Training Mistake #10: Machine Love
When you go inside a modern gym you can see machines from all kinds: Preacher machines, Pull-down machines, Dip machines, and ect. Make sure you do not use them too often in your workout routine. Dumbbells and barbells remain the best working equipment ever created as well as using your own body weight for muscle groups like back, chest, legs, and arms.
Solution
- Do more free weight and body weight exercises
- If you however decide to use a machine in your workout routine, try to use machines that allow you to change your grip and weight easily to imitate free weight lifting.
Training Mistake #9: Training To Failure
Failure is the point in a set where your muscles are so tired, that you cannot complete any more reps at all. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a really good technique to really suck the energy out of your muscles, but the problem is a lot of people mislead this and start going to failure in each one of their sets, even while they warm up. This will not lead to more muscle gain, this will lead up to overtraining and injuries.
Solution
- Try going to failure on your last set instead on every single one
- Combine between drop set and going to failure (example: On your first exercise on the last set do a drop set, on the second exercise on your last set go to failure)
Training Mistake #8: Cheating
When you go to the gym the first thing you are probably going to notice is a lot of people doing swinging movements with their bodies while lifting heavy weights. The reason is because they are lifting too heavy. By cheating on your sets you are increasing the chances of injuring yourself and lets not mention that you are literally not doing anything. To make your muscles grow you will have to maintain a good form while lifting your weights.
Solution
- Concentrate more on your form than on lifting heavier
- Take a friend with you as a spotter. Cheating on your last two or three reps is normal since your muscles are getting tired. Ask your spotter to help you lift the weight instead of having to cheat on your set.
- The most common exercise to cheat on is bicep curls, try sitting down instead of standing up, this will help you for any unnecessary swinging.
Training Mistake #7: Going Too Heavy
The best range of reps that is really going to make your muscles grow is 8-12 reps. Lifting heavy weights and doing only 7 repetitions may feed your pride in the gym, but it’s not going to help you with your muscle growth. Studies show that people who do around 12-15 repetitions have increased their muscle protein synthesis (this process leads to muscle growth) with about 50% more than when they lifted really heavy and completed only 4 reps.
Solution
- Count your reps, I know a lot of people who only think about lifting their weights and nothing more (that is cool because you only concentrate on lifting your weights), but it’s important to know what is you rep range with that weight, make sure it is 8-12 reps.
- This is not really connected with this issue, but before you start lifting heavily warmup, we don’t want to injure our self in the gym.
Training Mistake #6: Too Much Rest
Yes, this is considered as a mistake. Now, there are two types of rests – Resting between sets and resting between workouts. We all know that resting is essential to build big muscles. There are a lot of people who rest 2-3 minutes between their sets, if you are one of those people STOP ! After the two or three minutes have passed your muscles have literally cooled down. When you start lifting heavy again your muscles are rested and not really ready to complete more sets.
And there are people who are scared from not resting enough and they start giving each muscle group way too much time to rest (8-10 days). A muscle needs about 4 days to regenerate and be fully ready to be trained again.
Solution
- Be concentrated, when you are the gym the only thing that matters is lifting weights, resting 2-3 minutes is probably because somebody is distracting you from your workout, avoid that from happening.
- Rest no more than 1 minute
Training Mistake #5: Not Enough Rest
Like I mentioned previously resting is essential to build muscle. You train in the gym to make molecular rips in your muscle tissue, by resting at home and eating good nutrients, you are rebuilding your muscle and making it grow. Sadly there are people who do not give their muscles enough time to recuperate so they can be trained again. This will only lead to muscle loss.
Solution
- Give your muscle group at least 4 days to rest before using them again in a workout
- Sleep at least 6-7 hours to rest your body and to increase the flow of growth hormone in your body
Training Mistake #4: Failing To Warm Up
You cannot just go in the gym and start lifting as heavy as you can without warming up first. I have actually seen people do so. This way you increase the chances of risk of injuring yourself and overtraining your muscles. Not to mention the tension that you put on your heart.
Solution
- Cardio is a perfect way to notify your heart that you are going to start training, do about 10 minutes of low intensity cardio.
- Make sure that the first set you complete is a warming up set with a rep range of 15-20 reps
- Stretching is a good way to warm up your muscles
Training Mistake #3: Going Too Slow
When I go to the gym I warm up for a good 10 minutes, I start working out for 30-40 minutes, and I go to take a shower and change my clothes. And the people who I saw when I came to the gym where still there and training. That means that they are working out for more than 1 hour, which is really bad for them and will only lead to losing muscle.
After 1 hour of training your cortisol levels are way to high. If you are not familiar with the term “cortisol” it’s the stress hormone in the human body. When it reaches high levels it starts breaking down muscle tissue and storing more fat and that is exactly why you want to avoid training more than one hour.
Solution
- The only solution that is available for this situation is to keep your eye on the clock. It doesn’t matter if you are not finished with your workout routine, if you are passing 1 hour of training you MUST stop !
Training Mistake #2: Short And Quick
It’s important to control the weight by exploding on the way up and really slowly low down the weight. This way you are really working your muscles. The easiest way to finish a workout is by doing fast reps, but that will not lead to massive muscle gains, that will only make you sore on the next day.
Solution
- The best method on lifting and releasing the weights is 3:1 (you release the weight for a good 3 seconds allowing your muscle to really stretch and you lift it, or push it back up in the time range of a 1 second)
- Control the weight, no shaking, no swinging, no arching.
Training Mistake #1: Same Old Workout Routine
This is the biggest mistake that probably 60% from the beginner bodybuilders do. They do the same workout routine week after week after week, thinking that it helps them gain more muscle. This will only put your body in a plateau (you will stop gaining muscle). By completing the same working routine, with the same exercises, you are allowing your muscles to adapt to the environment, which leads to no muscle gains. You want your muscles to be always left clueless on what is going to be your next exercise in your next workout routine.
Solution
- Take time when you are creating your workout routines, make sure they have different exercises, and that they are in a different order
