Sport, like almost everything in our life, has overgrown with a mass of legends and myths. Some of them did not arise entirely from the bulldozer, and they have grains of common sense, but some ideas about what happens in the body under the influence of physical exertion are so far from the truth that, compared to this distance, America is a stone’s throw away. Woman’s Day decided to sort out this confusing topic.
Anyone can get thin
Myth. If you have thick and heavy bones, you are not too tall and your figure can be called stocky, then you will not be graceful and slender like a reed. Fit – as much as you like, athletic – yes, but genetics cannot be fooled, and the constitution cannot be altered, unfortunately. And no sport in the world will turn you into a supermodel. What to do? Go in for sports, but do not demand the impossible from the body. You need to get rid of the excess, you need to train your muscles, you need to try to lose weight. Just do not starve at the same time and go on rigid diets. The best diet is proper nutrition, it should always be and turn into a way of life. All the same, it is impossible to sit all your life on buckwheat with kefir.
There are certain exercises that allow you to lose weight in a specific place
Myth. The process of fat burning starts under certain conditions (when a certain heart rate is reached, with a sufficient duration of training), but it starts in all, without exception, places where there is a subcutaneous fat layer. “Statements like“ make bends so that your waist becomes thin ”is nonsense that is told to beginners,” says Vitaly Voznyuk, trainer of the Planet Fitness group programs. After all, scientists, together with leading fitness trainers, have proven that there are three reasons that reduce the effectiveness of fitness training. One of the biggest mistakes in fitness is “point training”, that is, fitness programs that focus on working on one muscle group. For example, by doing squats and crunches, you expect to tighten your abdominal muscles, but in the end you get negligible results. Therefore, exercises such as bending and twisting do not burn fat, but only train the muscles. That is, this is anaerobic exercise. And to lose weight or burn fat, you have to sweat in the aerobics gym or on the treadmill. But at the same time, fat will be burned throughout the body, and not in any specific area.
There are special sports for burning fat
Partly a myth. There are aerobic sports and there are anaerobic ones. Anaerobic is mainly muscle swaying, and aerobic is fat burning. Aerobic activities include running, cycling, swimming, walking, or cross-country skiing and skating. However, even doing strength training (that is, anaerobic sports), you can lose weight if you control the regime and pulse.
To always stay in shape, you need to walk more.
Sports are bad for your health during pregnancy
Myth. Of course, if you do not push a barbell weighing 300 kg, or do not show jumping, or do not jump rope (this greatly stretches the ligaments that support the uterus). Anything else will not harm you or the baby (of course, unless your doctor says otherwise, you have no threat of interruption or placenta previa). Of course, it is better to choose specialized lessons in a fitness club for pregnant women, where just enough load is given so as not to overwork the muscles, so that the blood has time to carry oxygen to the uterus too, and not just to the muscles involved in the exercises. That is, physical education is useful, of course, but no records.
If you stop exercising, your muscles will turn into fat.
Muscle is fibers and fat is fat cells. That is, these are two different types of tissues, one that does not pass into the other in normal healthy people. Muscles can be covered with a layer of fat at most if they stop moving at all. But it should be noted that, having pumped up muscles, it is much more difficult to get fat and become covered with fat in principle. Simply because muscles require a lot more energy even at rest, let alone when they are working. The largest muscles of a person are in the legs, then the muscles of the back go, and only then are such small, but important for every woman, muscles of the press. So, in order to lose weight, you should not pump the press, it is better for this to run or at least walk.