Health expert dispels seven fitness fallacies

Breaks down exercise barriers in new illustrated guide

CHAMPAIGN, IL—Each year millions of people resolve to get fit, but they quit when their gym sessions don’t reap immediate results. According to Brian Sharkey, a leading fitness researcher and educator, people often fall prey to common fitness misconceptions that prevent them from achieving their goals. In his upcoming book, Fitness Illustrated (Human Kinetics, October 2010), Sharkey dispels the top fitness fallacies.

1. No pain, no gain. Pain is not a natural consequence of exercise or training. Rather, it signals a problem that you need to address. Discomfort, however, can accompany difficult training such as heavy lifting, intense interval training, and long-distance work. The discomfort results naturally from the lactic acid that accompanies the anaerobic effort of lifting or doing intense intervals. “Overload is necessary for adaptation, and it sometimes requires working at the limit of strength, intensity, or endurance, which can be uncomfortable,” Sharkey says. “But, if your exercise results in outright pain, it’s probably excessive.” 
2. You must break down muscle in order to improve. Neither pain nor injury is a normal result of training. Runners often experience microtrauma at the end of a marathon that includes downhill stretches requiring eccentric muscular contractions. “Such contractions are a major cause of muscle soreness, which is associated with muscle trauma, reduced force output, and a protracted recovery period (4 to 6 weeks),” Sharkey says. “Thus ‘breaking down’ muscle does not help training, but instead brings it to a standstill.” 
3. Go for the burn. This mantra is often heard among bodybuild­ers who do numerous repetitions and sets to build, shape, and define their muscles. “They are probably referring to the sensation felt when the level of lactic acid increases in a muscle,” Sharkey explains. “This sensation is not dangerous, but it isn’t necessary.” 
4. Lactic acid causes muscle soreness. Lactic acid may be produced when performing contractions that lead to sore­ness, but lactic acid does not cause the soreness. Lactic acid clears from the muscles and blood within an hour after exercise. “Muscle soreness is probably related to microtrauma in muscle and connective tissue, and resultant swelling, caused by engaging in a new kind of exertion or exercise after a long layoff,” Sharkey says. 
5. Muscle turns to fat. Many people believe that if they stop training, their muscle will turn to fat. Neither muscle nor fat will turn into the other. “Muscle grows or gets smaller because training increases the size of muscle fibers (hypertrophy), whereas detraining reduces the size of these fibers (atrophy),” Sharkey explains. “Fat cells, in contrast, grow in size as they store more fat as the result of excess caloric consumption. If, on the other hand, you use more calories than you take in, fat cells shrink.”
6. I ran out of wind. When a person runs too fast for his level of training, he may feel as if he has run out of wind. This is due not to a lack of oxygen but instead to an excess of carbon dioxide, which is produced when the body metabolizes carbohydrate. “The respiratory system decides that it is more important to rid the body of excess CO₂ than to bring in more O₂,” Sharkey says. “Excess CO₂ is a signal that the body is working above its level of training—and it has exceeded the level of exertion it can sustain.” 
7. If seen on TV, it must be true. The 30-minute sales pitches on television for fitness equipment or exercise systems promise quick results, but these claims are never backed by evidence—just unverified testimoni­als. “That equipment will soon clutter the garage, basement, or attic, and there will be a new exercise miracle on TV in a few months,” Sharkey says. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” 

Fitness Illustrated presents core fitness concepts, exercise programming, nutrition, and weight management in an illustrated guide. For more information, see Fitness Illustrated. 

About the Author

Brian Sharkey, PhD, is a leading fitness researcher, educator, and author. Sharkey has more than 45 years of experience in exercise, sport, and work physiology. He is professor emeritus at the University of Montana, where he served as director of the Human Performance Laboratory and remains associated with the university and lab. He currently serves as a consultant with several federal agencies in the areas of fitness, health, and work capacity, especially of wildland firefighters. He has won several awards for his work, including the 2009 International Association of Wildland Fire’s Wildland Fire Safety Award for his contributions to wildland firefighter safety and health. 

Sharkey authored or contributed to over a dozen books on exercise, sport, and work physiology and fitness and numerous research papers. He is past president of the American College of Sports Medicine and served on the NCAA committee on competitive safeguards and medical aspects of sports, where he chaired the Sports Science and Safety subcommittee, which uses research to improve the safety of intercollegiate athletics. He also coordinated the United States ski team Nordic Sports Medicine Council.

Contents

Chapter 1 Activity and Fitness: Why Get Fit?

Chapter 2 Understanding Aerobic Fitness: O₂ and You

Chapter 3 Aerobic Fitness Training: A Gentle Pastime

Chapter 4 Aerobic Programs: Have It Your Way

Chapter 5 Understanding Muscular Fitness: Gain Strength and Endurance

Chapter 6 Muscular Fitness Training: Shape Yourself

Chapter 7 Muscular Programs: Designed for You

Chapter 8 Nutrition and Weight Control: Eat to Live

Chapter 9 Health Issues and Exercise Tips: Overcoming Hurdles

Chapter 10 Fitness Facts and Fallacies: What’s the Truth?

Chapter 11 Vitality and Longevity: Add Life to Your Years 

Questions for Brian Sharkey

• Why should a previously inactive person begin training gradually?
• What is overload, and why is it important if you want to continue improving?
• What are the best exercises for improving aerobic fitness?
• Why is it important to warm up the body before stretching?
• What are the biggest barriers that prevent people from exercising?
• Explain DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness) and how can it be avoided.
• What are the three types of stretching, and when should each be used?
• Why is physiological age more important than chronological age?
• How does muscular endurance differ from aerobic endurance?
• What is the difference between physical activity and fitness?

Background Facts

• Adults should do 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. Aerobic activity should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, preferably spread throughout the week.
  
  
• Physical inactivity is responsible for major economic costs and is a major contributor to heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer. It may be responsible for as many as 407,000 premature deaths annually in the United States.
  
  

• Training for muscular fitness increases muscle mass, which in turn burns more fat.
  
  
• Muscle cells include mitochondria, which are the site of a chemical process where oxygen is used to make energy from carbohydrate and fat. Training increases the volume of muscle mitochondria, which means muscles can burn more carbohydrate and fat. Training also doubles muscles’ ability to use oxygen, so endurance-trained muscles are better able to use fat as an energy source.

• People who are inactive are 50 times more likely to have heart problems during exertion than those who are active.
  
  

• Heredity plays a major role in the ability to respond to training. Aerobic training generally leads to a 20 to 25 percent increase in aerobic fitness, but the response is variable. In a recent study of 10 identical twins, improvements in aerobic fitness ranged from 0 to 41 percent; 77 percent of the variation in the response to training was dependent on genes.

• Chronological age (how long you’ve lived) is less important than your physiological age (how well your body functions). Chronological age is, in fact, a poor predictor of your health and your performance in work or sport.
  
  

• Strength declines slowly with age until the 40s or 50s, when the rate of decline increases. This loss of muscle is called sarcopenia, or vanishing flesh, and it contributes to frailty in elderly persons by reducing their strength and thus increasing their risk of falls and fractures. Sarcopenia results from the loss of muscle fibers and from fiber atrophy, due to lack of use, and from a decrease in muscle-building hormones. But, strength training regularly will retain muscle function much longer.
  
  

Facts taken from Fitness Illustrated (Human Kinetics, 2010).

Endorsements

"If you want to get in shape but don’t have a clue about how to do it the right way, Fitness Illustrated is the book for you! There’s no need to plow through pages of boring information. Brian Sharkey’s easy-to-read descriptions will help you jump into action."

Nancy Clark, MS, RD, CSSD

Author of Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, Fourth Edition

“Do you ever go to the gym and wonder why you are doing a certain workout? With Brian Sharkey’s Fitness Illustrated, you will not only get a step-by-step program but also understand why you are performing each exercise.”

Diane O’Donnell

ACE-Certified Personal Trainer

Health Editor for the Staten Island Advance