Top 4 Overrated Things in Fitness

The Internet can be an endless ocean of knowledge or a completely messed environment at the same time. When you learn from the Internet, you sometimes learn about a bit incorrect information or sometimes too much information can just befog your brain.

Here are the top 4 overrated things in the fitness industry, that you should not overthink about. I have done the mistakes, learnt things the hard way, I don’t want you to do the same.

1. Mind Muscle Connection: If you are somewhat interested in muscular hypertrophy and did a bit digging on the internet, it’s most likely that you have heard this term. Mind Muscle Connection in a layman’s term is feeling the engagement of the particular muscle or muscle groups, you are training at the moment. Mind Muscle Connection is in the list because most people out there just say, have a mind muscle connection but the problem is people who are new to lifting weights can’t exactly feel the muscles at the first place. So, if one is lifting weights and just don’t have a tuned mind muscle connection, it’s not correct that the muscle is not being trained at the first place. Mind Muscle Connection comes with training experience and you will understand it well, after you dedicate some time to training. Even if you don’t understand it in the beginning, keep training with proper form and you will get better at it.

2. Range of Motion: Every exercise movement has a range of motion. It’s basically the pathway of the movement of the resistance while training a muscle or a muscle group. Again, it’s quite possible that you might have heard some influencers talk about full range of motion and how people ego lift with a minimal range of motion and to some extent that’s true. But what if you’re training with the right form, you are training with light weights and still can’t cover the whole range of motion? Every time you try to go for the whole pathway, you sacrifice some form. Is it worth it? Definitely not, range of motion in an exercise is important and I agree to that but at the same time, we must understand it’s different for everyone out there. We all have different biomechanics, we all have different flexibility levels, so the correct range of motion for a individual in a particular exercise is the one where he sticks to the right form and tries to cover most of the movement possible with his current flexibility level.

3. Short Rest Periods between the sets for Weightloss: I have personally done this stupidity for a year and I can say it’s one of the dumbest and most misleading advice. Weight Training is for building muscle and strength and you don’t want your weight session to be cardio. If you really wanna burn some calories, a cardiovascular exercise will help you way more than weight training anyway. If you are training with short rest periods between sets, you will not be able to lift heavier and will be stuck at a particular weight, hence minimising the scope of hypertrophy. I generally go for 1-2 minutes rest period between my easy sets and on the top sets, it increases to 2-3 minutes or even more. You need to rest properly between sets to lift heavy. Even if you are resting short, any weight session is just gonna burn 100-160 kcals for a 60 minutes session and a moderate intensity cardio session for the same duration on the other hand can burn up to 500 kcals approximately. So, leave the weights and go for cardiovascular exercises, if you wanna just burn more calories.

4. Lower Body Fat Percentage: We all want to look like our favourite instagram influencers who is obviously bigger and leaner than our current state. A lot of times, there are PEDs involved and that’s why attaining and maintaining that low of a percentage is often difficult naturally. For being shredded, being natural, sometimes some muscles are sacrificed, the sex drive goes away, the energy levels crashes down and it’s not fun overall. So, everyone who’s trying to lose weight, just go slower with the process. I know it takes a lot of patience but it will be worth it and just try to maintain a body fat percentage where you feel healthy and have energy to push yourself in the gym.