Though many students are set in their ways of exercising, many ideas about weight loss and best ways to exercise are myths. Two experts, cardiologist Mike Zabel and personal trainer Amber Long, address some of these myths.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Students are creatures of habit, especially when it comes to exercising. The way students exercise, what part of the body they exercise and when they exercise is often decided by the infinite number of myths about six-pack abs, weight loss and quick results.
The Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center receives 50,000 visitors per month — thousands of students making their daily, weekly, monthly or yearly trek to the gym. Whether out of obligation, enjoyment, guilt or to be social, people choose to break a sweat — or at least, pretend to.
Through magazines, friends, family clinicians or their own assumptions, students have a method to the way they exercise, but these methods aren’t always accurate. Through the madness, they are forced to weed out the bias and the fallacies.
Two experts, cardiologist Mike Zabel and personal trainer Amber Long, are here to address some exercise myths.
Does it make a difference what time of day you exercise?
Answer: No.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Long said the most important thing was to get it done whenever it was possible and most convenient. She said certain studies had argued for exercise early in the day, citing that exercise alerted the body and awakened one’s metabolism. Long said these aspects discounted the basic importance of getting a workout in whenever it was possible.
“The bottom line, for most people, is that we really just need to make sure we have the time to do it,” she said.
Long said people who hated to get up in the morning shouldn’t force themselves to do so. In turn, those who could be alert in the mornings or were too busy to exercise late in the day would be more likely to stick to an early exercising schedule.
Are short, intense workouts more effective than long, moderate workouts?
Answer: Depends.
Kirin Arnold, Lawrence junior, decided to try a workout from a running magazine. For half an hour, she had to do a combination of brisk walking, lunges, sprinting and jogging. For her, doing it every other day, the workout was a success.
“It increased my speed in running, and I was sore, so I know it was working different muscles.”
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
In terms of general fitness, Zabel and Long said recent research had shown that shorter, intense workouts were just as effective, if not more so, than longer, less intense work outs.
“Research is now showing that circuit training is actually very popular because you can do a lot more in a shorter amount of time,” Long said. “You can work harder and smarter—not longer.”
In general, the types of workout someone does depends on his or her goals. Zabel said the only time a workout needed to be hours long was if someone were training for endurance sports, such as triathlons or marathons.
If you can’t work out very often, is it worth it to work out at all?
Answer: Yes.
Zabel and Long said one isolated workout every week or two was better than nothing.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
However, research showed that getting 30 minutes three times a week was the minimum amount of exercise needed to have major benefits for young people, Zabel said. He said one of the reasons people didn’t work out as much was because they were intimidated by what they saw on television, such as Nike and Gatorade commercials.
“The biggest misconception that people have with exercise is that they have to do something really strenuous,” he said.
Long said incorporating exercise throughout the week, such as walking to campus, was still extremely beneficial.
“You’re still helping to keep the muscles efficient and keep the body in motion so we’re not at this place where we’re pretty much sedentary,” she said. “Because that’s where the major health problems come in.”
Does exercising late at night upset your sleep pattern?
Answer: Yes.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Long and Zabel both agreed that late-night trips to the gym could make falling asleep more difficult. Long said exercising elevated metabolism, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature — all awakening a person’ system.
Zabel said although it didn’t affect everyone’s sleep, he still recommended working out in the morning to most of his patients.
“Exercise invigorates the body,” he said. “Your muscles are tired, but it wakens up the brain, and it just stimulates you, which is why it’s hard to fall asleep.”
Long also said it was important to realize that exercise, if not too late at night, actually helped people sleep during the night.
Does weightlifting increase your metabolism?
Answer: Yes.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
It requires more calories to maintain muscle. In turn, having more muscle burns more calories throughout the day, even when you’re not exercising, according to Zabel.
“The more muscle you have, the more calories you’re going to burn, even when you’re sleeping,” he said.
Long said strength training helped to increase lean muscle tissue, which burns calories continuously.
Although “cardio junkies” might be great at burning calories during their workouts, they would be less efficient at burning calories while sitting on the couch, according to Long. For those wanting to lose weight, it’s especially smart to include strength training into their exercising regimen.
Long also said strength training would become more important as people aged, because they metabolism typically decreases as they get older. When it comes to increasing bone density, strength training is essential.
Can it be problematic to do only one kind of exercise?
Answer: Yes.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Long said the main components of a well-rounded workout would include aerobic exercise, strength training and flexibility training. For example, if someone only weight lifts or only does yoga, his or her heart is neglected and never gets above a moderate zone of heart rate. In turn, if a person only does aerobic exercise, he or she is extremely prone to injury from overuse.
“It’s really important to just have a balance in all the things we do,” she said.
Zabel said it was OK to focus on a particular kind of exercise. For example, runners can focus mainly on endurance workouts, but it’s still a good idea to include other components for the best results.
“It depends on what your goals are,” he said. “But I do think it’s a good idea to have some of each of those things.”
Will weightlifting make you bulk up?
Answer: Depends.
The chances of bulking up all rest on gender. For men, heavy weightlifting will make them bigger and more muscular. For women, it would take years of the same kind of weightlifting to actually get bigger.
“Women don’t really possess this magical hormone called testosterone at high enough levels to actually build bulk,” Long said.
For women who still had fears of getting bigger, Long suggested weightlifting with moderate weight and higher repetitions. This would have a toning effect instead of a bulking effect. She said it was still important for women to push themselves in these repetitions.
“We still have to challenge our muscles in terms of load,” she said. “Five pounds is probably not going to be applicable for our larger muscles.” For students interesting in learning how to get started in the weight room, the Recreation Center is holding a workshop called “Women on Weights” on Dec. 2.
Is it worthless to stretch before your muscles have been warmed up?
Answer: Yes.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Long compared cold muscles to rubber bands—very elastic when stretched, but immediately pulling back together. When warm, the muscles actually lengthen and hold that length. For this reason, she said it was important to warm up the muscles before stretching so they’d already be lengthened and less prone to injury.
“We run the risk of actually causing injury because our muscles are not pliable enough yet—they don’t have enough blood flow. So they’re actually at more risk to tear,” she said.
Walking, jogging, or dynamic stretching, which involves rhythmic, gentle movements, can all be used to warm up the muscles before a workout.
Long suggested doing static stretching, which involves holding one position for 10 to 30 seconds, at the end of a workout.
If I’m not sweating, do I need to work harder?
Answer: Depends.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Long said certain workouts, such as yoga, didn’t necessarily get a person sweating very much, but were still very effective for the body.
“There are a lot of things you can do that don’t require a ton of sweat,” she said. “Yoga’s a great example because you’re using your body weight — great for flexibility and great for strength.”
This being said, Long and Zabel agree working up a sweat during a workout is a good thing. Zabel said this was more crucial for college-aged individuals. Compared to his usual patients, who range from 50 to 80 years old, young people need to have slightly more challenging workouts to get the benefits of exercise.
“College kids probably need to be doing more than a walk,” he said. “You’ve got to work up a sweat or you’re not working hard enough. That’s basically the bottom line.”
Once you stop working out, does muscle turn into fat?
Answer: No.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Zabel said this misconception was born out of people losing muscle mass and gaining weight after they’d significantly decreased or stopped exercise. This does not mean the muscle has been turned to fat. Rather, the body takes time to adjust its hunger.
“It’s not that the muscle is converted to fat—that really doesn’t happen,” he said. “But you will lose muscle mass, and if you don’t cut down your caloric intake, you will get fat.”
Long said those who stopped strength training would rapidly start losing muscle mass after about three weeks. For this reason, guys who have gotten bigger with muscle will get smaller, and women, who don’t have as much size to gain from muscle initially, will start to “soften.”
Does muscle weigh more than fat?
Answer: Yes.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Zabel said this was one reason for people to pay more attention to their waistlines rather than the scale.
“People need to not perseverate on what they weigh,” he said. “It’s really about how much of their body is fat, which I think people can tell pretty easily by pinching themselves.”
A more technical method of learning how much fat you have is through the body fat pinch test. This process can be done alone. Check out instructions at http://www.ehow.com/how_5005514_calculate-body-fat-pinch-test.html.
Can you get a six-pack by doing a lot of crunches every day?
Answer: No.
Zabel said people couldn’t control where they burned fat. Fat-burning exercises, mostly cardio workouts, burned calories from everywhere in the body. So, although doing crunches every day will make abdominal muscles bigger and stronger, it will not get rid of the layer of fat covering those muscles. It’s not how the body works.
Illustration by Caitlin Workman
Zabel said the body absorbed fat indiscriminately from all fat storages, as if it was one pool. To achieve muscle definition in one area, Zabel suggested focusing on that particular strength resistance in that muscle group, while also doing cardio to burn the fat that covers it.
“You have to burn away the fat with aerobic exercise and then you can do the toning exercises to make certain parts of the body look good,” he said. “But no one looks ripped if they’ve got too much fat because you just can’t see the muscles.”
— Edited by Abby Olcese
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