The Most Common Gym Mistakes
A lack of information, in some cases, can lead to making gym mistakes. In order to avoid this, here you can learn more about the most common mistakes people make at the gym. Take note!
The most common gym mistakes
The mistakes we make while working out can become a very hard habit to break. You may have been making them for a while without even realizing it, which is why you must identify them quickly, and before it’s too late! Here are the most common gym mistakes:
Being impatient
Let’s start by talking about a psychological mistake, which doesn’t mean it’s less important than a physical mistake. When we start working out, it’s possible that we see early results, but this can change after a few weeks, as the body becomes used to certain movements, burns less fat and stops changing.
Being impatient to see results can lead us to lose motivation and to gradually stop training. Is it clear now why this isn’t a less important mistake? Well, if you don’t see the results you want by the time you expect them to happen, it’s not that your body isn’t changing, it’s that it’s making these changes more slowly. You’ll be able to see the results soon enough. Don’t give up!
Lifting too much weight
You’ve been training for weeks and every day it gets easier to lift your ‘beginner’ weight. You want to improve each day, and that’s a great attitude, but be careful! Lifting too much weight can lead to muscle strain, which can stay with you your whole life.
Don’t be embarrassed to lift a small weight; do more repetitions in order to get the results you want. Your own body will tell you how much weight to add, but keep in mind that if you exceed this amount, it could be extremely harmful.
Bad form
Although many believe that paying attention to form is only useful when doing barbell weightlifting, it’s not like that at all. You could have bad form while doing squats, crunches or lunges. With some of these, bad form could make the exercise altogether pointless, because you won’t be working the muscles that you want.
Bad form could lead to severe injury that will negatively affect your training and even your life. Be careful with your posture, and even if you feel like you’re doing it right, ask gym trainers. They’ll be eager to help.
Not taking breaks
All professional athletes know that they must take breaks between sets. When you’re working out intensely, you’re body goes from zero to a hundred, and if you do the next set without taking a break, you’ll quickly become exhausted and your muscles will get fatigued, to the point of injury.
Don’t worry, you won’t ‘undo’ your efforts by taking a 30 second break, or even taking one minute between sets. Are you a beginner at the gym? Take a look at the muscular people in there. Their muscles are the consequence of effort, hard work and perseverance, so they actually know how to train. You’ll notice that between sets, they get up, walk away and then come back. They take their time to rest!
Training every day
Let’s sum it up: sometimes less is more. Training every single day won’t let your body, mind or muscles rest. You won’t get better results from training every day. On the contrary, your muscles become fatigued and enter the catabolic state.
Catabolism is similar to your muscles going on a hunger strike. The best thing to do is to ‘surprise’ your body with little breaks when it doesn’t expect them, or you could also plan out your routine. Training four days a week is more than enough.
Always using the same machines
This is probably the most common gym mistake. There are machines that we like more. Others just don’t do it for us, maybe because they take up too much effort: these are the best ones!
If you get used to using the same machines, your body will do just the same and your muscles won’t make the extra effort they need in order to grow. You must alternate different movements, weights and machines that will work several areas of your body. There are huge results in variation.
Did you take note of all the common gym mistakes? Now that you know them, it’s time to avoid them!