I have learnt a lot about fitness and dieting, the hard way. I have done some horrible mistakes, some minor ones but whatever they are, I don’t want you to do the same. I am not ashamed to talk about my mistakes and here are my top 8 mistakes as a beginner that you should avoid for getting better gains, the easy way.
1. Heavier weight over lifting technique or form: It’s all over the Internet. To build your physique, you need to lift heavier and I totally agree with it. However, there are few missing words. You, yes the person reading this, “You need to lift heavier with time but to an extent where you don’t compromise your form.” The exercise movements are designed to hit a particular muscle group or a set of muscle groups. So, when you forget about the movement pathway of the exercise and just focus on lifting the weight anyhow, the body will not follow the exercise form, rather it will find itself the strongest possible path. The problem with this is, you are not hitting the target muscle or muscle groups effectively with an addition of the risk of awfully injuring yourself.
2. Trying all sorts of fancy exercises without having the proper foundation: Now, I don’t want you to get me wrong with this one. Trying new exercises is always great. In fact, I prefer shuffling exercises, after maybe 8 weeks of sticking to a particular training regime but here I am talking about absolute newbies. This advice is for them. You need to learn all the major compound movements and basic exercises like Squats, Bench Press, Deadlifts, Barbell Rows, etc before trying out all the fancy ones. Get a nice hold of the exercise movements, get stronger in the movements and then try out new stuff.
3. Neglecting the Negatives: Every exercise movement has basically 2 parts, the positive part where you lift the weight against the gravity, contracting your muscles and the negative part is where you bring the weight down, relaxing the already contracted muscles and in fact, more muscle damage is actually observed in the negative part of the movement than in the positive half and honestly this is something that most beginners totally ignore. They just lift the weight and drop it, there’s is absolutely no control in the negative half of motion. You need to stop doing that. If you ignore the negatives, you are really missing out on a lot of gains. Focus on the negatives.
4. Not getting a trainer: Now, this is a tricky advice but I do believe it’s a good one though. A knowledgeable and good trainer can absolutely take your progress to great heights but if you get coached by a not so qualified trainer, you can absolutely get into trouble. I can truly say, without any doubt, no amount of videos on the internet can replace the physical presence of a good trainer but finding one is also extremely difficult specially in India. If you don’t find yourself the right coach atleast at the beginning, be in search of one while you keep learning from the Internet. Few of my personal favourite YouTube channels are Scott Herman Fitness, Greg Doucette, Jo Lindner and Mountaindog1. Check them out, you will find quality information without any second thought.
5. Ego Lifting for Social Media Content: You know it, this thing is real. I have done it, you have done it but you just should not do it anymore. I agree we love showing off our strength over the social media and there’s nothing wrong with it unless, you ego lift to impress your followers. We have already discussed the problems and disadvantages, all of it in the very first point.
6. Trying to go all out in the initial days: Again, quite a common mistake. The major chunk of beginners make this mistake, some suck through the pain and make working out a habit and some just simply give up and never return back to the gym. You don’t need to push yourself too hard on the very first day. If you have never exercised your whole life and it will be difficult for you to adapt to working out but you need to give yourself the adequate time to adjust. Some people can take less time and some can take a longer period to adapt. Give yourself the time, you do not need to hurry the process. It’s okay to have slower progress.
7. Unrealistic Expectations: We all want to look like our favourite instagram fitness model. We started working out, aspiring to achieve our dream body but the fact is, most of them are enhanced or have elite genetics for hypertrophy. You need to be very clear about the amount of muscle you can gain and not get disappointed with your results. If you want to read more about realistic expectations, check out my blog on the same: https://chiru.fitness.blog/2020/11/29/realistic-expectations-for-natural-lifters-and-knowing-all-about-your-body-type-the-most-basic-yet-the-most-important-concept-for-a-successful-fitness-journey/
8. Comparing you progress with others: I totally get it. We all compare ourselves with others and bet ourselves up. It’s totally normal but you just need to understand that any other person other than you, has a completely different body with different genetics and so their journey will be different, so will be their progress. You just need to stick to your fitness journey and you need to remember that you are becoming a better version of yourself. It’s always a win for you and you don’t need any other comparing parameter other than you yourself. To understand more about realistic expectations and somatotypes, check out my article on the same: https://chiru.fitness.blog/2020/11/29/realistic-expectations-for-natural-lifters-and-knowing-all-about-your-body-type-the-most-basic-yet-the-most-important-concept-for-a-successful-fitness-journey/
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