What you don’t know — and what you think you know — can hurt you, says Dr. Brett Osborn.
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While big chunks of America’s population continue to be ravaged by obesity, causing other problems such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, there are many millions who choose to prevent those conditions by exercising regularly.
“The Centers for Disease Control recently estimated that only 20 percent of us get the recommended amount of daily exercise,” says Dr. Brett Osborn, author of “Get Serious, A Neurosurgeon’s Guide to Optimal Health and Fitness,” www.drbrettosborn.com.
“Given our diet and lifestyles, it’s no wonder that some of our first-world diseases have reached epidemic proportions.
“Let’s be clear: This is your health. There is nothing more important. If you don’t have good health, you will eventually die, preventing you from doing everything else, from spending time with your loved ones to enjoying your money.”
If you’re going to exercise — which Osborn applauds — he warns that you will do more harm than good if you’ve bought into some of the myths and “conventional wisdom” that is, in fact, simply wrong.
Osborn, an avid bodybuilder, shatters some of those misconceptions:
• More exercise is always better. Everyone wants more muscle and less fat, Conventional wisdom says that hours and hours of exercise will achieve those results. That’s completely wrong, Osborn says. Overkill is not only unnecessary, it can be counterproductive. You’ll get the best results with a strength-training regimen, tailored to meet your needs, which can be accomplished in three to four hours per week.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free• More cardio is better than lifting. For all you chronic dieters and cardio enthusiasts out there trying to shed fat, the right strength-training program can boost your metabolism and help burn off more fat. By increasing lean muscle mass, you will increase your basal metabolic rate, BMR. Activated, contracting muscles are the body’s furnace. Excessive cardio and dieting can eat muscle tissue away, compromising this furnace.
• Women: “But I don’t want to look like a man.” Females who lift weights won’t look like men; they do not have the hormonal support to pile on a significant amount of muscle mass. Female lifters will, however, assume a shapelier figure. In fact, 99.99 percent of men older than 30 do not have the natural hormonal support to do so either. All elite professional bodybuilders use androgenic agents, including steroids.
• You need to buy “product X.” We live in a very money-based culture – so much so that we often place the almighty dollar above health. Get out of this mindset, at least regarding exercise. What counts for building muscle includes determination, intensity, consistency and safety. If you think buying the most expensive formula, training uniform or machine is necessary for reaching your potential, you’re wrong. Machines often compromise the intensity required for the body you desire.
• All exercise programs are created equally. If you want to build muscle, then an exercise program CrossFit has many problems. First, it encourages ballistic movements from novice lifters, and since the program’s rise in popularity, there has been a marked increase in injury rates, which can set fitness goals back by many months. Second, as mentioned above, you don’t need to pound the body five times a week; you may increase endurance and lose fat, but you’ll also lose muscle. CrossFit encourages overtraining and has been linked to increased incidents of Rhabdomyolysis, or Rhabdo, which is the breakdown of muscle tissue that leads to the release of muscle fiber contents into the blood. Rhabdo can cause kidney damage. Also, diets added to training can be harmful. The Paleo Diet, for example, is a low-insulin diet. Insulin is a necessary part of building muscle.
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Photo credit: clark rickman / flickr
I’m a fat guy, I always think that do exercise as much as possible can help me loose fat. I tried with many HIIT exercise but seen not work for me even i do it everyday. Now I think I know the reason, I feel really tired after the training session. I’m OVER TRAINING. Thanks for your article , i really help me.
I have found that low impact, no eccentric and very simple ballistic movements done for high reps (like kettlebell swings and various throws) do me very well, much better than my old program of super heavy grinding powerlifts. I would suggest that stuff like Olympic lifts are mostly good for Olympic lifters and shouldn’t be done for more reps than three at a time–different tools for different tasks. As for diet… I got nothing. My usual feeding plan is to just tip the open refrigerator to my mouth and keep on going. Holdover from extreme athletics as a young man,… Read more »
I was going to comment on paleo and a “low” insulin diet, but GMP refreshed the page and lost my text right before I could hit enter. That should be fixed. The gyst of it was: who says low is bad? And I also disagree about that misrepresentation. Paleo isn’t low carb/insulin, it’s simply no grain. There are other carbs out there to provide insulin response. Read Robb Wolf for a nuanced explanation of all the forms paleo comes in. It’s not one size fits all as portrayed here. Your extreme representation of Crossfit is fine. It’s not for everyone.… Read more »
I totally agree. I’m 22 and I started doing insanity about 6 months ago, I only did till day 42 (out of 60) and had to stop because i started having sciatica, it would get worse and worse with the training, I had never done any kind of training of such intensity and that’s one of the worst things about this programs, there’s no previous evaluation to tell whether that training suits your needs/ goals and condition. Now I’m doing a combination of many exercises at home with very little aids, I only got some suspension bands, a pilates ball… Read more »