Four Common Muscle-Building Myths

Bodybuilding is a field that's often flooded with a lot of conflicting advice. While conflicting advice can sometimes have two right answers, very often the advice that's given is just plain wrong. In this article, we'll expose four of the most common muscle-building myths.

Myth #1 - Eat More If You Want to Build Muscle

One common myth is that if you're skinny and want to gain muscle, you need to consume a lot of calories. Unfortunately, this is more likely to get you fat than get you built.

Yes, if you want to gain muscle mass you do need to eat a few more calories than you're burning. But you don't need to consume 2,000 more calories than you've been eating in the past.

Eat more food, but don't stuff your body with calories. It's not healthy and won't help get you where you want to go.

Myth #2 - You Should Tense Your Abs When Lifting Weights

Another common myth is that tensing up your abs when you're lifting weights will help give your spine more support, thereby reducing the likelihood of injury.

This myth stemmed from a research study that was conducted, showing that people who had back pain tended to have lax abdominal muscles. They concluded that by tensing up the ab muscles, back support was increased which reduced back pain.

This story spread among the bodybuilding community and has come to be accepted as fact today. Unfortunately, it's just plain wrong.

In reality, your body naturally knows what to do when it's lifting heavy objects. Yes, you do need to tense up your abs - but your body does that automatically already. If you tense up your abs even more manually, you can throw off the whole system and actually increase your chances of injury.

Myth #3 - The Trick Is to Eat a Lot of Protein

Yes, eating a lot of protein is crucial. However, just increasing the amount of protein you eat isn't going to cut it.

In order to really make a difference in your muscles, you need to have the right kinds of proteins. You also need to have the right combination of proteins; and you need to eat other foods that support that protein intake.

Yes, increasing proteins is important - but it's not the magic pill.

Myth #4 - The Path to Losing Fat is Not Eating Fat

Finally, a lot of people who decide to start building muscles decide that they need to cut all fats out of their diet. Unfortunately, this is actually harmful rather than helpful.

Your body needs fats in order to operate properly. Yes, you should definitely get rid of trans fats and oily foods, but it's important to keep consuming healthy fats so your body has the resources it needs to work properly.

You can actually lose more fat by eating enough of the right kinds of fat than if you tried to cut out all fats from your diet.

These are four of the most common myths in bodybuilding today.