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Cornish_Celt · #4 (**permalink**) 05-27-2010, 12:45 PM

22 -- Professional bodybuilders represent the epitome of health and fitness.
The ultimate irony is that the IFBB is facing in trying to get bodybuilders into the Olympics is that while every athlete in every other sport is presumably the healthiest they've ever been so that they are able to compete athletically and break records, the bodybuilder is so weak on competition day that he or she would have trouble fending off the attacks of an enraged toy poodle. The weeks of constant dieting, workouts that continually tax the body almost beyond recovery, and a constant influx of potentially harmful drugs and diuretics have brought most of them to total exhaustion.
And think about the huge amounts of food some steroid-using bodybuilders eat. In all the longevity sites in the world where people routinely live to be one hundred, the only common denominator is that they all either under-eat or eat just enough to meet their daily caloric requirements. By ingesting less food, they ingest less harmful chemicals, and fewer free radicals are formed in the body. The average professional builder probably eats at least four or five times what these aforementioned people eat. As a result, bodybuilders often suffer from high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Plus, with all that extra mass, the heart has to work that much harder and will probably stop beating years before it was designed to. That's why professional bodybuilding is the ultimate act of vanity. It was done strictly to fulfill some misguided notion of the superhuman ideal, and health was not even a consideration. Almost without exception, these guys and gals are not healthy, and they'll probably be among the first to tell you so. However, weight-training and consuming a nutrient-rich diet is very healthy, as long as it is not carried to extremes.

23 -- Training with weights causes your muscles to get tight and hinders flexibility and, consequently, athletic performance.
If anything, when done properly (slowly and using a complete range of motion), weight training increases flexibility. Many athletes now engage in weight training in order to improve their performance in their chosen sport -- witness Evander Hollyfield or any number of track athletes, basketball players, or gymnasts; the list goes on and on.
This lie goes all the way back to the 1930s. Companies that were selling isometric exercise programmes by mail were trying to convince people _not_ to exercise with barbells, simply because it wasn't practical to send weights through the mail. So they made up the 'muscle-bound' lie.
This lie might have been fueled from the feeling of 'tightness' that accompanies an intense workout. If the workout was intense and a sufficient number of muscle fibers were recruited and microscopically damaged, then even the normal tonus (the normal amount of contraction experienced by a relaxed muscle) is more than enough to cause a feeling of pain and tightness. The tightness is compounded by the 'tugging' of the tendons on the muscles. Stretching, however, would do much to alleviate this tightness, and stretching is a recommended part of any athletic pursuit.
The only possible confirmation of this lie concerns a baseball pitcher's arm. An intense weight training programme might affect a pitcher's ability to throw a fast ball, but it wouldn't be because of a lack of flexibility. The speed a pitcher can generate seems to be determined more by a complex relationship of tendon length and strength and nervous system efficiency as opposed to muscular strength, and weight training could, possibly, upset this delicate balance.

24 -- Loading up on carbohydrates is an excellent way to enhance your athletic performance.
The traditional manner in which athletes 'carb up' for an athletic competition usually involves first depleting the body's stores of carbohydrates through exercise and diet. This is then followed by rest and a high carbohydrate intake. However, studies have shown that this type of preparation is unnecessary. An athlete who eats a balanced, high-carbohydrate diet and is in reasonably good shape has plenty of carbohydrates in his or her system to meet the demands of short-duration exercises that don't exceed roughly one hour. Anyone that does exercises that last more than an hour, like long-distance running or cycling, may benefit from 'carbing up', but the ability of muscles to use fat as a source of energy rather than carbohydrates in endurance events may be even more important to performance at that level.

25 -- Consuming foods high in sugar before training provides your body with extra energy to sustain workouts.
Simple sugars like sucrose don't need to be broken down by the body's enzymes to be used as energy like complex carbohydrates do. Therefore, they elicit a rapid release of insulin, the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels. The trouble is, the sudden, rapid influx of sugar into the system causes the body to release insulin in what must be considered a haphazard method, ie. the amount released is usually more than what's needed to metabolise the sugar. Consequently, your blood sugar often temporarily drops to a point that is actually lower than it was _before_ you had the sugar, which might cause you to become more exhausted much earlier than it normally would. Your body is then forced to dip into its glycogen reserves in order to correct the imbalance.
To ensure that you have enough energy to complete a workout, eat nutrient- rich foods with low glycemic indices (those that elicit a smooth, steady stream of sugar into the bloodstream) like barley, lentils or beans.

26 -- All anabolic steroids are extremely toxic and dangerous.
Here's a good trivia question borrowed from Dan Duchaine's Underground Steroid Handbook [highly recommended]: if you lined up a bottle of Dianabol (a popular steroid), a bottle of Lasix (a diuretic used by heart patients and bodybuilders who want to 'cut up' for a competition), a bottle of Valium, a bottle of aspirin, and a bottle of Slow-K (a potassium supplement), which one, upon eating a 100 tablets, wouldn't kill you? Well, most likely the Dianabol. This isn't an endorsement of steroids; it's just an effective illustration of the stigma generally associated with all steroids: 'they'll give you brain tumors like Lyle Alzado . . . they'll cause your heart to enlarge and eventually give out [they cause spontaneous decapitation . .]'. Maybe, but all steroids are different. Some are more dangerous than others. Birth control pills are steroids. Testosterone patches have been used with great success to enhance the quality of life for elderly men. Some of the steroids that bodybuilders use are very mild, and the risk associated with them is virtually negligible. Still, there _are_ dangerous steroids, and that's all the more reason that athletes who choose to use them must be more knowledgeable about them. This is what Bill Phillips' Anabolic Reference Guide [_very_ highly- recommended] is all about -- education. Of course, the physical changes that steroids bring about might cause adverse psychological effects in the user, and that fact shouldn't be ignored.