Ronan Oliveira debunks five exercise myths: static stretching before workouts reduces strength, more exercise isn't always better, you don't need protein immediately post-workout, strength gains happen during recovery not in the gym, and muscle soreness doesn't mean you had a good workout.
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In this video, we are going to debunk the most common exercise myths. There are so many things that we still believe about working out and exercise that if we remove that, we can get so much forward with our working out and exercise and our fitness journey. So let's go straight into it. All right?
Gotta do some exercise, but before I do, gotta do some stretches to prevent some injury. One, two.
That is not true. Stretching before exercise was believed to be a practice that prevents injury. And it was something that they started a couple of decades ago with sports coaches. They would do this with their athletes. And because back in that day, we didn't have scientific studies to look into this practice and all the athletes were doing good because they were athletes, people going to the gym started to do the same thing, because this is what professional exercisers do. And a few decades later, when we started to have studies on static stretches, when you're holding a position before you exercise, we realize two things. That movement of static stretching, holding a stretch for a couple of seconds loosen up your muscles and ends up potentially weakening the muscles. It may even, depending on the amount of stretch that you give, make your muscles a bit slower, a bit weaker, and perhaps even increase the risk of injury during your workout. But this is mostly for very long, a minute and a half, static stretches. So the most important thing to know here is static stretching is not enhancing your performance. It's not preventing injury. And you don't need to do that if you don't like to do it. But some people prefer to do it for the sake of the practice, just to get ready mentally. If that's your case, don't hold a starting position for too long and you'll be fine.
All right, easy workout. Only five hours. Let's do this.
One eternity later. Done.
And only five hours. I should do one more because the more I do, the better it is.
Stop. Don't do more. We have this common belief on fitness that the more you do, the better it is. But we know that this is a myth. Think about something different. Think about you're going outside to get sun tanning. You know that if you get five minutes under the sun, you get some tanning on your skin. If you get 20 minutes under the sun, you may get a little more, but if you get three and a half hours, you don't get more tanned than 20 minutes. At some point, you just get burned. After you reach your limit, you're not getting more results, you're just causing more. More inflammation. And building muscle is a very similar process. All this training that you're doing is to cause to elevate your muscle protein synthesis so they are building more muscle mass once you have food after your training. But once you trigger that effect and once you fatigue your muscles enough, doing more will only cause more inflammation. You don't need to do a lot of training. You need to do quality of training training until failure and then give yourself time to rest.
Done with my workout? Okay, I got two minutes to drink this protein shake or else everything is gonna go to waste.
That is not true. You don't need to have your protein shake with you right after you train. That was this whole culture of bodybuilding that people would take their protein shake to the gym and leave inside a fridge because it absorbs faster when it's 4 degrees Celsius. All of this is a myth. What is most important is that you have the adequate amount of protein on a daily basis. If you want to know how much protein you should have, there's a video that we did only about that and you can find the link here. And that is the most important thing. As long as you've had a meal with protein before going to your training, you are fine. You can take your protein whenever is more convenient to you after you finish your workout.
3:00Am I just head to the gym?
Don't do that. Go back to sleep. We have the belief that when you go to the gym and lift weights, this is when you get stronger. And that's a myth. When you train and go to the gym, you are getting weaker. Just imagine that you do a set of leg press. Your first set you can do until the last repetition. The second set is a bit harder. The third set, you can barely finish it. This is because you are tearing your muscles apart every time they are lifting weights. For you to get stronger, you need to provide nutrients and time for recovery. All the processes that will make your muscles stronger and bigger will happen during the night while you're sleeping. Once all the metabolic processes of nutrition, training and sleep are going on together, don't skip on your recovery because this is when you get stronger. I am sore off. This means it was a really good workout. Good job. That is not true. We have the belief that only if it hurts the next day it was a good workout. If it doesn't hurt, it's not good it. And that is not true because muscle soreness will appear once you start lifting weights in the beginning, the first time that you go to the gym or when you change this stimulus. But we also know that other exercises that don't cause muscular growth. Like walking downhill is also something that can cause muscle soreness. And that type of activity doesn't mean your muscles are getting stronger or bigger. So muscle soreness is not an indication of a good workout. And there's more. There's individual variation. Different people with the same stimulus and with the same workouts may have wildly different levels of muscle soreness on the next day. Maybe you get extremely sore and maybe there's someone who, you know, go balls to the walls in every training and never gets there. Muscle soreness can happen, but it's not an indication of, of a good workout. You don't need to chase the pain just because of that. There are so many things that we still believe up to this day that stay on our way to fitness and strength and muscle development. You don't need to chase the pain. You don't need to have protein right after. You don't need to stretch before your training. You don't need to do more. You can do less and be more effective. And if you want a training program that is already designed to be efficient and effective and without most of the common myths of fitness, then go check our 10x fitness program. If you're a Mindvalley All Access customer, we are doing right now an experiment for eight weeks that you can join. And if you are not, you can join mindvalley all access pass to have access to this eight week experiment of the 10x fitness quest. And we have. We had so much fun doing this different type of video. You could see that it's a different format. And what I want to ask you is if you like this type of video because it takes us more effort to do and if it's something that you like, please let me know in the comments that we can put more effort into the next one of doing this different types of format to bring more information and ideas on health and fitness for you. Until then, I see you in the next video. Ah, the more I do, the better it is.
