12 Mistakes In The Gym That Took Me 23 Years To Learn
How to Stay Motivated, Injury-Free And Make Progress
I learned a powerful lesson early on in my training journey.
I was 19, I had made up my mind that I wanted to get in shape, fast.
What could be better than going from the occasional Basketball training and the PE class to a 7-day training regimen?
Here`s what my exercise schedule looked like for a few weeks:
Monday: Strength training
Tuesday: Jogging
Wednesday: Strength Training
Thursday: Jogging
Friday: Strength training.
Saturday: Jogging
Sunday: Strength Training
After only a few weeks, it is no surprise my body broke down.
It started with some mild, but tolerable pain in my knee while on a jog.
At this young age, an injury didn`t seem to exist, I couldn`t see it happen.
It did happen.
It started with knee pain, continued with my elbow, and expanded to the left part of my upper body.
Game over. No more exercise for more than a year. My body was officially fucked.
Lesson learned: Your body, no matter how young, has a threshold.
If you push it too far and too fast, it will get hurt.
In my 23 years of exercising, I saw many people in the Gym set themselves up for an injury or at least waste potential.
The idea is to learn from these mistakes, so you can avoid them.
Workout Time
Warm-up
The schedule is tight, your next appointment is waiting, but you manage to squeeze in a workout.
This is awesome, you resisted the urge to skip it.
Since you are busy, you save time on a warm-up and go straight in.
Ouch, not a good idea.
Even though strength training is one of the safest ways of exercising, there still is potential for injuries, if you skip warm-up.
7-10 minutes is all it takes to increase blood flow and loosen up the joints.
Stay away from static stretching before your workouts, because it results in lower strength, lower speed, and lower power output.
The best option is dynamic stretching, second best: Hopping on a cardio machine.
Follow up with a warm-up set that uses only 40-50% of your work set.
Abs
Now that you are at the beginning of your workout, you feel pumped and grab a mat to work on your abs.
Your core muscles stabilize your spine during compound moves, such as deadlifts, squats, and shoulder presses.
This is why it is not the best idea to fatigue them early in your training with isolated exercises.
Push them towards the end of the session.
Weak Parts
So many times I finished my workout with shoulder training (on push-day), which are my weak parts.
It is no surprise that they didn`t grow too much. My body is already tired, my concentration is low. Ever since I worked on them earlier on, they have started to grow more than before.
PRs
What is worse than no progression? An injury. Does it get any worse? A tragic accident in the gym can lead to death.
What am I talking about? People burying themselves under the bar when pressing weight far outside their strength level.
Avoid ego lifts at all costs. There is no need to use weights that you can only move 1-3 times unless you are a powerlifter.
And never attempt a PR without a spotter.
Poor Form
Your bunch of keys fall out of your hand. How do you pick it up?
Do you bend your knees, keep your back straight, using the muscles in your legs with perfect form?
No, probably not, and for good reason. The weight is low, your body can tolerate the poor form with a round back.
At the Gym, people use much higher weights.
Some people learn it the hard way.
Do a deadlift with a round back for many reps and there is a good chance to get hurt. The discs in your spine need an even distribution of forces. This is only possible when you keep your back straight.
If you are unsure of your form, ask a person to check it or film yourself and start with low weights.
Remember: The higher the forces, the better your posture has to be.
Aim for perfection in this case.
Lifting Tempo
This might be one of the most common mistakes in the Gym.
Why the rush? There is a place for elite lifters to move the weight as fast as they can to become powerful.
But the average Joe in your local Gym.
There is no way you can cheat yourself to faster or bigger muscle gains by moving the weight at light speed.
Let me clarify: It makes sense to do the concentration phase faster than the eccentric phase.
It makes no sense to do the reverse. Even worse: Let yourself be pulled passively into the stretch.
For a muscle to grow, time under tension is relevant.
Slow down.
Breaks
I've seen people glued to their phones, stopping only to do another forced set.
Or
People jumping from one set to the next, barely catching their breath. They don`t last long. Strength output decreases radically from one set to the next.
You guessed it. Both approaches lead to suboptimal results.
Your goals should dictate the duration of your breaks between sets.
Do you want to build muscle and burn fat?
Stay within the 6-12 rep range and keep your breaks short (60 - 90 seconds.)
Do you want to build strength and muscle?
Aim for 6 reps and pause for 2-3 minutes between sets, especially on compound moves.
Training Variables
Higher reps lead to higher fat burn.
This is the answer that somebody in the Gym gave me, when I asked why they use light weights.
To put things into perspective: Higher reps with lower weights have their place in the Gym.
For instance, after a long training break, for older people or to deload your bones, ligaments and tendons.
There is one thing that higher reps do not lead to and that is higher fat burn.
Your body fat percentage relies on your diet and the amount and intensity of exercise/movement.
Sets of reps above 20-25 reps do not lead to substantial muscle building.
Aim for muscle growth to burn more calories while at rest.
Progressive Overload
Our bodies adapt to the stress we put upon it.
If there is no change in relevant variables, such as the amount of weight moved, the number of sets, or reps.
Why should you expect to see muscle growth or higher strength?
Our bodies only adapt as much as necessary.
If you want to progress, progressive overload is the answer.
Change/Increase the intensity, volume, and/or frequency of your workouts.
Voila, you break out of the plateau.
Talking about frequency: Muscles grow during rest.
The time we need to rest depends on our age, fitness level, type of exercise, and intensity of exercise. As a rule of thumb, 48-72 hours works well for most lifters.
There can be too much rest. Advanced lifters see the biggest gains when they hit their target muscles at least twice a week. This is doable with a push-and-pull workout.
Newbies will stick to full-body workouts, because their bodies do not need as much volume for every muscle.
Tracking Numbers
I have become lazy in my 23 years of exercising multiple times.
Whenever I fell into the trap of not using a training plan, the quality and results of my training suffered.
No training plan turned into: No training log.
It took me a while to realize that I needed both.
A solid training plan that helped me reach my goals.
A training log, that has all the numbers written down.
Only what you measure can be improved. Anything else produces mediocre results.
After a year of training absence, a doctor found the reason for my aching left side of my body.
The thoracic vertebrae were no longer parallel to each other, they had all shifted.
After he had fixed them, I slowly introduced exercise into my life again.
To this day I believe that this is a reason why I value it so much.
The bottom line is: Listen to your body's signals.
If you avoid the common pitfalls, you will be facing a long and lasting exercise career.