Great Tips On Exercise

Have exercise misconceptions prevented you from starting an exercise program? Clear up any confusion and let these exercise tips improve your workout routine. Hopefully, none of these common exercise myths, mistakes, and misconceptions have prevented you from working out.

1. Common Mistake: Failure to set goals. Do you exercise without a clear goal in mind? Having a clear goal set is a critical step in exercise and weight loss success.  Tracking your progress in a journal will help ensure you see improvements, motivate you, and help you meet your ultimate goal.

2. Common Misconception: No Pain, No Gain. Pain is your body’s way of letting you know something is wrong. Do not ignore this. When you go beyond exercise and testing yourself, you will encounter physical discomfort and need to overcome it. An example of this would be training for a marathon. You must have the “base training” before getting into the advanced training. The base training develops the body and gets it ready for extensive training. You need to learn to “read” your body. Is the heavy breathing because you are pushing your body, or could it be the beginning of a heart attack? Exercise is important. Do it correctly, and you can do it for the rest of your life.

It is normal to hurt after exercise, but it must be done gradually with enough rest periods to allow proper healing. There are two common problems here with beginning exercisers. You can cause long-lasting damage to muscles, tendons, and ligaments if you work out while in pain without allowing enough rest time to heal. You might find yourself in constant and long-lasting pain if you do this, which means that you will no longer be able to exercise.

If you wake up the next morning after you exercise and can barely drag your aching body out of bed because everything hurts, you will be less motivated to exercise. Constant pain is a sure way to kill your exercise program.

3. Common Mistake: Sacrificing Quality for Quantity. When you are ready to increase the number of reps of a particular exercise and strengthen the corresponding muscles, instead of forcing yourself to do a little more each time, try decreasing the number of reps in a set but increasing the number of sets. Also, back off to half your usual number of reps, but add a couple of more sets. You will feel less tired and will be able to gain strength in your fast-twitch muscles.

4. Common Myth: Weight Training Makes Women Bulky. Weight training for a woman will strengthen and tone muscle, burn fat and increase metabolism, not build mass. Women do not produce enough testosterone to build muscle mass the way that men do.

5. Common Mistake: Over-Emphasizing Strengths. You should focus on your points rather then what you are good at. This will help you balance things. For example, if your lower body is stronger than your upper body, then try to work only on this area one day a week.

Being smart about exercise will go a long way. A healthy body is important, so get out there and start exercising today.