Whether you just started out or have been training for years,
we're all bound to make mistakes at the gym.
So in this video, I'm gonna tell you some of the biggest mistakes so you can deal with them now.
Also, stick around all the way to the end,
cause there's gonna be a rapid bonus section of even more mistakes that you'll wanna know.
So, the first mistake is thinking that you can just “wing it” at the gym.
Can't tell you how many times I've seen people randomly jumping between exercises
and doing a random number of sets of 3 to 34 reps, or worse yet, attempting exercises
their favorite fitness influencers do and thinking that's exactly how they should train.
The funny thing, though, is that this randomness might initially lead to some real results.
And, that's where things get tricky.
You see, early on, we do benefit from a concept colloquially known as “newbie gains.”
Simply put, as a beginner,
virtually any physical activity above the norm will elicit muscle adaptation.
However, newbie gains do not last forever,
and you probably won't even capitalize on its full effect if you're just winging it.
You'll definitely figure this out once you start hitting training plateaus in just three months.
Other issues with might arise as well, like an uneven distribution of work for your muscles.
Your biases might have you doing 20 different chest exercises but only one leg exercise,
which doesn't even really count 'cause it was just you walking up the stars.
And of course, having very little understanding of what you're doing
poses an increased risk of hurting yourself.
So, best thing to do is, of course, to structure or plan out your workouts.
At minimum, it's good to learn enough exercises to evenly target each body part,
understand the effects exercises have on other exercises, understand proper technique, and,
importantly, have a good balance between training hard enough and recovering enough.
Now, if you don't know where to start with all of this, then join our PictureFit community
discord. We got plenty of resources and great people that can help you out.
Once you do have some structure in your training, I bet your progress will be night and day.
But if you do follow a plan, be wary of potentially making the next mistake,
and that is trying to do everything the “right” way.
Now, normally it is good to follow a plan very closely.
But what would you do in a situation where, say,
your program starts you off with barbell back squats but all the squat racks are being used?
Well, you might have two options: One, you wait, which can take a long time.
Or two, get this, you can use the hack squat machine over
in the corner instead that no one ever touches
Believe it or not, you can occasionally replace your exercises with something else.
Sure, it's not a 1-to-1 replacement.
Mechanically, barbell back squats have a higher glute emphasis compared to hack squats,
but you can compensate with an accessory glute exercise and still save some time. And honestly,
if it's just a one-off, you don't even have to do that.
In fact, because they target muscles differently,
switching out exercises from time to time can be a good training strategy.
Again, hack squats might not drive the glutes as much, but it does drive the quad muscles more.
That's good news if your quads are a weak point for you in the barbell back squat,
so periodically doing hack squats might be the solution to that.
Also, you can apply the same thinking, to an extent, with the ordering of your exercises.
Big lifts, like squats, will always be high priority, so they normally should be done
in the beginning of your workouts. But after that, whether you do your
bicep curls before or after side raises doesn't really make a big difference.
Unless there is a clear overlap issue with muscle groups,
reordering exercises won't be a problem and again, might actually be better for you.
Since we get more and more tired throughout a workout, if we take some of the exercises
we normally do at the tail of a session and move them closer to the beginning,
we should be able to perform them at a higher level, which should then yield better gains.
Now to be clear, if you're an athlete, especially if you're competing in
exercise-specific sports like powerlifting, then you're not afforded as much room
for deviation since strict training specificity is extremely important.
But, for the other 99.99 percent of us that aren't elite athletes,
you gotta weigh the pros and cons of being very strict with your training.
It's not always going to be the most efficient and effective strategy.
Another huge mistake people make at the gym is dropping the eccentric phase of your lifts.
For most exercises, we go through two phases of movement.
One is the concentric phase.
For example, the concentric phase of a curl
is when you lift the dumbbell from the bottom all the way to the top.
During this phase, the muscle progressively shortens while under load.
Other concentric phases are like lifting the bar off the floor in a deadlift,
pushing yourself up in a push up, and pulling yourself up in a pullup.
Normally, we focus most of our lifting attention during these concentric phases.
And, it's probably because we typically consider
a lift or repetition as being successful specifically when we complete this phase.
However, if we pay attention ONLY to the concentric phase,
we might be making a huge mistake.
The reason seems to come down to something known as exercise-induced muscle damage.
You see, in order for our muscles to grow and get stronger, it needs to be
properly stimulated and stressed, and a big mediator of such stress is muscle damage.
Now exercise-induced muscle damage tends to happen mostly while the muscle is not shortened,
but lengthened under load, aka the eccentric phase where we lower the weight down.
According to two meta-analyses in 2008 and 2017, training the eccentric can
actually be superior to concentrics for both muscle and strength gains.
So if your goal is to get the best out of your training, not working the eccentric,
like how people sometimes mindlessly bring the weight
down or even just dropping the weight completely, would be a huge mistake.
Instead, during eccentrics, having some semblance of control and muscle contraction,
much like you would with concentrics, would be a much more effective way to train.
Now to be clear, sometimes you do wanna skip the eccentrics, especially to manage fatigue,
but that's more of a specialized strategy to consider down the line.
Also, again, athletes might require a higher concentric
focus for specific exercises, so skipping eccentrics make sense.
But for the rest of us, especially bros that like to drop the bar on the deadlift,
you don't get any cool points for skipping the eccentrics.
If anything, you get some uncool points for cheating yourself out of some gains.
And the final big mistake you can do with your
training is EGO lifting… but not in the way you think it means.
Have you ever failed a lift but felt like you definitely could have gotten
it if only some random thing went differently?
Like if you had calmed your nerves beforehand, or if you took a bigger sip of water, or if
you had a Taylor Swift track playing in your headphones instead of BTS?
Not saying that these little mental things can't make a difference, but many times,
not being able to do a lift just means not being able to do a lift.
But what's important is what you do next.
The logical step would be to acknowledge the missed
lift and adjust future workouts accordingly.
But if your ego or stubbornness gets the best of you, you would then instead attempt
the lift again, and then again, and again until you're bombarded with heavy amounts of fatigue.
Now instead of making this mistake over and over, it's best to take a timeout and calm down.
It's gonna be okay if you don't hit your numbers all the time.
And that's actually gonna happen much more often once you become a more seasoned gym goer.
You also gotta know that a workout program is not perfect for everyone.
As our mommas always say, we are all our special and unique little selves.
So the problem might not just be you. It might be that you need a different type of program.
Maybe something with more autoregulation, where instead of relying on fixed number of sets, reps,
and weight, your workout numbers are determined by real-time changes in self-measurements.
That's where things like RPEs and RIRs come into play, and in advanced programs, bar velocity,
or how quickly you can move the weight, also factors into your training figures.
It might sound complicated but overall it's pretty simple.
Essentially, autoregulation allows us to progress at a rate determined by our
own performance rather than using fixed figures as seen in traditional programs.
In that case, your stubborn ego can take a back
seat and let your actual performance speak for you.
And again, if you need help figuring this out, then check out the discord.
And that's the four huge mistakes people make in their training, but as I promised,
for the sake of time, we're now gonna do a rapid round of even more mistakes.
Rapid mistake number 1, training on an empty stomach.
There's simply no benefit to it. In fact, it can hurt performance. Not worth it.
Mistake number 2, using muscle soreness as an indication of a good workout.
Your muscles will get less and less sore the more and more you lift,
so it won't tell you all that much if you've been lifting for a long time.
Your actual progress is a better indicator.
Mistake number 3, not training close to failure.
More and more evidence shows that training close to failure is important.
Key word close, stopping about 1 to 3 reps shy of it. But going all
the way to failure occasionally can be helpful.
And rapid mistake number 4, not getting enough sleep.
Nothing interesting to add to this. Sleep is uber important for recovery. Get those sleep gains.
And now that's not 4, but 8 of the biggest mistakes that all of us make
and some that I still make even though I already know them. So,
I'll keep working on mine, and I hope you work on yours.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it
a stubborn thumbs up and share it with your mistake loving friends.
Subscribe for more and let me know how much of a mistake you are in the comments.
As always, thank you for watching and don't
forget to get your PROTEIN. Cause that will be a very big mistake.