- As a board certified family medicine doctor
with a special interest in sports medicine,
I've seen and treated countless musculoskeletal injuries.
I've talked and guided patients
through beginning workout regimens,
and I've created a list
of Top 10 Beginner Mistakes in Fitness Routines
But for the people who are trying to lose weight,
they often fall into the trap of thinking that
exercise is the end all and be all of weight loss.
Unfortunately, it's not.
70 to 80% of the weight loss that occurs
happens as a result of the foods that you take in.
It's ideal to think
about your weight loss journey in a holistic view,
meaning that you should be thinking
about recovery, sleep, nutrition, and exercise.
You can't just focus on one pillar
and expect the pyramid to grow.
The biggest fitness myth of all time is spot reduction.
It doesn't exist. It's been tested over and over again.
You have to think about your nutrition,
your exercise as a whole
in order to decrease your whole body fat content
in order to see more muscular definition.
This actually has been tested in some really unique ways.
Looking at tennis players, their dominant forearm muscles
in comparison to their non-dominant hand, guess what?
A lot more muscle in their dominant hand,
a lot less muscle in their less dominant hand,
fat content, exactly the same.
It's incredible what I see when I walk into a gym,
the exercises that some people are doing
and expecting to get results from.
The simpler your workouts are,
the more likely you are to see long-term success.
I'm talking about mixing in some cardio
with some good old fashioned
compound weightlifting movements.
That's all you really need.
And just cause I'm saying keep it simple,
it doesn't mean that
you can't have variety to your workouts.
I love variety in my workouts.
I'll rock climb, box, play basketball, soccer, weightlift.
There's so many ways to get your physical activity in.
As long as you're doing that,
your routine really doesn't matter
for beginner and just to stay healthy, of course.
You do not need to go on a shopping spree
in the supplement store.
You need to become consistent first with your work workouts.
You need to make sure that you're following
the right protocols, that you're eating a healthy diet,
that you're recovering correctly.
There's such a small percentage of change that occurs
as a result of adding supplements to your workouts.
And it's probably not worth
even thinking about it so early on.
And a very specific warning I'd like to throw out there
is when it comes to pre-workouts.
These are usually loaded with caffeine
and too many people take them close to bedtime
which destroys your sleep, destroys your recovery.
So your pre-workout is destroying your post-workout gains.
And if you do need a caffeine boost
for a workout in the morning,
just have a cup of coffee or an espresso.
You don't have to go for a pre-workout.
This one, I see happen so often in gyms.
When you're walking on a treadmill,
running on a treadmill, using an elliptical,
do not hold the static grips.
Because essentially, what you're doing
is decreasing the intensity of the workout,
meaning lower calories burn.
You're decreasing the strain on your core
making your core weaker, hurting your posture.
And if you're creating an incline for your treadmill,
by holding on, you're actually decreasing that incline.
So many benefits to letting your grip
loosen up on those machines.
When it comes to exercise, goals are important
and tracking can be interesting and fun
but obsessing over these numbers is truly counterproductive.
10,000 steps a day.
3,500 calories to be burned to lose a pound.
These numbers are really useful
for statistic research purposes.
They're not really meant for you to follow
as a super strict set of guidelines.
If you show up consistently, that's gonna mean so much more
than the intensity of how hard you work out,
how much weight you're actually lifting,
how many calories you're burning.
So forget about the numbers, especially while starting off.
Focus on showing up, having a good time,
Too many times, I've had patients and friends
come up to me and tell me
that they had an amazing first workout
with a personal trainer
because they went all out and actually ended up getting sick
that they worked out so hard.
To me, this is a failure on the trainers part.
Never for your first workout should you go all out.
That creates increased risk for injury.
You're less likely to feel motivated going back to the gym.
And even for me, when I've done this,
I've gotten so sore that I wasn't even able
to go to the gym that same week.
The whole idea of building muscle, getting in shape
is about creating some inflammation,
creating that acute stress on your muscles,
on your joints, on your ligaments
and allowing them to heal.
You don't want to fall into this bucket
where you start glorifying pain
or competing so hard that you're lifting too much weight
and you're sacrificing proper form
and increasing risk of injury.
I see this all the time with bench press.
I see guys go into the gym, they take the bench press
and they start bouncing it off their chest.
They're lifting one side way more than the other.
I've literally seen pecs get torn, rotator cuffs get torn
in front of me in these exact situations.
How many times has someone told you
that you should be stretching?
Your mom, your dad, grandma,
the PE teacher, your physical therapist.
Too often, I see people doing ballistic stretching.
What's essentially happening is you're triggering
the stretch reflex within the muscle
that while you're lengthening it and bouncing,
it's trying to contract and shorten and protect itself,
therefore creating a muscle spasm.
I tell everyone that they need to do a good warmup
before doing any kind of workout
but it's not mandatory that you stretch.
You need to get your blood moving,
the circulation moving, your heart rate up.
That's absolutely true,
but stretching can and should be reserved
for the end of your workout.
Or even used as a workout in general.
I can not begin to tell you what you're missing out on
if you do not strength train.
You actually improve your metabolic rate,
meaning that you're burning more calories throughout the day
'cause you have more muscle mass to support.
You're actually burning more calories as well
because you're repairing the damage
that you've caused to your muscles while working out.
Remember, this is acute short-term damage
that is actually beneficial for your muscles.
At the same time, you're strengthening your bones,
you're improving your hormonal profiles.
It's just like win, win, win, win, win.
By only focusing on cardio, you're just really missing out
on all of these benefits for no real reason.
In fact, newer research suggests that
ultra performing running athletes
get a significant benefit from weightlifting,
not only in terms of performance but also injury reduction.
There is a caveat here, however.
You should be very careful of mixing these two workouts
on the same day or even back to back.
For example, if you were to do squats one day very heavy
and the next day you want to play pickup basketball
like I do that quite often.
If I'm really sore,
I actually have a much higher rate of injury
because the way that your body reacts
if it falls on an uneven ankle
or it takes a weird step is by firing antagonistic muscles,
opposite muscle groups in order to protect itself.
And if your muscles are sore, fatigued
after a heavy lift session,
it's more likely that you could injure yourself.
One of the most overlooked aspects
of people's exercise routines is recovery.
I'm talking adequate rest, protein intake, sleep, hydration.
All of this is crucial to allow your muscles to recover,
to grow, to decrease injury
and even giving your brain some time off.
It's actually been proven
that when you're over-training and under sleeping,
your stress hormones can peak and stay chronically high,
which ends up hampering your progress
and increasing risk of injury.
Click here for my Five Healthy Meal Prep video ideas.
I made all of them myself.
They're not special but they are delicious.
Huge thank you to DeltaTrainer for sponsoring this video.
I'm truly, truly a fan.
Gonna continue using their service
and I recommend you do as well.
Link and offer are down below.
As always, stay happy and healthy.