If there’s one thingthat living for more than a year in a global pandemic may have causedyou to feel, it’s guilt – that you haven’t kept on top of yourfitness as much as you feel you should have done, even during timesof lockdown and other disruption.
So, you might be eager to get back into anexercise routine, and to that end, you may well have been choosingfrom our extensive selection of activefitness wear and accessories here at Hybryd.
Not all of the things many of us think aboutexercise in the 2020s, however, is necessarily borne out by reality.So, with help from the experts, let’s look at just some of thepersistent fitness myths that may be causing you to haveless-than-helpful attitudes towards your own exercise regime.
Exercise for exercise’s sake is ‘normal’and instinctive behaviour
If you’ve felt more than a little guilty aboutyour fitness habits – or lack of them – over the past year, it’sworth bearing in mind that the concept of “exercise” as somethingwe do with the specific intention of attaining and preservingphysical fitness is actually a fairly modern development.
As Harvard professor of evolutionary biology,Daniel E Lieberman, recently outlined for The Observer, “formillions of years, humans were physically active for only tworeasons: when it was necessary or rewarding… no one in the stoneage ever went for a five-mile jog to stave off decrepitude, or liftedweights whose sole purpose was to be lifted.”
Unused muscle tissue turns into fat
This is a bit of a comical one really, but it’sworth underlining nonetheless. In the words of Sean Kuechenmeister, aclinical athletic trainer at the New York Sports Science Lab inStaten Island, New York: “It’s really important to say thatmuscle tissue has muscle cells and fat tissue has fat cells.
“By no means is it chemically or physicallypossible for muscle tissue to convert over to fat and vice versa, fatinto muscle.”
Static stretching before exercise helpsprevent injury
A lot of us were taught in school PE classes aboutthe importance of performing static stretches, such as reaching forone’s toes and then holding that stretch, for minimising thelikelihood of injury during exercise.
However, as pointed out by health journalistRobert J. Davis in an article for TIME, past research hasoften struggled to back up this idea. Davis even suggested thatengaging in static stretches before exercise may cause harm byadversely affecting performance.
As he put it: “A better approach is to warm upand then do dynamic stretches, such as arm or leg swings, whichinvolve movement. Unlike static stretching, dynamic stretching primesmuscles for action and may improve performance.”
If you don’t ‘just do it’, you’relazy
How often have you heard some variation before of“oh, stop moaning and just get on with that fitness routinealready”? It’s something that might have come out of a lot ofpeople’s mouths during this pandemic when you mentioned to themyour exercise struggles – but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
For this one, we look back to Lieberman, whocautions that “for most of us, telling us to ‘just do it’doesn’t work any better than telling a smoker or substance abuserto ‘just say no!’”
Lieberman goes on to suggest that those wishing toget their workout momentum going should find ways to make exercise“necessary and rewarding”, as it was for past generations ofhumans. “Of the many ways to accomplish this, I think the best isto make exercise social. If you agree to meet friends to exerciseregularly, you’ll be obliged to show up, you’ll have fun andyou’ll keep each other going.”
Are you ready to make your own next exerciseroutine the one that you stick with for good? If so, you can havefaith in the Hybryd online store providing you with all of thenecessary activefitness wear for less. Browse online now to discover thelatest additions to our range, not forgetting that allpostage of our goods to UK addresses is free.
