Here is the 2nd part of my 6 critical mistakes that people make in the gym.
Check these out so you can take honest stock of your own tendencies. I posted part one last week which has the first 3 critical mistakes.
If you are committing any one of these then it could be really hurting your progress.
Here they are:
4: Resting Too Long:
It never surprises me how many times that I see people resting too long between sets. When I ask them why….the most common response is “I am trying to add size.”
It is true that under certain circumstances, longer rests may be needed.
You should be pushing your fitness level ahead by shortening your rests gradually. You need to increase challenge so you can improve your fitness. I recommend resting only 30-60 seconds even when mass is your goal. This pushes your energy systems to evolve so that you can train harder and recover faster. This will be something you will need to work up to and not something that you can just jump into. A heavy leg day may need 1 or 2 minutes between sets until you are accustomed to the training intensity and can recover with less rest.
Cycle your training between heavier, moderate and lighter weights as well as shorter rests such as 30 seconds and longer rests up to 2 minutes.
You should …under no circumstances… be sitting around and letting your breathing return to resting state and letting your muscles get cold. This would be counter productive to your progress.
Push yourself!
I usually leave 30 seconds -60 seconds rest between sets in even my heaviest training phases. 30-40 seconds for smaller body parts and 40-60 seconds for larger body parts. It has never limited my muscle building. I use this method with clients as well and it works like a charm.
Work hard and the results will speak for themselves!
5. Lack of Workout Intensity:
Many people just go through the motions during their workouts. They may check their BBM’s, stop and have a chat or just complete their exercises without really focusing on what they are doing.
If you go through a workout with out feeling challenged then you are short cutting your way to results.
This applies whether you are very conditioned or not. We all need to push for more intensity. If we don’t then we will start to plateau and gradually slide backwards in our results.
Challenge equals progress.
:6. Training Only Your Favorite Body Parts
You can’t just train your favorite body parts and expect to look fantastic. Sooner or later something is going to look not quite right.
It seems like an obvious thing not to do and yet so many people do it. In fact…the most common mistake is training only the “mirror muscles”. What I mean by that is training only the muscles that you look at in the mirror. ie: chest, shoulders, arms, quads and forgetting the others that are not seen such as the back, hamstrings, and calves.
Lay out your training so that you are hitting all your body parts in a balanced way.
If you have been training for a while then an example could be:
Day 1: Back
Day 2: Chest
Day 3: Shoulders/ Calves
Day 4: off
Day 5: Bicep/Tricep
Day 6: Quads and Hams
Be sure to avoid all these mistakes in the gym and you will on your way to making steady progress towards the body of your dreams.
That is as long as you are not filling your face full of twinkies ….of course. “wink, wink”
Yours in health,
Tammy Strome
