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Everywhere you look you will find exercise information.  It can come in fitness magazines, the beauty salon, your co-workers, the Internet, and infomercials.

You will see snappy headlines such as, “Lose 10 Pounds in a Week with No Exercise at All!”, and “Melt Pounds without Dieting.”  These marketing ploys don’t end.  They will use any tactic to get you to buy their product.

Along with the vast amount of exercise information coming to us at every conceivable angle, there are many myths leaving the consumer thoroughly confused.  In this article I will be discussing several exercise myths, giving you the facts and dispelling the fiction.

Myth #1: Exercising with weights will bulk you up. Fact: - Excess calories from protein, carbohydrates, and fat will bulk you up, not resistance training. Fat is bulky and inactive while muscle an active, lean and dense tissue.  The more muscle you acquire, the more fat you will burn at rest and during activity.

Myth #2: Muscle weighs more than fat. Fact: - A pound of muscle and a pound of fat weigh the same, a pound. As previously stated, muscle is more dense, and takes up less space than fat. Adding muscle to your physique will create curves and make you appear smaller in the absence of excess fat.

Myth #3: If I stop weight training, my muscle will turn to fat. Fact: - Muscle cannot turn into fat any more than fat can turn into muscle. The two are not interchangeable. They are two completely different tissues. You can increase or decrease fat and muscle, but the two cannot change into the other, ever!

Myth #4: Crunches will make my abs visible. Fact: - Crunches will build the abdominal muscle, but your abs won't shine through until you remove the layer of fat covering them. When it comes to "ripped" abs, they are built with balanced nutrition, coupled with proper exercise.

Myth #5: Weighted crunches will make my midsection thick. Fact: - The abdominal muscle is a thin layer of muscle tissue, and not able to grow much in size like other body parts.  Therefore, adding resistance to your abdominal training will just increase your midsection strength.  It is the side bends and twists that can contribute to a thick waist.

Myth #6: Exercise burns fat. Fact: - Exercise burns calories, and eating correctly with added exercise can aid in fat burning. Weight loss is not a one-shot approach. There are many angles, and you have to tackle each of them in small to moderate amounts. Knowing the right food combinations can give you the advantage on fat burning.

Myth #7:  Exercising with light weights and a lot of reps will get me defined. Fact:  Training with light weights will build muscle endurance.  If your goal is to get defined, you should also incorporate a healthy diet balanced in macronutrients and add some cardiovascular exercise.

Myth #8:  I just want to tone up, not build muscle. Fact:  When you weight train you build muscle.  There is no “toning” about it.  As a woman, you have the ability to control the amount of muscle you add to your frame to a certain extent.  Hormonally, women will not build a large degree of muscle mass.  However, you can add more muscle size by increasing your protein intake and overall calories.  For a woman to add a lot of muscle, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, and sometimes steroids.

Conclusion to Exercise Myths

Now that we have dispelled exercise fact from fiction, you are better equipped to get in the shape you desire.  Always strive for excellence and keep a positive attitude.

Please don't be like me!

Several years ago I was warned to stay away from behind-the-neck exercises and movements, and do you think I listened? Of course not.

And as a result, I acquired a rotator cuff injury that slowly gets worse and worse over time.

It is often said that it is much smarter to learn from the mistakes of others than to have to suffer the consequences yourself. I'd say that I agree with that.

Just in case you are not quite sure what a "rotator cuff" is, its a handy little muscle on the back of your shoulder that literally helps your arm to "rotate" around the shoulder socket.

For most people, this muscle is not supposed to rotate far enough to take the arms too far behind the head.

Behind the neck exercises not only pull this muscle to the edge of its natural range, but often have additional weight resistance involved that cause even more stress to the area.

If this is done repetitively over time, the muscle will often get injured. Another thing that may happen is that it will become inflammed and swell to the point where the bone around it pinches the muscle. Both conditions are chronic, painful, and should be avoided at all costs.

So, if there are any behind-the-neck movements in your current workout, you will want to find more shoulder-friendly alternatives. And if such an exercise is ever recommended to you by a friend or exercise program, ask or look for a better alternative immediately.

You only get one body! Take care of it.

Quite often, when our children return from afternoon play, they look exhausted, and ready for a nap.  That is the most accurate description, and quite the truth.  Play is hard work.  It is exhausting to the mind and body of the young person, and plays an extremely important role in helping them to become productive, healthy citizens.
 
The role of exercise and play in a young child’s life provides them with many benefits.  Exercise of the body is an important part of keeping the young body fit as it grows into an adult body.  When we reach adulthood, if we have had the benefit of exercise and play, we tend to continue that habit into our adult years.


What else is to be gained from the opportunities that play affords?  We often participate in organized sports, coordinated play times, and are a member of a large group during all of these activities.  Play on this level teaches us how to interact with our peers, develop camaraderie and perform as a team with other players.  These skills are absolute necessities in today’s business world.  But what else is happening here, during this time of play and exercise?

What we learn in body language, coping skills, and the interaction of the mind and body during our interaction with others, is invaluable.  When we learn these skills well, we not only learn how to interact with others, we learn how to interact with our self.  Interact with our self?  That seems like a pointless exercise, but it is an all important part of maintaining our health and wellness.  There are times that our bodies try to tell us things about our physical or mental condition, and we simply refuse to listen.  If we have learned how to listen to others around us when they attempt to point out a need or desire, we have a useful tool in listening to ourselves.  This often can mean the difference between optimal health, and creating an unhealthy situation.
    
What else do we learn?  We learn what our physical and mental limitations are.  During play, you see children and young adolescents push themselves to the very limit.  But as children, we are better able to distinguish between a real limit versus what society deems our limits.  As a child, or young adult, the pressures of the world do not weigh on us as they do when we are adults.  We are better keepers of the temple at ten, than we are at twenty.  We are still very in tune to what our body tells us, because it is our true master as a child.  As an adult, we have let outside influences master our body and mind, and dominate our time.
    
As you can see, the benefits to be gained during our exercise and play time as children, is a benefit to us for the remainder of our lives.  Too often, we adults forget the importance of exercise and play and the principles that are to be learned from time spent in these activities.  We want to rush our children into their daily responsibilities, forgetting that their chief responsibility during the younger years is the play and interaction of young minds.