Muscle Myths

Irrefutable Science That Later Proved Dead Wrong

Irrefutable science that later proved to be dead wrong.

Muscle myths. In progressive resistance training, every era has had its irrefutable truths, its settled science, its indisputable contentions about certain aspects of training that later turned out to be dead wrong. There are no absolutes. There is no finality in true science. A scientist seeks repeatable success and is open and receptive to new and better ways. A fundamentalist defends an entrenched position and rejects additional input. Fundamentalist orthodoxies exposed to sunlight wilt and wither. Irrefutable science is no science at all.

Fundamentalists masquerading as scientists have held sway over resistance training philosophies since the end of the Second World War. An unbelievable number of “unassailable contentions” have later been exposed as complete bullshit. The champions of faulty methodologies embrace censorship and insist those who question be excommunicated. These champions of the entrenched bristle at questioning.

Some of the muscle myths of yesteryear seem laughable today. Back in the day, if you laughed, you could get kicked off a team, lose your full-ride athletic scholarship, or lose your job as a coach. Here are a few muscle myths of yesteryear, just the first eight to come to mind. The list could have easily been twice as long.

Resistance Training Muscle Myths: The Settled Science of Its Day

Musclebound

In the 1950s and 1960s, weight training for high school and college athletes was frowned upon. The settled science maintained that adding “unnatural” weight-trained muscle slowed a man down, tightened him up, made him unathletic and musclebound. It was not until the weight-trained Pittsburgh Steelers began beating the hell out of opponents in the early 1970s that the ridiculous musclebound myth died.

When an athletic man takes up weight training, he creates a larger, stronger version of his current athletic self. When an unathletic man takes up weight training, he creates an enlarged version of his unathletic self. A muscled-up unathletic man is musclebound.

High Reps Get You Ripped

This myth was widely and universally embraced by the experts up until the 1990s. The logic seemed irrefutable: 10- to 15-rep sets melt away the body fat that obscures muscle from view. Low reps built “bulk.” High reps were great for burning away excess fat.

The fact is, upping reps from 5 to 12 does zero, zip, nada, by itself, insofar as making a man leaner. Higher reps need to be accompanied by a tight diet and regular cardio. Resistance training, by itself, does not create leanness. Cardio, coordinated with diet, remains the eternal ticket to low body fat. Weight training is secondary when it comes to attaining single-digit body-fat levels, though it remains invaluable for preserving or building muscle while the fat is being stripped away.

Nautilus Mythology

Barbell and dumbbell users were told by Arthur Jones that his philosophy and his monstrous, overbuilt devices were going to consign our primitive tools, barbells and dumbbells, to the resistance-training trash heap. Nationwide, Nautilus Training Centers sprang up in every shopping mall. Imperious young men and women, in uniforms with clipboards, staffed these facilities.

Twice weekly, the Nautilus trainee would drop by and do a single set to failure on each of the thirteen Nautilus machines. This would renovate the body. After a few years, folks figured out nothing was happening. The original Jones philosophy called for going to positive failure, then immediately performing 2 to 5 forced reps, this followed by “negative reps” until the trainee could no longer control the negative. The forced reps and negatives were dropped, and the watered-down version of Jones’ three-phase protocol produced zero results.

High Volume Was Sacrosanct

For 30 years, from 1950 until 1980, irrefutable science proclaimed that unless a muscle was exercised every 72 hours, that muscle would degrade, weaken. Arnold Schwarzenegger, at his peak, was performing 700 sets per week. He trained twelve times per week, twice a day, two hours per session, six days in a row.

The powerlifters of the 1970s slashed training volume. These men followed where results led. These power pioneers were squatting and deadlifting 700 pounds for reps and bench pressing 500 for reps. There was no way they could handle that kind of poundage three times a week. These pioneer power-men reduced the training volume and progress skyrocketed. Dorian Yates and Ronnie Coleman used these same power tactics, with forced reps added, to build unprecedented muscle size. Monstrous increases in strength are often accompanied by monstrous increases in muscle size.

Ab Work Melts Fat off the Abs

This is the biggest myth in all of fitness-dom. Millions and millions of dollars have been made selling “ab-buster” devices on TV. The fraudulent sales strategy never changes: perform abdominal exercise and melt away the fat that lies atop the abs.

The practical truth is that ab work alone does not uncover abs. Preferentially performing a particular exercise will not let you decide, with specificity, where body fat is drawn down from. If the old spot-reducing sales pitch worked, why not have people with fat on the back of their arms do hundreds of reps in the triceps pushdown?

The way to obtain a fat-free waistline is to lower your overall body-fat level. This is accomplished by skillfully blending cardio and nutrition. Want ripped abs? Lower your total body-fat level.

Pre-Fatigue

Among the original Heavy Duty training strategies promoted by the Mentzer brothers, Mike and Ray, and their mentor Arthur Jones, was the idea that, for bodybuilding purposes, the most effective muscle-building strategy was to pre-fatigue a target muscle.

If, by way of example, the Heavy Duty bodybuilder worked shoulders, normal procedure would be to start with compound movements, overhead pressing, followed by isolation shoulder exercises, say lateral raises. Pre-fatigue insists you start with lateral raises. Work the laterals until the delts are totally exhausted — now perform the overhead press.

The still-fresh triceps and upper pecs were supposed to enable even more growth-producing reps. This strategy failed to take into account how radically the poundage-handling ability was destroyed. The isolation burnout that preceded the compound movement caused strength to plummet so precipitously that the entire effort was rendered ineffective. This once-revolutionary tactic is deservedly extinct.

Exercise Machines Are Equal to Free Weights

This is another myth that people want desperately to believe. It would be wonderful if the seated leg extension delivered the same results as deep barbell squats. We want to believe that lat pulldowns are as good as free-hand pullups, or that seated cable rows are every bit as good a back developer as barbell rows, deadlifts, or power cleans.

I want the smooth-as-silk seated machine press to be as effective at building chest mass as heavy dumbbell flat benches. Machines eliminate the third dimension of tension, the need to control side-to-side motion. Free weights, barbells and dumbbells, cause muscle stabilizers to fire while machines, with their frozen grooves, allow stabilizers to lie dormant.

That does not mean machines are useless. Machines can be valuable for isolation, beginners, facilities, injured trainees, older lifters, and targeted assistance work. It does mean that, when the goal is total-body strength, coordination, balance, athletic transfer, and stabilizer demand, the free-weight exercise often does more than the machine exercise it mimics.

Weight Training Can Double as Cardio

For decades, bodybuilders labored under the false premise that weight training, done lighter, faster, longer, more often, would act as both a muscle builder and an effective form of cardio exercise. As it turns out, by going faster, lighter and longer, many of the muscle-building aspects normally associated with weight training are compromised.

Hypertrophy, the triggering of the adaptive response, requires meaningful effort. There are no true 100% efforts when going light, fast, and sloppy. By trying to make weight training do double duty, strength training and aerobic training done simultaneously, the results associated with weight training can be diluted.

Weight training can be arranged in a conditioning style, but it is still not a clean substitute for purposeful aerobic work when the goal is sweat-inducing, body-fat-supporting cardio. Don’t mix modes carelessly: augment intense, hypertrophy-inducing weight training with dedicated cardio when fat loss and conditioning are the goal. Separate and distinct. Do not create an ineffectual hybrid.

When someone, something, some entity, presents their particular brand of training or nutrition as based on “irrefutable science,” when they insist their approach is so advanced it renders every other system obsolete and destined for extinction — be a cynic, not a sucker.

Equipment Notes for Testing Training Myths

The tool does not decide the truth of a training method. The goal, exercise selection, effort, recovery, technique, and honest measurement decide the truth. Still, different tools reveal different things.

For free-weight training, lifters and facilities can compare dumbbells, barbells, Olympic weightlifting bars, and weight plates. For machine-based training, compare selectorized gym equipment and plate-loaded leverage gym equipment.

Specific options such as IRON COMPANY rubber hex dumbbell sets and the Legend Fitness 1131 SelectEDGE cable crossover can support honest training when matched to the lifter, facility, goal, and method. The equipment does not kill a myth. Results kill a myth.

Safety Note for Resistance Training Myths

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW resistance-training perspective and historical myth-busting style. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, nutrition, fat-loss, or programming advice.

Forced reps, negatives, repeated training to failure, heavy squats, deadlifts, power cleans, high-volume bodybuilding work, and fast circuit-style lifting are not automatically appropriate for every person. Beginners, older lifters, injured lifters, deconditioned trainees, and people with medical concerns should scale training to their body and seek qualified guidance when needed.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, dizziness, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical breakdown, severe soreness that worsens instead of improves, or any symptom that feels different from ordinary training effort.

The useful lesson is not that every old method was stupid. The useful lesson is that results must be tested, measured, repeated, and questioned.

Related Myth Reading

For more Marty Gallagher myth-busting, read Seven Fitness Myths. For a deeper dive into one of the oldest ab-training myths, read Exploding Fitness Myths: Endless Ab Exercise.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.