’s going to make you flip out because the 2 are not the same.

Saying overtraining is a good thing is not responsible. Overtraining is never good. Overtraining meaning that you’re pushing yourself hard and you’re working hard and you’re doing more than you did the last time? Great! But that’s not the definition of overtraining.

So, make sure that if anybody gives you this advice, you run fast the other direction. Number 7. ‘Your metabolism slows to a crawl after the age of 45 making it very hard for you to build muscle or get rid of fat. ’ I feel bad for any 45-year-old and up who’s ever listened to this advice because you know what they most likely did when they heard it? They stopped training.

And guess what? The number 1 contributor to this having any semblance of truth is the fact that you lose some lean muscle as you get older. And you know why most guys lose lean muscle