Hello OwnPace family, welcome back to week 9 of your transformation challenge! If you are reading this, then that means that you have completed 8 weeks of the challenge, so congrats to you! If you are reading this for the first time, it is never too late to start the challenge.

For this week of the challenge I will expose truths vs. myths about fitness and health. The goal is to help you understand what is really going to help you on your fitness journey and what is going to hinder your success.

Myth: Women that lift weights will get big and bulky.

Fact: Women do not create anywhere as much testosterone as men do in order for this to happen. In fact, lifting weights is great to help women get strong, toned and burn calories.    

Myth: Fat spot reduction works.

Fact: Many people think that you can do ab workouts every day and lose their gut. Unfortunately, this is not true and it is a wasted effort if your diet is not on point. When we lose body fat, we lose it as a whole and not in a specific place. We must combine nutritious portion controlled food with exercise in order to create a calorie deficit in our body, therefore losing body fat.                                                                            

Myth: Squats are bad for your knees.

Fact: Contrary to popular belief, there is NOT a lot of evidence that links squats to knee pain. When squatting it is extremely important to keep the weight light enough to keep your form good.                

Myth: You need to intake tons of protein after your workout.

Fact: Your body can only ingest about 15 grams of protein per meal. The rest is excreted out of your body. With a proper diet, you shouldn’t have to supplement with extra protein.

Myth: Stretching before a workout greatly reduces the risk of injury.

Fact: I think people tend to get confused with the different types of stretching, therefore end up doing the wrong stretch before and after workouts. The two types of stretching are dynamic stretching and static stretching. Dynamic stretching involves more movement based stretches and should be done before your workout to warm and loosen your body up. For example, trunk twist-10 to each side. Static stretches are more held stretches for recovery and should be done after your workout. For example, touching your toes to stretch out the hamstrings and holding for 10-15 seconds.

Myth: Machines are better than free weights.

Fact: Don’t get me wrong, machines serve their purpose for people with injuries or little to no experience. In general, free weights give you a better range of motion and is a more functional workout. The body is not made work in one plane of movement.                                                                                  

Myth: The more you sweat the more calories you burn.

Fact: Just because you sweat a lot during a workout, it does not mean that you burn a lot of calories unfortunately. Sweating is simply the bodies way of autoregulating your internal temperature. Working out in the sun for example will lead you to sweat more.

Myth: If you don’t feel sore after a workout, then you didn’t work out hard enough.

Fact: Just because you stop being sore after doing certain workouts, it doesn’t mean that the workout is not effective. Just as long as you are progressively overloading (increasing the weights and/or intensity), then you will be just fine.

Myth: You should find one type of exercise and stick to it.

Fact: Your exercise program should consist of a combination of exercises including strength, cardio, and mobility. This will allow you to obtain optimal results, internally and externally.

Myth: You can get lasting results in 30 days.

Fact: In this instant gratification society we live in today, everyone wants results right now. We see tons of “30-day diets” that may allow us to lose weight quickly, but unfortunately we put the weight back on just as fast. This is because 30-day diets typically consist of major changes that are not sustainable. In order to keep the weight off, you need to make daily small changes to both your diet and workouts that will become habits, which in turn will last a lifetime.

I hope these myths and facts were valuable and helped you learn something new that could help you push towards your health and fitness goals. If you have absolutely any questions, please feel free to reach out to us.

Have a great and productive week!

Marcos