Why Cheating (In the Gym) is Bad

Cheating is never good. If you're in school its bad to get answers from the girl next to you during tests, if you're playing chess its bad to move your opponents pieces while he goes to the bathroom, and worst of all its bad to cheat when you are exercising! When you cheat in other aspects of your life, you cheat other people. When you cheat during weightlifting, you cheat yourself.

Cheating in exercise refers to using momentum and non-related muscles to move the weight a given distance. If you do this, the target muscle does not get the desired workout. There are thousands of ways to cheat when you workout. You can thrust forward when doing bicep curls, you can lean forward when you do tricep pressdowns, you can lean over an abdominal machine so your body weight is doing the movement, not the abdominals. The list of ways to cheat could be the topic of the next two months worth of Articles of the Day.

Cheating reduces stress on the muscle you are trying to grow. This lack of stress means that your muscle will not grow as much as it would have had you not cheated. Cheating defeats the point of working out because if there is not stress on a muscle, it won't grow! Whenever you are working out, make sure that your form is as good as it can be, and that way your muscular gains will also be as good as they can be.

Article courtesy of www.mogulnethealth.com