Common Mistakes Made in the Gym

Nick Smoot- Owner of Smoot Fitness

Smootfitness.com

 

 

I wrote an article recently on a major mistake I made when I first started working out; not warming up.  As I was typing that article’s conclusion, I started to think of all the other mistakes I made that negatively affected my results in the weight room.  Apparently I was on a mission to see how many things I could do wrong before they finally broke me down.  I didn’t last long.

Now adversity makes you stronger and the mistakes I made in my own lifting career have enhanced my abilities as a coach.  But man did it cause problems.  Hopefully by sharing the mistakes that I made starting out in the gym, you will avoid them and witness nothing but continued success.

 

Not Warming Up

Alright I just wrote an entire article about this, but I will touch on it briefly one more time.  The closest I got to a warm up when I first started training was the walk from my car to the squat rack, and that is probably why what I considered a squat more closely resembled a bent over leg twitch.  Warm up!  Ten minutes with 4-8 exercises that resemble the movement pattern you are about to work is more than enough to help you maximize performance and reduce your risk of injuries.

 

Using Too Much Weight 

I am not sure why this is, but when one guy in the gym lifts a respectable load, it signals the start of a competition between him and every other guy who happens to be training that day.  In my mind, I did not have a successful training session unless I outdid my friends on everything from the deadlift to barbell wrist curls, and my form suffered because of it.  If you can’t keep proper form (excluding max effort attempts), you need to drop the weight.  Every rep is a chance to increase your technique, and better technique correlates with better results and less overall injuries.

 

Program Hopping

Oh this is a big one that plagues almost every novice lifter; jumping from one program to the next without giving the one you started with enough time to provide results.  Whether you want to admit it or not, everyone wants instant results.  If my pec didn’t grow an inch the day after I started a program, I labeled it as “crap” and was on Bodybuilding.com searching for the “next best thing.”  I would have been more successful winging it than trying to do a hybrid of 5/3/1, SS, FST-7, and Jim Stoppani’s Shortcut to Size.  Pick one person’s philosophy to experiment with and stick with it (at least for a few months).  Keep what works, trash what doesn’t, and continue this process until you build the program that works best for you.

 

Ignoring Nutrition

Ah, the dreamer bulk days.  The days when I was told to eat everything in sight because that was the only way to get “massive,” when every fast food restaurant in a five mile radius knew me by name, and when I gained weight so fast that a treasure map of stretch marks formed across my thighs and lower back.  Many people have the same mindset that I did; that they can eat anything and everything they want because they burn it all off in the gym.

Well once you are in enough of a caloric surplus to support muscle growth (250-350 cals), adding any more calories is just a quick path to the dickydoo disease.  Guys, you know what I am talking about here.  Now if you are an athlete, I think you need to pay more attention to your nutrition than someone who isn’t training.  When you break your body down in the gym, it needs adequate macro and micro nutrients to rebuild and grow, period.  Overeating, under eating, or not eating enough nutrient dense foods all have their drawbacks, and ignoring nutrition is a sure fire way to stall progress.

 

Not Doing Mobility Work

Not keeping up with mobility and flexibility training was one mistake I wish I could have gone back and changed.  From the inability to walk without excruciating knee pain to a spiraled pelvis and wicked rib flair, it really gave me some problems.  Keep up with your mobility work.  Maintaining mobility and flexibility is much easier than it is to get it back, so take my advice and don’t lose it!

 

 

Not Giving My Muscles Time To Recover

I was hooked to strength training the moment I loaded up my first barbell.  I wanted to be in the gym all day, every day, but in this game less is more.  I was constantly breaking my muscles down and never giving them time to heal, and this greatly hindered my initial strength and size development.  Your muscles grow during the 22 -23 hours AWAY from the gym.  Pay attention to proper recovery and your progress will soar.

 

Overdoing Cardio

I really don’t know what I was thinking when I first started lifting, but I certainly don’t share the same love of cardio I did back then.  I was doing cardio five to six days per week, and this took away from the energy I had in the weight room, from the recovery that I wasn’t giving myself much of in the first place, and was just another hindrance in my quest to gain strength and size.  Cardio is important, but remember to keep it specific to your goals.  If you are aiming to put on size and strength, doing an hour or two of low intensity cardio every day is simply not optimal.

 

Being Narrow-Minded

You know that time as a teenager when you think you know everything?  Yeah well I let that same mindset carry over in to the weight room.  I read a few Muscle Magazines and thought I was the Jimmy Neutron of strength and conditioning.  To be honest, my training absolutely sucked until I was able to accept the fact that didn’t know anything about strength training and hired a coach to help me out.  If you are open to new information and various philosophies, you will never stop growing.

 

Not Training Legs

Yeah that’s right; I was a member of the “how much you bench” crew.  For the first year of my lifting career, I ignored squats and deadlifts so I could spend more time at the pec deck machine and preacher curl.  Now I have always had big thighs (not exactly all muscle mass) and didn’t look too bad from an aesthetics standpoint, but ignoring one half of my body resulted in a lot of plateaus and poor upper body development.  You need balance to perform optimally.  The legs can pack on more strength and size than any other muscle group, release loads of testosterone and growth hormone that stimulates development everywhere else, and have the greatest effect on metabolic rate.  No matter what your goals are, you need to train legs!

 

Summing Up

It’s pretty clear that I screwed up big when I first started hitting the weights.  You learn from your mistakes so I am not sure I would have it any other way, but I do feel I could have made much more progress during the first few years of my lifting career if I had taken the time to properly educate myself and listen to other peoples’ advice.  You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Educate yourself on what works and ignore what doesn’t.  Stay humble, open minded, and continue to put in work in the gym!