It depends on your goals. To put it simply, a bodybuilder is a fitness player who didn’t want to stop in time. Bodybuilding’s priority is training muscles for size, fitness is training muscles for shape. However, in any case, in order to give a good shape to any muscle group, you will have to increase it in some part. Thus, if you want to do fitness, because interested in improving your muscle form, the first year you will still have to train your muscles on very similar programs with bodybuilding. We are now talking about effective fitness. Which will really help in muscle training: tighten or shape your figure.
“Bodybuilding makes a woman look masculine.”
If you are a natural bodybuilder (no chemicals), you have no chance of becoming like those scary sleepers from bodybuilding magazines. Do not believe other information – this is a bodybuilding myth. Many biological characteristics of the female body will save you from this. First of all, a small amount of male hormones and muscles in the upper body.
So in order to become “masculine” you either need to be born with a genetic defect or take male hormonal drugs. But this is a completely different song. Remember the main thing. No matter how a woman trains her muscles, she can never acquire masculine features without injections of male hormones or their analogues.
“Aerobic muscle training is better than resistance training.”
Unfortunately, aerobic exercise is not able to build muscle tissue in any way. And this means, and change its shape. During aerobic exercise, muscle fibers are involved, which are responsible for endurance, while speed-strength fibers are responsible for muscle size and shape. However, aerobics perfectly trains the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, normalizes metabolism in the body. But most often, aerobics is used as an aid in getting rid of subcutaneous fat. In this case, it is better to use long-term low-intensity exercises.
“Bodybuilding takes away your flexibility.”
It would be more correct to say – they can deprive you of flexibility. The fact is that when training muscles, loss of flexibility is really possible if you reduce the range of motion in the exercise. This often happens with heavy training weights and some professional intensity-raising techniques (cheating, partial reps). Thus, the muscles adapt to a more economical way of lifting weights.
However, if you perform the exercise technically at all stages of the movement (especially at the starting point), then your flexibility will not only not decrease, but may even become better. Heavy training of muscles makes them harder and harder. However, even then, it is easy to combat this by doing stretching exercises between sets or after training. And don’t forget that this is really hard muscle training by very high level athletes. For beginners, it is early to worry about a similar problem in the first year of training.
I want to be healthy and strong, what should I do? “
Go to the gym. Only here you have the opportunity to adequately train the muscles of all muscle groups. Most other sports train some specific muscles and qualities (endurance in runners, explosive power of pushing muscles in throwers, etc.). And only by doing bodybuilding, you have the opportunity to train all muscle groups. And in different modes. If you add cardio (running) to such loads, then you will be able to develop all the indicators of a healthy and strong body. The basic eating habits of bodybuilding and fitness will also be very beneficial for your health.
“To noticeably improve your physique, you need to train very often and for a long time.”
This “Myth” is a very common reason for busy people to refuse to work out in the gym. Fortunately, it lacks any foundation. For good progress, three workouts per week for 45-60 minutes are enough. Too frequent training, especially at the beginning, will lead to general overtraining and stunted growth. The duration of the workout itself should also be reduced to a minimum. This will help reduce the release of catabolic hormones responsible for muscle breakdown. In fact, the duration of the workouts themselves is not as important as their quality and rest. The latter is much more important than the training itself. Since muscles grow during rest.
