The next time your friends, personal trainer, or favorite magazine offer advice, ask yourself where it's coming from and is it scientifically sound.
If you've read any health or fitness magazine for more than a few months, you'll quickly notice the large amount of contradictory information being published. You'll also notice opinions being published as fact. But just because someone has an opinion does not make it true. Let's take training, as an example. One month, the best way to train your chest is with various exercises done for 8 sets. The next month, it's a variation of those same exercises but for 12 sets. The month after, it's a another variation of those same exercises but done for 6 sets, three times a week. Has anyone else noticed the utter random and abstractness of this type of training?
If someone prescribes 8 sets of bench presses to you, the first question that should come out of your mouth is, "Why 8? Why not 7? Why not 9? " You'll never get an answer to a question like that. And if you have, then please enlighten me because I've not heard anything even close to a satisfactory answer in all the time that I've been involved in the industry.
Simply put: it's complete randomness. Can you imagine any other discipline using similar techinques like this?
Can you imagine a doctor prescribing medication to you and then giving you random dosages? Dosages not based off of any scientific evidence?
The entire fitness industry (yes, that includes the aerobic enthusiasts as well) operates on the notion that more is better. A corollary to that is the idea that the more exercise that you perform, the more results that you see; that it's cumulative. As an example, using weight training, if one set is good, then a second set will produce more results. If two sets are good, then three sets are more productive. If it's running, then 1 mile is good but two miles is better. If 7 miles is good, then 10 miles are better.
Just as in medicine, taking more of something than what is needed often times will end up hurting the patient.
If someone suggests that you have to spend countless hours in the gym, ask them what evidence they have that one needs to do that in order to get the results that they want. Recent evidence regarding weight training has shown that a single set of an exercise is just as effective as multiple sets. Here is the link to the meta-analysis: http://www.asep.org/files/Smith.pdf
Additionally, a study was done in 1975 at West Point academy showing similar results. Not only that, but they showed that when trained three times a week, for no more than 30 minutes per session, the research participants had superior cardiovascular conditioning compared to the control group. The military conducted the study, it was overseen by Nautilus employees and also employees of Kennth Cooper, who at the time, were opposed to weight training. If you're interested in the study, go to any search engine and type in the phrase Project Total Conditioning, and you'll likely find information about it.
