Huff, puff: Blowing down five strength-training myths

Come on, don't be a weakling: Load weight plates onto a barbell on a squat rack at chest level. And making sure to follow proper technique to avoid injury, do several sets of squats - uff - a standard strength-training exercise.

Strength training is diverse and can be quite complex, and many myths surround it. We spoke with two fitness experts, who dispel five common ones.

1. You should train as often as possible, and with heavy weights

"It's not that simple," says physiotherapist and fitness coach Johannes Frank, who owns a fitness facility in Berlin. Proper strength training is a matter of the right exercise dosage, he remarks.

To determine the right dosage for you, particularly if you're a beginner, he says it helps to have individual supervision from a trainer and a plan that's tailored to your fitness goals.

You shouldn't push yourself to your limits if you're just starting out. "You should gradually increase your training to let your body structures get used to and adapt to the greater stresses," says Dr Petra Platen, a sports medicine and nutrition specialist at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany.

For typical health-oriented strength training - not competitive sport, in other words - two to three workouts a week with moderate weights is sufficient to start with, she says.

And later? Then, Frank says, you should follow two principles to enable you to lift heavier weights and build more muscle: "First, maintain clean technique and controlled execution. Second, don't shy away from heavier weights, and give every set of exercises just about your all!"

2. Don't do isolation exercises. Only exercises that work multiple muscle groups, such as pull-ups or push-ups, are effective

This is an inaccurate generalization. Exercises that focus on a single muscle group (which is why they're called isolation exercises), such as bicep curls or sit-ups, are sometimes useful.

That said, the most "effective" exercises are those with the greatest overall fitness benefits in relation to the expenditure of time and effort. So-called compound exercises are therefore advantageous.

"Exercises suited for an effective strength training workout include the deadlift, since it works multiple muscle groups simultaneously," says Frank. To perform a deadlift, you lift a loaded barbell from the floor to hip level, which engages the leg muscles, buttocks, core muscles and back.

"If you were injured or there's a strength disparity between your back and abdominal muscles, your can also train these muscle groups separately," Frank says.

Which exercises should you do? This depends on what you want to achieve. "If you want to boost the grip strength of your right arm, for example, push-ups won't help. Rather, you've got to target the relevant muscles," notes Platen. Or if you want to strengthen your thighs, pull-ups are useless.

3. Women who train with weights become unattractively muscular

This concern should be put to rest. "Difficult though it is, considering all the pictures in the media, we should focus on what our body can do and not whether it meets an appearance ideal," remarks Frank. Every person is an individual, he says, so fitness looks different in each - but is always good.

"Increases in muscle mass are individual," concurs Platen, explaining that while intensive strength training can quickly build muscle in some people, others - often those with a slim physique - can train themselves raw with little change to their appearance.

4. People do strength training mainly for their looks

For many people, getting a more defined body may be a nice side effect, but it's often not their primary motivation. As Platen points out, "In competitive sport, you don't train strength for your looks - there, strength is the most important form of motor stress and the basis of everything else."

Put another way, strength is trained to improve performance and stabilize the musculoskeletal system.

What about recreational sport? "To offset what's often a sedentary lifestyle, almost everyone needs physical exercise to stay mobile and active into old age," Frank says. Regular strength training has effects far more valuable than merely looking better.

And so older people, too, are now advised to do strength training. "If you've got plenty of strength, you'll have quick reactions and be able, for instance, to catch yourself from falling if you stumble," says Frank. Strength training exercises help to stabilize the body and prevent falls.

5. If you do strength training, protein shakes and protein bars are a must

This isn't true, although sometimes they can help as "people who train strength have a higher protein requirement than the physically less active," Frank says. Muscles, after all, are made of proteins.

As Platen notes, "Muscle mass increases only when the building blocks of muscles are present in sufficient amounts."

So if you regularly do sport or exercises requiring strength, you should make sure to have lots of protein in your diet. The German Nutrition Society (DGE) points to international experts who recommend that athletically minded people who train at least five hours a week ingest 1.2 to 2 grams of protein daily per kilogram of body weight.

You may not meet that recommendation, however, if your diet is low in meat and you don't eat sufficient plant-based protein. "In that case," Frank says, "protein shakes and bars can be a convenient way to satisfy your increased protein needs, for instance right after a workout."

If you're not a competitive athlete though, Platen says you shouldn't overthink your diet. An ideal post-workout meal is simply potatoes and an egg, she says. It's not only high in protein, but also delivers carbohydrates that the body needs as well.