World's Worst Workout Mistakes
You can see it in every gym--people giving 110% doing some of the craziest things. People spending hours and hours working out daily, yet they look the same month after month. Clients spending $1000/month on private training yet their trainer has them doing stuff that is not even related to what their goals are. What is going on?
There are more people working out nowadays, belonging to gyms, hiring personal trainers, on so-called diets, and yet the results are not showing! Sadly it seems most people are making so many mistakes when it comes to training, yet they just keep right on trying. These are the biggest workout mistakes that we obverve today:
Focused on How Many Calories are Burned Working Out
What does this matter in the overall scheme of the whole day and fat burning? Assuming that fat burning is your goal, does that mean doing more and more exercise just burns more and more fat? No. Who said you are even burning fat in the first place? What about stored glycogen? What about breaking down muscle? What about that Subway sandwich you had an hour ago? Really this mentality is what is keeping most people from focusing on what matters, your eating!
Diet and nutrition is where 85% of your results come from and will even tell the body hormonally when to burn fat, and when to not burn fat. Forget how many calories you are spinning away--you don’t know what is really going on inside of you. Prime your body for all day fat burning and use your workouts as the right hormonal trigger for it.
More is Better When it Comes to Working Out
This goes hand in hand with thinking that you are burning more fat with more exercise, which is not true. Not too mention the more people workout, the lower they drop their blood sugar and if they go too hard and go into a hypoglycemic state guess what will happen, they will rebound with sugar cravings and most likely end up drinking/eating more calories than they even burned in the first place. Not too mention the increase of cortisol you will get from extended workouts (over 45-60min) that will start to break down and use muscle as fuel.
Also when it comes to resistance training, I see people wanting big muscles yet they do the same workout four times a week. How is your body supposed to grow muscles if you keep breaking them down and never give them time to grow? Remember the saying that “muscles do not grow in the gym”. So resistance train a few times a week, then go home and eat and sleep to grow the muscles. How do you expect the build a big house (muscles) if you keep smashing it down during the construction period?
Carb/Sport Drinks are Okay Before, During and After a Workout
This could be titled instead “don’t believe everything you see on TV or read in advertisements”. If you look around you would think that you need Gatorade all day long. So you have people working hard on a bike, rowing machine, treadmill (whatever) and then drinking a sugar drink for more energy? If you are an athlete and are training for increased endurance or power during a 3 hour workout and need ongoing fuel, then maybe you need something….but if you are the average person trying to burn fat and pumping sugar into your body in the process, you are somehow expecting the rules of fat burning to not apply to you! Forget the workout drinks, drink some water and go burn some fat instead.
Not Lifting Heavy Enough
Whether it is women afraid to get bulky muscles (won’t happen), magazines saying you need high reps to “tone” (which is a fancy word for burning fat around a muscle--which doesn’t happen lifting something 50 times), or just people afraid to challenge their muscles for safety reasons. Hands down you get the best results for strength and muscles when you lift in a range of 5-10 reps.
If you are new to exercise, hire a trainer to show you how to properly and safely lift. Exercises and heavy weights do not hurt people. People doing all the wrong things hurt themselves! So forget all those magazines with 40 reps of some lying side leg lift. Go do some lunges and eat right and you will be more tone than anyone reading those magazines.
Having No Real Set Plan
While you don’t need anything overly complicated, you do need to have a plan. Whatever it may be, you need to know if you are progressing in your workouts and not just doing whatever exercises you “feel” like doing. That and you need to keep your rest periods short to get through your workout in 30 minutes (40 minutes, max). If you can’t get a workout done in 30 minutes, you need a new plan!
Most people at the gym are socializing and trading facebook profiles, and they also stay there for hours and look the same month after month. Do your workout, have a plan, get out of the gym and get on with your life.
Using the Whole Maze of Gym Machines
Just because a gym has 100 pieces of equipment to target your calves and rear deltoids doesn’t mean you need to use them. In fact all you need is a few pieces of free weights and you get done all the exercises that really count. All the rest are just there to keep memberships up and to keep people coming back. Forget isolation exercises and focus on the basic compound movements. Machines may help people will some movements but overall you don’t need 95% of what is in a commercial gym nowadays.
Mentality that You Need a Gym to Get in a Good Workout
This is probably the worse mental mistake people are making. Say you don’t have time to get to the gym, or are on the road travelling, or whatever other excuse you want to use--so does that mean you can’t workout? No. But many people will not because the gym is seen as the only place that they can workout. The gym industry is a tragedy in the sense that they make most their money off the 90% of people who sign up, show up for a week or two and then come back like three times in the next year--yet get billed monthly.
If you knew the break even point on membership for gyms you would probably laugh (a small gym may need 500-1,000 members, and a bigger gym 10,000+). You don’t need a gym to go run a trail, do some pushups on your living room floor, lunge across the kitchen, take the stairs at work, do some pullups at the park on the kid’s monkeybars, or whatever. No more thinking you need the gym. The gym may need you, but you don’t need it!
Spot Reduction and Isolation Movements Are the Focus
Want big triceps? Do some heavy dips. Want big biceps? Do some heavy chinups. Want big calves? Sprint! While you can add in some isolation movements in a workout if you like, they should be at the end and all done within 10 minutes. The bulk of your workout (whether you goal is fat loss or gaining muscle) should be with compound body movements (see a pattern here?) like squat, deadlift, overhead press, pullups, etc.
Isolation movements are for bodybuilding magazines to keep writing about so they can sell new subscriptions for years to come. Want abs? Then hold something heavy over your head and brace it with your abs--or do a plank. Forget the situps and go focus where it matters--with your eating.
Informational note: The data presented on our health and nutrition website is for educational purposes only. Though we stive to be accurate in all of the information we present, it should not be taken as medical advice. NSC always recommends consulting your physician before beginning or modifying any diet or exercise program.
