There are many common workout mistakes that you may be making that are holding you back from reaching your fitness goals. Correcting these simple mistakes will make your workout more productive and help you achieve better results from your workouts.
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1. Skipping Your Warm Up And Cool Down
You should always warm up for a minimum of 3-5 minutes before you engage in any form of intense exercise. Warm up properly can greatly decrease your risk of injury from the exercises you are about to do. Your warm up prepares both your mind and body for training, You’ll increase performance and flexibility in your workout, as well as your heart rate which will promote better circulation.
Read More:
- 7 Reasons Why You Should Warm Up Before You Exercise
- The 5 Best Warm Up Exercises To Get You Ready For Your Workout
3. Performing Cardio Before Your Weight Training
If you are training both cardio and resistance training back to back, perform the resistance work first, use the bulk of your energy on the most difficult and most rewarding of the two. You are also more likely to burn more fat if you do your cardio second.
3. Not Lifting Heavy Enough Weights
You need to challenge your body for it to adapt and grow. Just going through the motions with light weights or following a high rep, light weight workout will produce “light weight” results. At the end of a set, if you feel you can do 3 or 4 more reps, you need to increase the weight you are using.
4. Not Breathing Properly
Regardless of what some trainers feel, it is not critical to inhale here and exhale there. It IS critical that you breathe deeply and regularly to promote oxygenated blood traveling to your muscles and organs, that’s where your energy originates. It is also critical that you NOT hold your breath as many new trainees do. Holding your breath increases your risk of fainting and increases intracranial pressure, a very bad thing if you have high blood pressure.
5. Overtraining
30 minutes of training is good, so 3 hours must be better, right? No, regardless of the training, the real “magic” happens after your workout during the rest phase. While you rest and sleep, your body repairs and recovers, you get a little bit stronger, a little bit faster as you rest. Don’t skip your scheduled rest days. Don’t train a muscle group tomorrow that you trained today. Alternate and rest, you will then go back to the gym with renewed energy.
6. Not Planning or Journaling
Don’t wander around the gym not knowing what to do or what you need to do to meet your goals. Research, plan and write it down in a simple inexpensive spiral notebook, down to the sets and reps you would like to accomplish. Hit the gym with your workout planned, record your actual achievements and any notes that might help. Have a page with your height, weight and measurements and update this every 2 weeks or so, much of your progress will show in the mirror and tape measure, not the scale.
