What Are Some Of The Exercise Myths That Might Be Holding You Back? - Hybryd
by Liz Seyi Digital marketing managerIf there’s one
thing that living for more than a year in a global pandemic may have caused you
to feel, it’s guilt – that you haven’t kept on top of your fitness as much as
you feel you should have done, even during times of lockdown and other
disruption.
So, you might be
eager to get back into an exercise routine, and to that end, you may well have
been choosing from our extensive selection of active fitness wear and accessories
here at Hybryd.
Not all of the
things many of us think about exercise in the 2020s, however, is necessarily
borne out by reality. So, with help from the experts, let’s look at just some
of the persistent fitness myths that may be causing you to have
less-than-helpful attitudes towards your own exercise regime.
Exercise for
exercise’s sake is ‘normal’ and instinctive behaviour
If you’ve felt
more than a little guilty about your fitness habits – or lack of them – over
the past year, it’s worth bearing in mind that the concept of “exercise” as
something we do with the specific intention of attaining and preserving
physical fitness is actually a fairly modern development.
As Harvard
professor of evolutionary biology, Daniel E Lieberman, recently outlined for The
Observer, “for millions of years, humans were physically active for only
two reasons: when it was necessary or rewarding… no one in the stone age ever
went for a five-mile jog to stave off decrepitude, or lifted weights whose sole
purpose was to be lifted.”
Unused muscle
tissue turns into fat
This is a bit of
a comical one really, but it’s worth underlining nonetheless. In the words of
Sean Kuechenmeister, a clinical athletic trainer at the New York Sports Science
Lab in Staten Island, New York: “It’s really important to say that muscle
tissue has muscle cells and fat tissue has fat cells.
“By no means is
it chemically or physically possible for muscle tissue to convert over to fat
and vice versa, fat into muscle.”
Static stretching
before exercise helps prevent injury
A lot of us were
taught in school PE classes about the importance of performing static
stretches, such as reaching for one’s toes and then holding that stretch, for
minimising the likelihood of injury during exercise.
However, as
pointed out by health journalist Robert J. Davis in an article for TIME,
past research has often struggled to back up this idea. Davis even suggested
that engaging in static stretches before exercise may cause harm by adversely
affecting performance.
As he put it: “A
better approach is to warm up and then do dynamic stretches, such as arm or leg
swings, which involve movement. Unlike static stretching, dynamic stretching
primes muscles for action and may improve performance.”
If you don’t
‘just do it’, you’re lazy
How often have
you heard some variation before of “oh, stop moaning and just get on with that
fitness routine already”? It’s something that might have come out of a lot of
people’s mouths during this pandemic when you mentioned to them your exercise
struggles – but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
For this one, we
look back to Lieberman, who cautions that “for most of us, telling us to ‘just
do it’ doesn’t work any better than telling a smoker or substance abuser to
‘just say no!’”
Lieberman goes on
to suggest that those wishing to get their workout momentum going should find
ways to make exercise “necessary and rewarding”, as it was for past generations
of humans. “Of the many ways to accomplish this, I think the best is to make
exercise social. If you agree to meet friends to exercise regularly, you’ll be
obliged to show up, you’ll have fun and you’ll keep each other going.”
Are you ready to
make your own next exercise routine the one that you stick with for good? If
so, you can have faith in the Hybryd online store providing you with all
of the necessary active fitness wear for less. Browse
online now to discover the latest additions to our range, not forgetting that
all
postage of our goods to UK addresses is free.
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Created on Jul 7th 2021 06:03. Viewed 289 times.