9 Mistakes to Avoid when exercising
Even the smartest, most dedicated exercisers make lots of mistakes on an ongoing basis. That's why even the best athletes have coaches. Here are the most common mistakes!
Charles Staley states that the former world Karate champion and popular action star Chuck Norris was once asked if he ever made a mistake, upon which he replied "No". Seeing the surprised and somewhat incredulous reaction of the interviewer, Norris continued by explaining that sure, he makes mistakes all the time, but only once. Norris' feeling was that if you learn from your mistakes in order to avoid making the same ones again in the future, they really didn't count as mistakes.
We all like to do things right. However, no matter how disciplined and careful we are,we will constantly try to either avoid the errors in the first place or to learn to substitute more productive habits and behaviours in the future.
All good plans start with a clear, concise picture of the desired objective. Have you ever had this conversation at training?
"So, what ya wanna work today?" "Dunno, maybe chest?" "Ummm... I guess so... tryin' to remember when I did chest last... how about arms?" "Ok, cool, what exercise ya wanna do first?"
Think about it this way. When was the last time you jumped in the car and drove without knowing where you were going? You know what I mean!
Remember this: Challenge yourself by aiming big. The only difference between successful people and everyone else is the size of their goals. make sure your goals are worthy of your complete dedication.
2. Sacrificing quality to quantity
Note this: More isn't better! BETTER is better! Make sure you do something well, before you do it more.
The way to assess the effectiveness of a workout or training system is by the degree to which it improves the quality and/or abilities you are trying to develop, not by how much pain it produces.
Muscles grow when you gradually force them to perform more and more work in a given time frame, from workout to workout. This required managing fatigue, not seeking it.
Focus on achievement, not the after-effect of your efforts
If you're sore, it is in fact a sign that your muscles are in a repair state... do not train on sore muscles. Instead, wait until you have one full day or no soreness before training the same muscles again.
"No Pain, No Gain"? No, Pain is your body's signal to you that something is wrong. Pay attention! Adjust your workout accordingly.
Pain that diminishes or disappears after the warm-up should still be taken seriously. The reason is that your body releases histamines during your early sets which are a natural painkiller.
If you experience sudden sharp in a joint during a workout, stop immediately and apply ice to the area. If you do not experience considerable improvement within a few days, seek medical attention.
A feeling of tingling, numbness or "pins & needles" in one or more extremities should not be ignored. Seek medical attention promptly.
5. Excessive Focus on Load
The 70kg guy at the gym asks you of you can spot him do inclined bench press. No worries. You agree to lend him your services. As you walk to the bench you notice two 50kg dumbbells laying on the floor next to the bench. "Hmm..." you think. "Wonder what this guys is up to?" You soon find out. he asks you to hand him the dumbbells one at a time and after that, you get he unexpected workout of your life as you help him through 4 forced reps, with you lifting about 75% of the weight on the first rep and about 95% by the forth rep! The greatest trap workout of your life!
The point is, the amount of weight you can lift does matter, but it isn't the only consideration by any means. A lot of guys for example, will do almost anything to life more weight, including using power lifting support gear, significantly reducing the range of motion, and/or using a training partner to help them complete the lift.
Note: In each of these examples you really didn't lift more weight at all, you just appeared to have lifted more!
weight, including using power-lifting support gear, significantly reducing the range of motion, and/or using a training partner to help them complete the lift. In each of these examples, you really didn't lift more weight at all, you just appeared to have lifted more!
6. Too Much Focus on Strength
A strength overused becomes a weakness and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Determine if your weak link is correctable or not (For example short arms may be undesirable for a dead lift, but nothing can be done about it.) Focus on correctable weaknesses.
Make a list of all the major muscle groups and then rank them from 1-10 in terms of your own development. Next, take the 2 lowest-scoring muscle groups and allot one training day per week where you work only on these muscles.
7. Insufficient Diversity
The best program is the one you're not doing, and here's why:
The effectiveness of any program depends on the degree to which it challenges your body. The problem is that familiar stressors are less challenging, because the body habituates (habituation is the gradual reduction of a response when an initially new stimulus is repeated over and over) to them. Every time you repeat a training program, it becomes less effective.
All programs and methods have both negative and positive aspects, no matter how well designed or specific. Too much time on one program, and you'll demonstrate a tendency to habituate to the positive aspects and accumulate the negative ones. For example, if you perform barbell bench presses every week, you may develop an imbalance between the front and rear deltoid muscles, despite the fact that you are not getting stronger on the exercise.
Unchanging training routines lead to overuse injuries. Athletes are particularly vulnerable, since their training tends to become more and more specific over time.
People tend to be creatures of habit, but even good habits have a downside as we've just seen. Be sure to provide for enough variety so that your workouts remain challenging and therefore, productive.
While variation is important, so is continuity. Getting stronger is largely a matter of "motor learning". And this requires repetition, just like any other kind of learning.
If you change exercises every single workout for example, you never get enough practice on any single exercise to get better at it. Similarly, if you mis-interpret the classic texts on periodisation, you might make the mistake of training for muscle hypertrophy for 6 weeks, and then maximal strength for 6 weeks, reasoning that maximal strength training is potentiated by a prior phase devoted to hypertrophy development. The only problem is, by the time you're 4 weeks into the strength phase, you're 4 weeks away from the last hypertrophy workout, which means the quality you worked so hard to develop for 6 weeks is now rapidly fading away as you focus on another objective.
One way to strike a good balance between diversity and continuity is to change half of your exercises every 4 weeks.
Generally, exercises which utilise (relatively) large loads and multiple joints (such as squats and dead-lifts, for example), are more difficult than "isolation" exercises, and therefore, should be practiced on a more continuous basis in order to maintain your expertise.
You can learn a lot from observing others... sometimes by looking at what they're doing right, but just as often, by noticing what they do wrong.
Generally speaking, if you're lifting a weight correctly, you'll feel tension through the target muscle but no pain or discomfort in the associated joint.
Your movement should be precise and consistent from rep to rep, almost like you are a machine. If you find yourself "shaking and quaking" under the weight, it's probably too heavy relative to your current abilities.
If it looks wrong, it probably is. For example, if the bar isn't parallel to the floor when you squat, dead-lift, or bench press, it means you're applying more force with one limb than the other.
Lift light weights as if they were heavy, and heavy weights as if they were light. For example, if you can't lift a 90kg bar over your head to put it on your shoulders in preparation to squat, don't do it with an empty bar either. Every rep you do should be viewed as an opportunity to perfect your technique.
