“Fitness Trends That Don’t Work (And What To Do Instead)” – Monica May

 

Fitness is a ever-changing matter.

Especially nowadays with so many people getting into fitness, trainers and enthusiast experiment a lot hoping to make fitness more fun and much more appealing.

However, the reality is, not all of them work.

In fact, there are so many famous fitness trends around us, that in reality are not that effective and don’t hold up to the hype around them.

And today, we’re going through all of them.

And I’m not saying there is a bad workout because we all know the drill – the only bad workout is the one you didn’t do.

However, when we already spend so much time working out, we might as well make the best out of it.

So, without further ado, lets jump into them right now!

2020 fitness trends

Fitness Trends That Don’t Work


Single Exercise Challenges

I’ve talked about this so many times – there’s no such thing as a single “best” exercise, and the real deal in fitness is variety.

That’s why I don’t believe that single-exercise challenges really work.

Doing one movement for a set amount of time and hoping to do huge body changes is not realistic.

Doing 500 reps of crunches a day won’t give you the abs you wanted.

As I’ve said before, it’s not possible to spot-tone or reduce fat just by doing one single exercise.

Heated Cardio Classes

If you haven’t heard of heated cardio before, it’s basically a heated fitness class that sets up the temperature to 80 degrees or even higher in hopes for bigger sweats.

Now, it all sounds legit, until you dig in a bit and find out the facts.

Turns out that even though you feel like your workout is harder and more effective when you’re doing it in a hot room, the only thing that happens is your workout suffering.

In fact, it only feels harder to your body, since it’s using so much energy to cool itself off, and it certainly becomes much harder to workout at the same intensity level as you’d be able to normally.

That being said, more sweat does NOT equal a harder workout, and sweating is only your body’s way of cooling down.

It’s not an indicator for a harder workout, or higher intensity, and it most certainly not and indicator for bigger results.

Instagram/TikTok Workouts

Instagram and TikTok slowly evolved from people dancing and taking selfies, to a point where you can quit the gym and basically conduct your entire workout routine from your feed.

And while that’s a great way to discover and learn new workouts and more and find effective exercises that can spice up your workouts, you shouldn’t rely on them alone.

While there is quality content, there are tons profiles that are more entertaining than they are educational and effective.

Especially, accounts that post videos exercising with toilet paper rolls and suitcases, explaining workouts in brief (or not at all) and do not offer advice or show any techniques, reps and sets.

Not to mention the fact that you’re probably getting unrealistic impressions that you can achieve it all if you follow just those 4 brief exercises.

Unfortunately, you can’t.

In fact, what you can see in a 30 second video is most certainly not the workout routine that influencer is doing on a daily basis.

She is fit because she has a workout program that’s usually 30-60 minutes a day and doesn’t include objects from the house, but actual fitness equipment.

So, yes, you can steal a workout or two, be creative and try it out on your next session, but never rely on those workouts to be your primary focus.

fitness trends 2020

Isolated Workout Programs

Oh, I know the drill:
1 Week Booty Challenge To Grow Your Booty.

Tons of workout programs that promise you a bigger booty, or smaller waist and doing isolated exercises just for that body part.

 

Sorry to break this down for you, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – you can’t do spot training, because spot training doesn’t work.

Our bodies doesn’t work that way.

And unfortunately we cannot choose which body part we want to lose weight from.

What we can do is work on our bodies as the whole pieces they are, and make sure to get fit overall.

 

We can focus on a certain muscle group more along the way, however, working out on the body as a whole piece is necessary.

Cardio Only Workout

Yes, cardio burns calories.

And yes, it helps you lose weight.

However, you most certainly can’t rely on cardio only if you want to achieve great fitness results.

You have to understand that working on your muscles burns fat too and is an important part of the fitness process.

In fact, strength training burns twice as much calories, compared to the ones burned when doing only cardio.

And while it’s true that doing steady state cardio will probably help out with weight loss, it’s actually totally unnecessary if your main goal is fat loss.

I’m not saying that you should never do cardio.
You just don’t need dedicated cardio sessions.

Cardio is actually one of the least effective fitness modalities for weight loss.

In fact, you can achieve that in many different ways that are not as boring and are a lot more effective.

We’ll head on to them in a second…

What To Do Instead


Find a workout program that works for you in terms of body goals, time, intensity and effectiveness.

For me that’s HIIT.

After long years of a gym workout, doing mostly weightlifting split training that lasts for hours and boring cardio on a machine that feels like an eternity, I realized that I’ve been wasting precious time on something that’s not that effective.

Oh, the countless times I’ve left the gym after an hour and a half of workout, without even breaking a serious sweat and without feeling like I’ve reached my maximum…

Not to mention cardio, which when done on a cardio machine, takes at least 15 minutes just to possibly enter the fat-burning zone, and not to mention burning fat.

Well, that’s not the case with HIIT.

HIIT is designed to push you to the limits and give you the maximum amount of benefits in a shorter period of time.

Quality HIIT training sessions are approximately 30 minutes a day, warm-up included, which is amazing for anyone with a busy schedule.

Yes it is hard, yes it pushes you far away out of your comfort zone and yes you think you’re going to die.

But that’s exactly what it takes to make a real change.

It’s not boring, nor to you nor to your body.

You can try out my HIIT based workout on my YouTube channel!

This workout is a part of my RADIATE Workout Program!

You can find out more about my workout program here: Lose Weight & Build Muscles At The Same Time – All About HIIT

 

I really hope I cleared out some common fitness trends that are ineffective.

I hope some of them are already vanished by the time you read this article, since I’m mainly talking about 2020 fitness trends in this article.

However, in my long experience in fitness, these trends are usually here to stay for years ahead.

That being said, share this article with your friends and workout buddies to help them get on the right track.

Till next time, babes!
xoxo

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