10 Muscle training myths that keep you from looking good in a swimsuit
Muscle training scares off many because there is so much contradictory information about it. Here are the ten greatest muscle training myths – and how they prevent you from getting the most out of your disposition.
Correct strength training is the most powerful body change – a tool you can use. You become more defined and transform your body faster than any other training form by doing it with suitable nutrition combined.
Start strength training if you ever want to wonder what you’re starting with.
Cardio training and other sports can be added later.
Countless myths still prevent countless people from taking the first step and taking weights in their hands.
Here are the ten most prominent. Let us bury them once and for all!
Training myths – Nr. 1: Cardio training is more effective than weight training in losing weight
Strength training is like a Swiss Army knife of your fitness. You don’t have to make any compromises: it keeps you healthy, slim, and fit and turns your biological age back.
Strength training helps you burn fat, become stronger, and maintain or even build your muscles. You cannot achieve any of this by cardio training alone.
Strength training makes the difference between a person with an ideal weight and average body and a person who looks defined, fit and strong – like a Hollywood star or fitness model.
If you can set it up in time, do strength – and cardio training.
If you think now, “Rachel, but I don’t have the time,” please think about it again.
“I don’t have time” is not a reason but an excuse. Everyone has the same time. And some people find it easier to set priorities than others.
So if you thought so far that you had no time, be honest with yourself: “Other things are more important to me at the moment. “
And that’s okay. But it feels different because you are back at the helm and have made a conscious decision.
I know many who exercise early in the morning because the rest of the day is packed with family and professional obligations.
Paradoxically, the busiest people are often the ones who can best get their training under –perhaps because their schedule forces them to set priorities consciously.
Hey, but if they can, you can too.
Training myths – Nr. 2: Take off before you start strength training
If a lot of weight still limits your ability to move, you can focus on your diet first. But:
As soon as you can safely carry out simple strength exercises, you immediately benefit from the countless trump cards of strength training.
No matter how high your body fat percentage is, walking is practically always in it.
Almost everyone can get on with simple strength exercises.
This is how you manifest from now on good habits – the base that maintains your great body shape for a lifetime.
Of course, you would lose fat if you only focus on endurance sports and nutrition.
But in the end, many people are not happy with the result. You can wear tightly cut clothing. But they don’t like to be seen in the sauna or pool.
The body is slim but looks soft and not very athletic.
The good news: it is never too late to go to the weights. And the fastest way to see success is to start right from the start.
Training myths – Nr. 3: You are making the best progress in the gym
The best training location is where you can train effectively and, above all, regularly.
I started in my room in my parents’ house when I was 17. Everything I had was a simple set of dumbbells. It was only two years later that I graduated from a gym.
Since then, I have mainly been training in gyms. The gym – atmosphere motivates me, and I like the variety of training equipment.
Maybe your ideal gym is different. The point is:
As soon as you find your favorite – training location, you will feel comfortable there, like at home.
The training may be in the home gym, which is exactly your thing. The advantage is that you can train for yourself and save yourself the journey and the membership fee.
The ideal training location is the one you visit regularly.
Your muscles don’t care where you train them. Therefore all training plans are in Beta Switch Program designed so that you can train them anywhere.
All you need at first is one good pair of dumbbells. As you progress, you can gradually upgrade your home gym, for example, with a weight bench, pull-up bar, barbell, and squat – rack.
You can make better progress with this simple setup than with the best engines.
Training myths – Nr. 4: If you lift weights, you will soon look like a bodybuilder
Most natural bodybuilders – even those who have been training for years – would like to be more muscular. Because building muscle is a tough process and costs a lot of patience, they still train for it after 10 or more years.
Beginners can see rapid progress in the first few months, but at this pace is reduced fairly soon. Muscle building is also limited in women because their body produces less testosterone.
Every gram of additional muscle is a well-deserved victory.
Why is it that so many women and some men are still afraid of regular strength training she accidentally transformed into a muscle – monster?
This is probably related to the pictures of professional bodybuilders that most see in front of our inner eyes. Understandable that some then think:
“If muscle training makes me look like this, forget it!”
They do not know that they mostly compare themselves to a person who has excellent muscle-building genes, takes steroids, and has had two full-time jobs for the last 10 years of his life: Food and training.
Even if you had the genes of an Olympian, you don’t wake up one morning and find that your muscles have exploded.
Muscles grow slowly. And by no means by accident.
Once you understand how proper strength training works, you take full control of what your body looks like.
You are the artist, and your body is your masterpiece.
Cardio training is the chisel with which you remove excess—correct strength training of the tone that builds muscles exactly where you want something more.
So you can shape your body according to your ideas. However, this requires strength training – nutrition alone is not enough.
Training myths – Nr. 5: Muscles become fat as soon as you stop training
If you stop strength training, you start to shrink your muscles. If you eat more calories than you consume, your body fat percentage will increase.
From the outside, it then appears that muscle tissue has become fat.
This is impossible because fat and muscles are two different types of tissue.
This myth probably comes from the changes we can sometimes observe in former competitive athletes.
Competitive athletes train many hours every day and burn tons of calories, so much so that it is often difficult to supply this amount through the diet at all.
When they finish their professional career, they often do not consciously adapt their eating habits to – and continuously increase in fat. From the outside, it seems that their muscles have turned to fat.
This is not about competitive sports. But around good habits that give you long-term changes.
Once training is integral to your life, you no longer need to worry about muscle loss and fat.
If you ever had to pause because “life” in the form of an illness, injury, or other circumstances intervenes, you can deal with it.
Then you adapt your diet until you are fit for training again.
Training myths – Nr. 6: Strength training makes you overly muscular and immobile
Here’s a sure way to get inflexible: sit on your butt all day and move as little as possible.
Despite all the calls, proper strength training is a great way to do something for your agility – at least if you do the exercises with full movement amplitude.
Some bodybuilders can easily control a balancing act. A prominent example: is Jean Claude Van Damme.
Among women who practice weight training, you will find some of the most agile people in the world –even though they train with heavy weights.
If you want to improve your mobility in a targeted manner, you can take some time for stretching at the end of your training. The best thing to do is focus on the body regions where you have been the most immobile.
Yoga is – in addition to strength training – also a good way to improve your flexibility.
Training myths – Nr. 7: Women have to train differently than men
When women say they want to get “in good shape”, they usually mean that they want to become fitter and more defined without appearing more moderate.
The fastest way to a fitter, more defined physique is the same way that helps men become more muscular: proper strength training.
Without muscle training, women will find it difficult to achieve this definition. There are no “gender-specific “exercises.
Do you like Star Wars? Main actress Daisy Ridley got in shape with strength training – and put an 80 kg deadlift on the floor with a clean shape. Monster muscles? Nothing.
If women train squats, down steps, barbell rudders, shoulder presses, and deadlifts – just as men do – then they will be rewarded with faster progress than if you are doing a workout with pink 1 kg dumbbells or without weight, which was previously associated with “body tightening”.
Training myths – Nr. 8: To look good in a swimsuit, you have to train for hours every day
Fortunately, you don’t have to train every day or complete training sessions for hours to look good in a swimsuit.
60 minutes (and less) are sufficient for effective muscle training.
Even if some people, especially professional strength athletes, invest more time, the “much helps a lot” approach to strength training can quickly lead to a dead end.
Training sessions that are short and intensive usually bring the desired success. Intensive workouts that you do too often or too long are counterproductive.
Even if you would move a little faster through a higher level of training, long workouts are not practical for many people.
If your time is limited, you should bypass the everything-or-nothing – trap and can instead train as intensively and efficiently as possible.
To save time, for example, you can do fewer exercises and increase the intensity of the training.
Super sentences, in which you carry out two exercises in succession without a break, are one possibility. Shorten the duration of the sentence breaks, another.
If you have little time, you can also get a highly effective workout in 30 – 45 minutes.
Training myths – Nr. 9: Strength training makes you slow
The opposite is the case! Strength training makes you a faster and better athlete: strong muscles contract faster and more powerfully.
No successful athlete can do without strength training these days.
The fastest people in the world, sprinters: muscle training with heavy weights is an integral part of your training routine.
In this context, fitness coaches often propagate “functional” training. However, the term “functional” is rarely clearly defined. Mostly this means exercises that depict everyday or sport-specific movements.
However, it is not the case that “unfunctional “exercises restrict you in any way in your flexibility or functionality. Especially not if you train them additionally.
If you want to use strength training to improve your sport, adding a fitness trainer who specializes in your sport can make sense.
More strength and more performance motivate everyone Athlete. More health and a good look motivate everyone.
The good thing is that you don’t have to choose one OR the other. Correct strength training makes you stronger, healthier, and more functional – and you look good in a swimsuit.
Training myths – Nr. 10: ONLY YOU feel overwhelmed, insecure, and do not know how to start
All knowledge is freely available today – and just a click away. But more than ever, we are also exposed to a world sea of opinions and information that often contradict each other.
It is completely normal if you feel confused or overwhelmed by it.
The good news is that you can stay relaxed. You must research and experiment for months or even years to collect what you find here. (I’ve been doing this for more than one decade)
In my articles, I aim to present solutions that work and I recommend only coherent working concepts like Beta Switch Program for “home starters”.
I recommend you: Find a trainer or coach you trust and stay with him/her.
Most people are initially a little unsure when they start strength training – especially when they exercise publicly in a gym.
That is also normal.
Don’t let that stop you because we initially went like this (at least I was so).
This uncertain feeling is normal when you try something new. This applies to all areas of life, not just strength training.
If any reasons prevented you from going to the weights, I hope I can clear them up with this article.
I wish you lots of fun and success in training!