Muscle Building Myths

No guesses on the myth from the previous post? I'll continue on as though someone is listening...

Easily the most repeated, most believed myth in all of fitness is that "a pound of resting muscle burns 30-70 calories per day." (I hear it anywhere within those ranges, typically 35-50).

You see this myth in articles everywhere. Very smart people are quoted as stating it as fact. Though I'm not very smart, I believed it and probably said it at some point.

At first glance, it just doesn't set off alarms. But, when you start to think about it, you start to see that it just can't be right.

If you take an average in-shape man for example, a guy who weighs say 180 lbs. and has a body fat percentage of 15%. This puts his lean body mass (LBM) at 153 lbs. Though it would be difficult to get the exact number, 45% is a good estimate of how much of LBM is actually muscle in the average person.

So, about 69 lbs. of our sample man's bodyweight is actually muscle mass.

According to the myth, the sample man must take in between 2,070 calories (30x69) and 4,830 (70x69) calories just to maintain his resting muscle tissue. That's a lot of calories just for maintaining muscle.

The average 180 lb. man probably takes in between 2,500 and 3,000 calories to maintain his physique in good shape.

So, by the logic of the myth the vast majority (or all and then some) of the sample man's diet is needed to just maintain his resting muscle tissue???? That certainly doesn't make sense. What happens when he starts moving? What about maintaining the other 111 lbs. of his bodyweight?

I googled the question and found this - How Many Calories Does Muscle Really Burn?.

That makes sense. 6 calories per pound of muscle makes sense. That works.

The take home lesson? In fitness, just because a lot of people say something is so, doesn't make it so. Not even when those people have a bunch of initials after their name. Not even when it is published repeatedly in top magazines.

Sometimes things that don't immediately set off alarm bells just get repeated so much that they become accepted as fact.

2 more examples: Will Brink has offered a cash reward for anyone who can show him any basis for the commonly believed myth that "the body can only utilize 30 grams of protein per meal." He hasn't had any takers.

And, the one that annoys me the most often, "the natural trainer can only gain 5-15 lbs. of muscle in a year." Yeah, right. My rant on that one is here - How Much Muscle Can You Really Expect To Gain.

JP Clifford

Building Lean Muscle for Women

Recently, I got and answered an email asking for advice on how to gain weight.

And I made a HUGE mistake.

Somewhere in my reply I said the phrase women fear most, "Build Muscle Mass."

The reply I got back was predictable, it said something to the effect, "Oh - no,no,no. I DO NOT WANT TO BUILD MUSCLE MASS. I was just hoping to add some lean muscle."

My bad. I should know better. In fact, the whole fitness industry knows better than to mention "muscle mass" to women. It just conjures up bad images, images of those chicks who stuck one too many needles in themselves or, even worse, images of men.

The politically correct term for women is "lean muscle tissue." Men build muscle mass, women build lean muscle.

But here's the thing - muscle is muscle. Yep, women who are building lean muscle are really building muscle mass. There is no difference.

So where did the term "lean muscle" come from? From some very, very smart fitness trainer I guess, someone who figured out they could avoid the long, laborous task of trying to convince a woman that she would retain 100% femininity, look better, feel better and younger, and be healthier if she went about building some muscle.

That argument has a very low-success rate - but simply call it lean muscle and you're on easy street.

Note my clever placement of "lean" in this article - Weight Gain For Women.

I'm pretty sure it was that same genius trainer that started calling it "lean muscle" that invented "toning." What is toning? It is commonly believed to be an alternative to weight lifting, for those who don't want to get huge muscles. The thing is, IT IS WEIGHT LIFTING.

Really, I want to shake the hand of the trainer who invented these terms.

Here's an article from a college paper that tries to ease women past their gym fears using some gentle language - Weight training myths ‘filling the heads of women everywhere’.

That's a good article, BUT... it does perpetuate one baseless fitness myth - Can you guess what that myth is?

I'll reveal the answer in my next post.

JP