What's up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. So, I remember 30 years ago, the very first time
I picked up a weight, I actually hated it. I did not want to lift weights whatsoever. I
wanted to look bigger, I even dressed the part to look bigger. Yes, that's actually me. But I didn't
want to put the work in to get there. Thankfully, I learned how to love the process and I'm going to
make sure you do today because I'm going to show you the seven biggest mistakes that beginners make
that oftentimes gets them off track before they even get started. If you follow these pieces of
advice, we're going to make sure that you don't trip up the same way I did. With that being said,
guys, let's start breaking them down one by one. So right off the bat, I don't want to
break anybody's heart, but I've got to give you the truth here, you see you can't get around,
and I mean literally get around nutrition. And I'm talking about either overeating the wrong foods
or undereating the right foods. There is no magic exercise plan, there's no great ab routine,
none of those things will overcome the fact that you're not eating properly. So, let's say you're
a guy that's overweight right now and you decide to lift weights. Yes, you're going to be bigger,
but you're going to be a bigger fat guy. Or let's say you're a skinny guy who doesn't eat
nearly enough and you lift some weights, yeah, you might get some results, but they won't be anywhere
near what you could get if you actually supported your efforts and your training in the gym with
proper nutrition. Think of it this way, guys, i's the perfect two-man team, you have to have both of
them working towards that end, goal nutrition and training if you want to look your best. Mistake
number two is actually picking up the weights too soon. You see if you don't learn how to command
your own body and space then are probably going to look a bit ugly when you grab the weights.
And that's because you haven't learned proper joint stability in any of your exercises. So,
what I'm asking you to do is rewind it a little bit, start in the beginning and learn how to
master the basic body weight movements like a push up and like a pull up. And when you do, you'll
see that your task gets infinitely easier when you actually go back to pick up the weights. And don't
be discouraged here, guys the body weight training is not going away forever. As a matter of fact,
it's going to come back and compliment the perfect training routine because that's where some of the
most difficult calisthenic exercises can be performed. But not before you learn how to
build that base of strength and stability with the proper execution of the basic movements.
So, let's stay on that idea here for a second for mistake number three, and that is
you're forgetting to address your mobility and flexibility issues early. You see, before you
make or even as you make that transition to the weights, if you're not looking yourself
in the mirror and I mean literally looking at yourself and seeing all the posture of flaws
and mobility issues that you have in addressing them, that you're setting yourself up for long
term failure. Look, there are people out there that will tell you you can work through these
things if you just pick up the weights and start working on perfecting your mechanics. But what
I'm telling you is you're actually going to work them in to improper mechanics and make it a hell
of a lot harder to correct these things down the road once you've built your strength around these
imperfections. If you get them out of the way early, guys, you're going to be able to build
a better foundation free from the cracks that are going to ultimately take you down in the long run.
Beginner mistake number four is forgetting to lose the "routine" part of your workout routine.
What I mean is once you've adopted a habit of training, then you want to try to get out of the
"routine" of training as quickly as possible. Look, does this seem familiar to you? You kind of
knock out the same amount of pushups every time you do them and you move on. And you knock out
the same amount of sit ups and then you move on. Or maybe the same amount of air squats and you
move on. There's no challenge in that, guys. And in order to change yourself beyond that beginner
newbie phase, you're going to need to challenge yourself. And that's where you need to incorporate
a new exercise, a new stress of the exercise, make it difficult in some way, shape or form. Add
weight to the exercise and once you start to learn how to properly overload, then the changes will
continue to come. But if you just get comfortable in that "routine" of doing the same thing over
and over again, which a lot of beginners will, you'll lose not only the enthusiasm for training,
but the gains that come along with it. Mistake number five for beginners is taking rep counts
too seriously. Now, look, I create programs and I know how effective programs can be for guiding
someone from point A to point Z. But what happens with beginners oftentimes is they're so focused
on counting their reps that they stop making the reps count. What I mean by that is it affects you
in two different ways. Let's say you're doing a set here and you know that you're supposed
to get ten repetitions on the first two they're actually harder than what you thought they were
going to be. You might decide to sort of back off a little bit and just quick wrap yourself through
three, four, five, six and seven only to rejoin the effective reps again to get to your magic
number of ten. Well, guess what? You've wasted half of the set and the effort there just isn't
good enough to take you to that next level. On the other hand, if you're so fixated on getting to
that number and you're going to do so, come hell or high water, even if it means sacrificing not
just your form, but your safety in the process, that's never going to be a recommendation that
I'm going to tell you you should do. You need to be able to do the reps that can as effectively
as you can and get rewarded for doing that. Skipping around and playing with the numbers
just to get to that number is never going to be the most effective way to get you gains.
Building off of some of the early mistakes, mistake number six requires that you learn
what failure looks like and more importantly, feels like. You see a lot of beginners don't
really ever grasp what this is, and it holds them back from making significant progress. If you just
move through your sets without any real discomfort and looking like you're maybe on a Sunday drive as
opposed to training to build muscle, you're likely never going to be satisfied with the results you
get. You have to push your body to the point of challenge in order to create that change. So, when
I mentioned failure and recommend failure to even beginners, I'm trying to get you to understand
what it feels like on a given set. You want to be able to push and each repetition becomes more
and more difficult. However, when you reach a point of form failure, we're done. We don't want
to sacrifice our safety in the process of trying to get out that other rep. We talked about that.
But you do have to be able to push and grind your way through repetition. And don't get caught up
in some of the new phrases like RPE and other methods of measuring your exertion levels because
you probably don't have a good enough appreciation for what that even means. To you a 7.5 versus an
8 will mean no difference because you don't truly know what it means to take yourself
to that point of failure. You can back yourself off once you've determined what failure feels
and looks like, but you need to feel it first in order to be able to program around it.
So, you better deliver point number seven on beginner mistakes, then meet the perpetual
hard gainer. Realize that it takes time and that you need to enjoy the journey. Listen,
it's been a long time for me and you know some of my critics out there would say I've made no gains
except for on my beard. Now take a look back at when I started, and you'll see, yes, I've made
gains over the years and my journey has become much more enjoyable because I learned to enjoy
that process. We're always learning something new for me, I'm learning how to eat better. You know,
I ditched the gummy bears, but I'm still trying to eat more and more nutritious foods. It's those
little victories that mean the most. For me, it was setting a new PR, looking in the mirror and
seeing some new gains, some size on my muscles and it's going to work for you as well. It's
not something that's going to happen overnight, but in the end, it's going to be worth it.
Remember, guys, we're all beginners at some point. And I remember exactly what I felt when
I was going through that stage and recommending to you guys that if you avoid these mistakes
that we covered here, your journey will be a lot faster, despite what Jesse just said,
because you can cut out a lot of the things that hold beginners back. Not anymore. If
you're looking for programs, guys, where we take you through step by step and make sure you
don't make these mistakes, they're all available over at athleanx.com. We even included nutrition
plan that Jesse's trying to follow to get those gains coming. If you found the video helpful,
make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. And also, if you haven't already done so,
make sure you click subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never missing a video when we
put one out. All right guys see you soon. I'm going to go eat some, uh, some good food.