6 Muscle Building Myths

Think you know fact from fiction? Well what about when it comes to weight training and muscle building? These days there are rumors everywhere, and the gym is one place where socializing perpetuates the spread of bad information. That's right, even the guy next to you curling 150s may be dishing out bogus advice, so for once let's get the record straight.

1) More Protein Means More Muscle: Yes and No. Yes because protein is necessary for protein synthesis, the process through which your body creates more muscle. However, the amount of protein is not so much a matter of importance as when you ingest it. Anything more than 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is going to be excreted or stored as carbohydrates. The best time to consume protein is right after a workout. For example, have a protein shake composed of 1 part protein, 3 parts carbs.

2) Don't Exercise Sore Muscles: Working out can actually help relieve the soreness of muscles, assuming it isn't too sore. If your muscle is sore to the touch, better to err on the side of caution and give it another day of rest. Otherwise, hit the gym, and start off with some jogging, cycling, or erging.

3) Stretching Prevents Injuries: Plain and simple, stretching improves flexibility before a workout, but it doesn't prevent injury. What does help prevent injuries, though, is a good warm-up. A proper warm-up slowly increases blood flow and prepares your body for physical activity.

4) Free Weights Are Better: Perhaps for highly experienced trainers, otherwise, machine workouts can provide highly stimulating resistance to isolated muscle groups. Also, machines can help you recover faster from an injury by isolating that specific injury spot.

5) Yoga Balls Will Help You Build A Stronger Chest: The bench is perfect for chest press and shoulder press. In order to use a yoga ball for chest exercises, you have to reduce the weight, so you'll end up getting less out of the exercise in the long run. However, the ball is good to mix up your workout and also for abdominals.

6) Open-Chain Exercises Are Better Than Closed-Chain: Open-chain exercises, ones which a single joint is activated, like leg extensions, are actually found to be more dangerous than closed-chain exercises, ones which activate multiple joints, like the leg press.

These are just a few of the myths that circulate around the gym from time to time. Make sure you aren't a victim of false information by keeping up with sports medicine and the science behind muscle building.

Ben Stacy writes health and fitness articles for a number of publications, and he maintains his on website, Keys to Building Muscle. If you are interested and would like to learn more tips and techniques, please visit keystobuildingmuscle.blogspot.com keystobuildingmuscle.blogspot.com