How To Avoid These Three Muscle-Building Myths

There’s a lot of information out there, people say that one things works, others say they don’t, one study shows the benefits to one method, another shows no results. It can be hard to sort fact from fiction, and naturally many of us don’t. Many of us just find something and go with it, we make up our minds.

I have no problem with that, I’ve suffered from misinformation before, and I know that there’s just too much out there to ever be completely sure that what you’re doing is as effective as you expect it to be. I will point out three large myths that Huffington Post has presented that, while many believe in, have shown to be incorrect:

Myth 1: You need to lift heavy weights to build muscle

It’s certainly true that an excellent way to build muscle is by lifting heavy weights with big compound exercises such as squats and deadlifts. But it’s not the only way to go. Contrary to popular belief, you can gain muscle using light weights (or body weight) and higher reps.

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Another study found that training with higher reps and lighter weights (25-35 reps) led to the same gains in muscle size as heavier weights with 8-12 reps. Even in seasoned weightlifters, researchers found the same muscle growth occurs when comparing 20-25 reps weight compared to 8-12 reps with a heavy weight.

That’s a fairly common myth, one that most of us have just adopted without knowledge of this counterintuitive truth. Want to know more? Check out the full post for more details and the other myths.