30 Strange Fitness Facts & Myths
Updated: Sep 27
Your body is weird. Wonderfully, ridiculously weird. You grew a tail before you were born, you're taller at breakfast than at dinner, and your strongest muscle is the one you chew with. Here are 30 facts and myths about muscle, sleep, brains and food. Some will surprise you. A few will make you rethink what your trainer told you. Unless your trainer is me.
30 Facts, Zero Fluff
Soreness is not a report card. DOMS barely tracks with muscle growth. You can build muscle without limping down the subway stairs the next day. If your trainer measures success by how much you can't sit, get a new trainer.
Pound for pound, the strongest muscle you own is the masseter, your jaw. Your glutes win on sheer size and power. So the strongest parts of you are the ones you chew with and sit on.
It does not take 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile. Those numbers were made up. Smiling and frowning use roughly the same number of muscles. Smile anyway. It's cheaper than Botox.
Your body makes roughly 300 billion new cells every day, built from whatever you eat. No pressure, but that drive thru burrito is now technically you.
You're about half an inch taller in the morning. Gravity squashes your spinal discs all day, and they rehydrate while you sleep. Schedule your height measurements accordingly.
Standing still isn't really still. Your feet, legs and core make constant tiny corrections just to keep you upright, putting a big share of your 600 plus muscles to work. Balance is a full time job.
Muscle doesn't grow in the gym. The workout is the signal. The growth happens while you recover, and how long that takes depends on how hard you trained. Skip sleep and you're paying for a gym membership just to get tired.
Most of your cells get swapped out over the years, but not all. Your skin turns over in weeks. Most of your brain cells and the lens of your eye are with you for life. So "I'm a new person" is only partly true.
That crack when you move your knuckles or knees isn't bone grinding on bone. It's usually gas bubbles popping in the fluid around your joints. Annoying for the people around you. Harmless for you.
Muscle fibers are thinner than a human hair, yet each one can support about 1,000 times its own weight. Ants have nothing on you.
Early in embryonic development, you had a tail. By about week 9 it's gone, leaving your tailbone as a souvenir.
Humans carry more fat on their butts than almost any other mammal. Scientists still aren't sure why. Your jeans have theories.
The penis has no bone and no skeletal muscle. It's mostly spongy erectile tissue, blood vessels and smooth muscle. And yet it can still "fracture." Nature is cruel.
A baby's foot can grip about 20 times better than a shoe wearing adult's. In cultures where people go barefoot, adults keep much of that grip. Shoes are casts you pay for.
Your liver and muscles store roughly 12 to 24 hours' worth of carbs as glycogen. Once those tanks are full, extra carbs mostly get burned instead of fat, so more of the fat you eat gets stored. Exercise empties the tanks.
Science still can't fully explain why we yawn, or even why we sleep. We do know what happens without it. The record for staying awake is about 11 days, and it wasn't pretty.
Tight hamstrings can set off a chain reaction of tension up the body that may contribute to tension headaches. Your headache might start south of your belt.
Long static stretches right before you train can make your muscles temporarily weaker and slower. Warm up by moving instead: leg swings, lunges and lighter sets of your first lift.
Hanging from a pull up bar doesn't stretch most of your muscles. It makes them work. It can decompress your spine, though, and add up to half an inch of temporary height.
For depression, exercise has matched antidepressant medication in some studies. It isn't a replacement for treatment. It's one of the best add ons there is.
Smokers who lifted weights while quitting were about twice as likely to stay quit. Trade the cigarette break for a set of squats.
You don't use only 10% of your brain. Brain scans show nearly all of it lights up over the course of a day. The 10% myth mostly survives to sell pills.
Exercise increases brain volume and helps grow new brain cells. Crossword puzzles are nice. Squats are better.
Your sneeze does not travel at 100 mph. MythBusters clocked it at around 35 to 39 mph. Still fast enough that you should cover your mouth.
Swimming tends to make people hungrier than running or cycling at the same effort. Cooler water may be the reason. Hence the post swim bagel.
Breakfast isn't the most important meal of the day. That slogan owes more to cereal marketing than to science. Eat it if you're hungry. Skip it if you're not.
Lactic acid does not cause next day soreness. It clears out of your muscles within about an hour after training. Stretching won't fix DOMS either. Time, sleep and gradually harder training will.
Static stretching before exercise doesn't prevent injuries, and most studies show it temporarily drops strength. My hot take: stretching is overrated.
Carbs are not technically essential. There are essential fats and essential amino acids, but no essential carbohydrate. That doesn't make carbs evil. Most people feel and train better with them.
Cooked food gives you more calories than the same food raw, because cooking makes it easier to digest. Ultra processed food is even easier. Your body pulls nearly every calorie out of a Twinkie, but only about 80% from a raw almond.
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Doug Joachim – NYC
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