Thursday, May 5, 2011

Fact or Fallacy?

Are the following statements a fact or fallacy? Test your knowledge by answering the questions, then look at the answers below!

Questions:
1. Doing crunches and sit-ups everyday is the best way to strengthen the abs.
2. If you get breathless during exercise, it's usually your lungs fault.
3. The best way to lose body fat is to burn the greatest amount of fat during the exercise itself.
4. Stretching right before resistance exercises may cause the muscles to relax and lower one's ability to lift heavy weights.
5. Fat is the smallest potential energy source in the body.
6. The best way to get strong without hypertrophy is to lift lighter weights with higher repetitions.
7. Proper nutrition is more important than proper exercise when it comes to hypertrophy gains.
8. There is no advantage of sweat that drips from the body.

Answers:
1. Fallacy. You don't want to work on the ab muscles everyday and when you do work the abs, you want 80% of the exercises to focus on stabilization and the other 20% be exercises such as crunches or sit-ups.
2. Fallacy. It is your heart's fault.
3. Fallacy. Some mistakenly believe that body fat is only burned in a long-bout of moderate-intensity exercise. However, our bodies are always burning fat at some point and for weight loss, it is best to burn calories in the long run. We shouldn't be focused on the "fat-burning zone" because calories will add up faster with a higher intensity exercise.
4. Fact. However, this really only applies to those who lift a very heavy amount of weight, such as bodybuilders.
5. Fallacy. Fat is definitely the largest potential energy source and ATP is the least. ATP in a given skeletal muscle can only fuel about 2 to 3 seconds of activity.
6. Fallacy because this statement is talking about endurance training.
7. Fallacy. Someone can consume all the protein powder they want, but their body will get rid of the excess protein. For hypertrophy, it is important to focus on total volume (weight x reps x sets) while weight lifting.
8. Fact. Sweat has to evaporate to cool the body and anything in excess is just causing one to lose body water. No heat is being lost with excess sweat.