The 5 biggest mistakes you can make in the gym

Scott Laidler

There are many mistakes that the average weekend warrior, gym rat or Mcdonald's addict makes in the gym. Here are the 5 biggest according to Scott Laidler.

Allow me to take you on a journey down movie memory lane, to a favourite of any self respecting gym rat, Rocky III. You’ll remember after our hero Rocky has been defeated by the infamous Mr T as Clubber Lang, he’s consumed with self doubt and wondering where he goes from that point, just when all is at its bleakest in enters Apollo Creed, here’s a snippet of Apollo’s motivational talk to Rocky: “You lost that fight rock for all the wrong reasons, you lost your edge, the truth is you didn’t look hungry, now when we fought, you had that eye of the tiger man, the edge, and now you gotta get it back and the way to get it back is to go back to the beginning man, you know what I mean?”

My point is that whilst rocky was a great fighter, he was of course a former world heavyweight champion, he had been operating on cruise control, he had lost his drive, his hunger and of course he no longer had the eye of the tiger. Obviously Rocky goes on to batter poor old Mr T to a pulp by the end of the film, but only once he has refined his skills, got his mojo back and picked up a few new moves along the way, and how did he do all of this? By acquiring in Apollo, a great coach.

Behind every great athlete is a great coach, someone who guides their trainees through gruelling exercise regimes all the way to the completion of their goals, drawing on their own wealth of experience to spot mistakes and avoid pitfalls. For the remainder of this article I’d like to take on the role as your coach, and draw on my experience as a Personal trainer and athlete to do for you what Apollo did for good old rocky.

Here are the five biggest mistakes I see well intentioned gym rats make day after day in the gyms and health clubs all over the country. No matter how hard you train and how regimented your training schedule is I’m willing to bet you’ve been guilty of at least two of these mistakes, we all are from time to time. Seeking out and destroying these little blunders could have a massive effect on your training goals, saving you a huge amount of time and effort, especially if you’re guilty of more than one!

Mistake Number One: No Goal

I once heard a saying that a ship with no destination either lies stagnant and rusts or gets lost at sea, it’s the same with your physique. You always need to be working towards a goal with your training, or just like a ship you’ll begin to stagnate, or be totally lost fruitlessly churning out ineffective workouts, after all how will you know if what you’re doing is getting you to your goals if you have no idea what you goal is?

This is a conversation I’ve heard countless times and its pretty much the same give oir take an accent and a bit of slang anywhere you go from Land’s End to Venice Beach:

Gym rat 1: what shall we hit today?

Gym rat 2: I dunno, shoulders?

Gym rat 1 : nah, I did shoulders the other day

Gym rat 2: How bout legs then?

Gym rat 1: ok, what exercise shall we start with?

And this is the manner in which their whole workout continues, and such is the habit for every workout they grind out. If this conversation is all too familiar I urge you to set some clearly defined training goals. It would be beneficial firstly, to decide what your overall aim is, are you trying to put on muscle? Trying to shed some fat? Add strength? Become powerful? Perform better at your sport? You had better know the answer to these questions because your answer will dictate what kind of training you do, how often and to what intensity – so get your goal CLEARLY defined.

Next you need to setup some smaller goals that determine exactly what you want out of your training routine whether this be a certain weight, body fat %, to lift a certain amount of weight in a given exercise or beat a given time, again these goals must be CLEARLY defined.

Once you have your goals in place it would be a great idea to keep a log of your training sessions, it’s a perfect way to stay on point and motivated and fantastic for referring back to in the future. When setting your goals keep in mind that the only difference between successful people and everyone else is the size of their goals.

Mistake Number 2: Too much emphasis on strengths

It’s very tempting to focus on your strengths; I’ve met people who only ever train their arms and chest, purely because they enjoy the workout and know they perform well at the exercises involved. This is a recipe for disaster, training this way is likely to bring about injury due to muscular imbalance and be detrimental to your pursuit of an aesthetically pleasing well rounded physique.

In his early days of body building Arnold Schwarzenegger and those around him considered his legs the weak point of his physique, was his response to ignore them and focus on his massive chest, boulders for shoulders or 20+ inch biceps? Well that wouldn’t be very Arnie now would it? He trained his legs with such intensity that he would often throw up or faint during training. Needless to say he eventually ended up with huge tree trunks of quads. While this may be a little on the extreme side, the lesson is still well observed: MAKE YOUR WEAKNESSES, YOUR STRENGTHS

A useful way of identifying weak points is to score your individual body parts on a scale of 1-10 and make sure your two lowest scoring areas are trained in isolation and are allotted their own training days. This should help you bring them up to par with the rest of your physique.

Mistake Number 3: Lack of Variation

Hopefully everyone reading this will know what kinds of food are healthy and productive for muscle growth and health in general. Imagine upon learning that chicken breasts and brown rice are a great low GI, high protein combination would it not be obscene to have the same meal for every meal, day after day week after week, month after month and year after year? Our bodies would soon develop Vitamin deficiencies and our heath would be in jeopardy.

Exercises work in the same way. there are definitely a number of tried and tested exercises out there that can be relied on for producing results, for example squats, dead lifts, barbell rows, shrugs, lunges and the list goes on... It is however essential to any successful training regime to have a diverse range of exercises and workouts included so as to avoid over developing certain muscle groups and sufferings from overuse injuries. Athletes are particularly vulnerable to these injuries as their training often becomes more and more specific over time e.g. tennis.

The effectiveness of any training program can be measured by the amount it challenges your body, the more you perform the same exercises and routines the less they challenge your body as it gets more and more habituated to performing the same movements at the same level of resistance, without diversifying your workouts you are robbing yourself of progress and wasting a lot of time. Here is something to ponder: EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PERFORM A WORKOUT PROGRAM IT BECOMES LESS EFFECTIVE

Mistake Number 4: Lack of consistency

Having made the point above it is also important to consider the importance of consistency. Strength is largely a case of ‘motor learning’ which requires repetition, only once you have performed an exercise or movement a given number of times do you become proficient at it. Think back to the first time you ever tried a dumbbell bench press, invariably you will have had to use a very light weight to perform the exercise even though by all rights you should have been lifting a lot more, for example if you compared the lift to a barbell (which you probably would have been more used to) this of course was not a true reflection of your strength it was merely that you had not done enough motor learning on that exercise to utilize your strength.

As a general rule try to keep the major compound lifts at the core of your training programs as these exercise generally require large loads and multiple joints making them more difficult to perform than isolation exercises and as such need to be practised more often to maintain expertise.

Mistake number 5: Too much focus on load

The gym can be quite a competitive place, often guys use the amount of weight they lifts as some sort of measure of their manliness. I have seen time and time again guys trying to do dead lifts with power lifting straps on, almost no range of movement and a back as bent as a labour party accountant, this is clearly asking for trouble, either that or guys doing biceps curls swinging so much they look like Mr. Bean dancing in front of a mirror.

Often what has happened is that a newly pledged gym rat has been introduced to weight training by his friends and feels obliged to lift exactly what his friends are lifting so as to not appear weak or slow down the workout, I’ve seen this over and over again, they all lift the same amount of weight but the new guy has terrible form and never sees much, if any progress. If you are that guy it is imperative that you start lifting weights that are actually the right weight for YOU , not for anyone else, bravado has to be swept to one side in the gym, everyone starts somewhere and at the end of the day it’s those that are progressing that deserve respect and admiration not those that lift loads that are clearly too heavy for them.

If your workout regime calls for you to do 10 repetitions of a given exercise then you pick a weight where 9 reps would be too easy and 11 would be too hard, it’s really that simple, no one wants to work out with someone who overestimates his own strength to the point where spotting his bench press could easily substitute any good trap workout. Selecting the right load will not only vastly increase the effectiveness of your training sessions it’ll reduce your chance of injury.

Conclusion

Taking the time to examine your training habits on a regular basis and making sure you are not falling into any of these bad habits would be a great move toward long term training progress. In summary you should make sure you always have a clear set goal, keep records of your training sessions, focus on your weak points, vary your training programs, keep compound movements at the core of your routine, and lift an appropriate load, this should keep your training productive and you on course to sculpt the physique you’re aiming for.

Now let me leave you with some very wise words “there is no tomorrow”

About the Author

Scott really doesn’t mess around. He brings an all business approach to his training. Work hard, shut up and get it done. He has a background in Psychology and brings a great focus to all that he does. Check out his articles if you need to get focused or to work harder, shut up and get it done. His site - Project-fitness.co.uk

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