if You Want to Get More Fit Stop Doing This...

IF YOU WANT TO GET MORE FIT STOP DOING THIS….

Ok. There is probably a long lists of bad habits you need to stop if you really want to get fit but this one is probably one of the first things you should do:

Stop reading fitness magazines!

I get a lot of comments and questions and emails that start out “But I read in a fitness magazine that I should be doing this or that.”

Magazine publishers are not evil people trying to replace Hannibal Lector as the worst villain of all time by wrecking your fitness goals. They’re publishers. And publishers have two goals: sell magazines and sell advertising.

They need to keep people buying their product and their advertiser’s products every month. They know what their market wants and that’s what they try to give them.  However, it doesn’t take 20 articles to teach someone how to get bigger arms or a smaller waist. So they have to get “inventive” with their titles and their content.

Do I read fitness magazines? Yes, on line versions. Why? Because their articles are often fodder for my articles…with a twist, I take their misleading articles and debunk them and try to tell you the truth. Most of my article ideas that come from the fitness magazines could all have the same title; “Stop Reading This Crap”.

Sorry ladies but the worst offenders seem to be the magazines targeted toward women. The average woman is more health conscious than the average man and usually has less fitness experience from prior sports activities.Unfortunately, a lot of the information in the women's magazines is "fluff". Don't buy the little pink dumbbell horse hockey. They're just telling you what you want to hear. Women are actually better at training than men. If you missed it you need to read this article- Should Women Train Differently from Men? 

Here are some of the biggest pieces of “Misinformation”:

“Ab Workouts” Give You Abs

To get your abs to show you need to do 2 things:

1.     Loose the belly fat

2.     Build the core muscles

Do you really need a different article every month to learn what you need to do?

How the Latest Super Hero or Heroine Got Ripped for their Next Movie..

The posters and magazine covers are photoshopped. No one invented a new workout just for this star. The star didn’t take some new magical supplement.

The star has a personal trainer or coach, at least one private chef, a nutritionalist and some very good wardrobe and make-up artists. If the article says he gained 30 pounds of muscle in 4 months he has “pharmaceutical assistance”. Gaining that muscle in a short amount of time is simply not possible naturally.

Cardio is a Great “Fat Loss Workout”

Debunking this lie is a lengthy article in itself so I’m going to refer you back to a previous article The Myth of Steady-State Cardio

Doing the Workout of any Famous Athlete or Bodybuilder

Don’t do any routine the elite athletes are doing now. Do the routine they were doing 10 or 15 years ago.

Do you really think that by copying their workout you’re going to perform like them? Do you think you’ll look like Arnold or Jay Cutler in a year or two? Or run with the power of Eddie Lacy, or the speed of Chris Johnson or strength of Eddie Hall?

You likely don’t have their genetics, or their elite coaches and trainers or in some cases the substances in their refrigerator door.

Go back a couple of decades and start there because that's how long it took them to get to where they are now.

I could go on and on but I won’t. Just keep in mind that the fitness magazines have only two goals and getting you fit isn’t one of them.

But fitness magazines aren’t all bad. Look at the pretty pictures if they help with motivation.