The 3 most common workout mistakes.
Workout Mistake #1:
One of the biggest mistakes people make is really just not working hard enough at the gym. They stick with what feels comfortable, they stay in their comfort zones.
The truth is, unless you are specifically training for an endurance type event, your workout should NEVER last more than an hour. It’s just not possible to maintain a decent level of intensity for more than an hour, even an hour can be a little long sometimes. Intensity is about doing more work in less time. That’s what forces your body to change.
Next time you’re at the gym take a look at the other people.
Notice the super-happy, friendly guy who talks to everybody between sets and the woman reading the latest copy of People magazine while she cycles.
Compare them with the guys and girls with the death-stares, working and sweating their butts off, doing weird exercises, focused and not distracted by anything around them.
Who’s in better shape? Who looks like they’re reaping the benefits of their training? I’m pretty sure you’d say it’s the latter group…
The fact of the matter is that your body will not change unless you SUFFICIENTLY CHALLENGE IT, and one of the main reasons people never get in shape is that they really are just not willing to put in the work, to sweat it out, to take the pain. Everything worth achieving comes at a cost, and in this case you pay for it in sweat.
I’m sorry to bust your bubble, but there really is no silver-bullet or magic pill that will do the work for you.
You have a job to do when you’re working out, and that is to challenge your body. You are not there to socialize, you are not there to read and muck about – you are there to be bad ass!
Get in, work hard, get out.
So the next time you head to the gym, ask yourself if you really think you’re working hard enough.
No matter what your level, ask yourself – is it not possible to push yourself just a little harder, to do just 1 more rep, 1 more burpee, 1 minute more than you did last week?
Workout Mistake #2:
Doing the same thing all the time, doing the same kind of workouts day in and day out.
So many of us are guilty of slipping into comfort zones and getting stuck in a rut, in life, and in the gym.
Once your body adapts to a certain kind of workout, it stops responding. Even if you are continually trying to make that workout more intense each week, eventually you just reach a point where you can’t anymore, and your body won’t respond the way it did when you first started the workout.
So mix it up and change things around often. Substitute in different exercises, adjust the tempo, trying doing sprints instead of jogging, change up the intervals in your interval training, shorten rest times, change training frequency and volume etc.
By adding things in and mixing it up all the time, you keep your body guessing, never really knowing what’s coming or what to expect. It responds best under these conditions.
Adaptation is a response to stress (in this case exercise) – all living organisms will attempt to adapt to a stress to aid their survival.
If your body is not stressed and thrown out-of-whack all the time, what need does it have to adapt?
How often should you change things up?
- If you’re a beginner (anyone who has been training REGULARLY for less than 6 months), you should change up some aspects of your program every 4 weeks.
- If you’re an intermediate trainer, (anyone who has been working out REGULARLY for the last 6-12 months) change things up every 3 weeks.
- If you’re an advanced trainer (anyone who has been training REGULARLY for more than a year), mix it up every 2 weeks.
Bear in mind though, that when you mix things up or modify your program – you need to do it in such a manner that your program is still in line with your fitness goals.
If your goal is to build muscle and strength, you need to keep your program within the confines of those goals, you’re hardly going to adopt a marathon runner’s or triathlete’s training program now are you?
The same can be said for people training for endurance, fat-loss, toning etc – switch things up, but stay within the confines of your goal. Don’t adopt a completely different training methodology – training still needs to be specific to your goals.
So next time, before you head to gym, think of what you’re going to be doing – if it’s the same as you’ve been doing for the last few weeks, and not much has changed, you’d better CHANGE IT UP!
Remember what Emerson said: “Break the monotony. Do something strange and extravagant!”
Workout Mistake #3:
Guidelines for choosing a good workout plan:
If you think your friends and family might be making some of these mistakes, please share this article with them..
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The Burpee – One exercise to rule them all (Part 1).
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