At Easter the family and I went for a mini break at Stockholm. The very first place we went to on day one was the Viking Museum. Which was pretty interesting. One fact that surprised me is the answer to the title of this blog. How many Viking helmets have been found? What do you reckon? Go on, decide on a number. The answer is one. One reasonably intact one. And pieces from two others. And there is no historical reason to think that Viking helmets had horns on. None of the writings, carvings or jewellery from the time talking about or showing horned helmets. The first known reference to horned helmets coming in Wagner’s opera ‘The Ring of the Nibelungen’ from 1857 and developing in popular culture over the years since. Which surprised me. Horned helmets being something that I, and I’m sure pretty much everybody else, understood to just be the case. As with plenty of other supposed ‘facts’.
“Eating healthy is expensive and time consuming”
I’m pretty sure I could take at least 90% of the populations eating and make it healthier for less time and money. Just because more expensive and more time consuming options exist doesn’t mean that others don’t.
“You have to exercise for hours a week to make it worthwhile”
Provided the intensity is sufficient, a fraction of that would still be beneficial. There’s probably a trade-off in the middle of a few hours a week of reasonable intensity that most people would find preferable and more maintainable. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing anything if we don’t feel that we can put multiple hours towards it.
“Lifting weights makes you bulky”
A dumbell is no more capable of increasing muscle mass than a bag of shopping of the same weight or anything else that has mass (everything). Gaining muscle mass is incredibly hard at the best of times. Heavily muscled bodybuilders are, in the vast majority of cases, taking steroids and the like to look like that. It requires a particular type of training and a way of eating. Unless we’re doing the above then we will just gain a bit of shape, definition and strength. Which I’m pretty sure is what those who are concerned about me coming bulky would actually like (and will be gained on our programme –> www.myrise.co.uk/apply)
That’s just a few. Like horned Viking helmets, they’re commonly accepted as being fact. But aren’t actually true.
Much love, Jon ‘Viking press’ Hall
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
