After writing the 8 mistakes for beginners blog, I actually decided to make it a series where I can point out the mistake and say why it’s wrong. I do think it’s a better way of learning in general.
So, here are the 7 common mistakes that most people in the gym make, that’s slowing down their progress.
1. Suppliments over a Proper Diet: This is by far the most common mistake, that people make. They think food suppliments are an absolute necessity when it comes to nutrition in general but on the contrary as the name itself suggest suppliments are the products that help you fulfill your requirements that you can’t satisfy from whole foods. They are not a replacement for food itself. If you can satisfy your protein requirements for a day from whole foods, you absolutely don’t need to invest in protein powders. You don’t need to invest in fat burners for getting lean, you can just do it by making smarter food choices and reducing your total daily calorific intake. I mean if you are filthy rich and want to buy those suppliments, sure you can but I am not one of them and don’t wanna buy those super costly suppliments when I can fulfill my requirements from food itself, just a personal opinion. I am not against the use of suppliments but just wanna convey the message that you don’t need to buy all of them. You just need to get the ones that are an absolute necessity.
2. Underestimating Warmups and doing it the wrong way: Warmups are one of the most undervalued topics when it comes to fitness discussions. Warmups are hands down a must. It keeps you injury free, helps you lift more and perform well in the gym. However, people either skip the warmups or do it the wrong way. Have you seen that person in the gym who reaches the weights arena and starts with his static stretching routine? Yes, I just wanna say, don’t be that guy. That’s stupidity or maybe lack of knowledge but whatever just don’t do it. There are various studies done regarding the topic and the conclusion of the studies is static stretching before a weight session, doesn’t do any benefit, rather it decreases your strength and makes you more injury prone. If you really wanna stretch before the workouts, go for the dynamic stretch and save the static stretching for the end of the workout. I don’t do stretching in my warmups. I generally do a moderate intensity cardio for 5-10 minutess and then, 2-3 warmup sets with weights for the particular muscle, I am training for the day.
3. Neglecting Cardio: I was that guy, you will always see in the weights room but never in the cardio room. Everyone likes those massive biceps and the badass chest and shoulder muscles but at the end, we need to remember the heart is what helps us to function efficiently. THE HEART IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MUSCLE. Doing cardio will not only help your cardiovascular health, help you live longer and a healthier life but it will also help you in lifting by improving your endurance in general. So, when you do cardio regularly, it’s more likely that you will perform well in those sets with crazy high rep ranges. An average of 20 minutes of cardio is recommended for a person in a day at minimum and it’s advised to be done all days of the week. Now, when I say cardio must be done, it’s not necessary to do all of it in the gym itself. For me, I do the warmups with cardio itself, then I brought in some minor daily life changes which help me hit my cardio duration target for the day by taking stairs whenever possible and walking or cycling to nearby places I need to visit.
4. Underestimating Sleep: If someone asks me, what’s the most important thing to improve your recovery and overall performance, my answer is always gonna be sleep. Now, the duration of sleep required for an individual to be at peak performance varies from person to person. There are people who require just 6 hours of sleep a day to be at optimum performance and there are people like me who require a good amount of 8 hours to 9 hours of sleep to be at my peak. So, find the sweet sleep duration for yourself and don’t make the mistake of underestimating the importance of sleep required for your daily performance.
5. Not using Internet to it’s Full Potential: In the last article, we have discussed about getting a trainer and how strong of an impact, a good coach have to one’s fitness journey but the only truth is very few people actually have access to a well learned trainer. This is when the internet gets into the conversation, being an extremely powerful tool to educate yourself. Now, the Internet do have a lot of fitness influencers who spew nonsense for more attention but there are good educated people too. You just need to find the right people to learn from. If you want to learn about form and exercise movements, I highly recommend the 3 ‘How to’ playlists from ScottHermanFitness on YouTube. If you want to learn about dieting and weight loss, I highly recommend you to check out Greg Doucette on YouTube.
6. Socialising in mid of Workouts: Now, this is just a personal opinion but I actually consider socialising in between workouts as a mistake. It breaks your concentration, takes your mind away from exercising to every random topic possible. I don’t enjoy that and feel like concentrating on workouts just help me end with a better and more efficient workout in general.
7. Overcomplicating the Simple Path: When you learn from the internet, the obvious next thing that’s gonna happen to you is information overload. You will get advice to train in a particular RPE, train with a particular rep range for muscle hypertrophy. You will get advice regarding number of meals in a day and meal timings. You will get advice regarding the best workout timing and what not. The reality is you need to do things that give you results. There’s no best time for the gym. You just need to show up everyday. The rep range that gives you results is the best rep range. The number of meals in a day is the number of times, you feel hungry (however, the total calorific intake needs to be fixed, irrespective of the number of meals). You just need to keep things simple, train harder than last time, eat clean, learn forever and stay committed.
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