Common Workout Mistakes
The other day I was asked by a magazine what I thought were some of the most common workout mistakes people make at the gym. I’ve been an Austin personal trainer for 20 years, so naturally, there was plenty to talk about. Here are a couple of the classics.
Naturally, men and women tend to have different agendas at the gym as their goals are often vastly different. Men, by enlarge want to add muscle mass and size while women oftentimes are looking to add a little muscle tone and reduce their body fat percentages. In doing so, both sexes tend to make some pretty common mistakes.
One glaringly obvious mistake a lot of men make besides the lack of proper technique, is in the selection of the appropriate amount of weight for any given exercise. A lot of men want to impress themselves and others with their heroic feats of strength, all the while undermining their workouts as the weights are too heavy to get good muscular contractions and proper ranges of motions. Women, on the other hand, can tend to use too little weight as they don’t want to “get bulky”. This is a myth I addressed in a previous blog.
Building muscle for men and women involves the exact same principals. The goal is to recruit the maximum amount of muscle fibers throughout the range of motion. Without proper stimulation of these fibers and without a proper range of motion, you are getting only a fraction of the benefit of the exercise. The trick is for those aforementioned men to use the weight they can handle, not what their egos can handle and instead of heaving through an abbreviated range of motion, contract the muscle through a fluid, full range of motion. For the aforementioned women, it would behoove them greatly to not be afraid of getting man like muscles, and to challenge themselves a little more in the gym as it pertains to their poundages, if they are truly interested in gaining some lean, quality muscle.
Another one of the common workout mistakes I see often, is people treating the gym as a happy hour of sorts. Some folks play with their phones, chat it up with friends, and even strangers. A lot of people go to gyms to see and be seen. This obviously is a waste of workout time and a complete diversion from what you really should be doing their. My gym, the Austin Fitness Center has a strict no cell phones policy as it’s distracting and annoying to others who are their for all the right reasons. Make the most of your gym time with a sensible, challenging workout that’s void of distraction and yo’ll find yourself achieving your fitness goals much more quickly and efficiently.
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Andy
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