1) Winging It: This means having no written goals, training journal; no way of tracking progress. It’s when you just show up to the gym and go from one machine to next, or use whatever equipment is available at the time. Winging it is when you don’t know where you are, where you’re going and what got you there. This sounds cliché but it’s true, “Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.”

Being a trainer gives me the chance to see all the mistakes that people are making with their exercise routines. Everyday individuals give110%, doing some of the strangest things. They can spend hours and hours in the gym yet look the same month after month. Often these individuals will be making these mistakes whilst using a personal trainer. These are some of the top mistakes I see people make in the gym on a daily basis.

Solution:  Develop a Plan: People who get results in the gym are those who are following a strategic plan. A strategic plan is an ongoing progress that incorporates an assessment (where am I?), goal setting (where do I want to go), and creating a progressive plan (how will I get there?). Once you develop a proper plan, keep track of your results and make tweaks as you see fit. I promise you will never see results without a well, thought-out workout regimen.

 2) More is Better When Exercising: This is the number one mistake I see people make in the gym. Exercising too much can cancel out any positive benefits you might have gotten from working out. Some of the more common signs of “overtraining” are insomnia, excess muscle soreness and fatigue. By not giving our bodies enough recovery time between training sessions, the immune system can start to shut down, making the body more susceptible to getting sick. Inadequate recovery time also slows down fat loss and the body starts “eating” away at muscle: this is a self protection mechanism for survival.

Solution: Train only 3-4 days a week: I realise that this might be a hard if you are accustomed to working out 5-7 days a week. Trust me, your body will thank you later. While everyone is different, a general rule of thumb is a recovery period of 24-36 hours between training sessions, with a maximum training session lasting no longer than an hour. How is your body supposed to grow muscles if you keep breaking them down and not giving proper time to recover? Muscles do not grow in the gym. You break them down in the gym, but they grow and repair outside of the gym.

 3) Not Properly Warming Up: During the winter, sane people will start their car and let it run for a few minutes. This allows the car to “warm up” and get the engine prepared for its functional purpose. The same should hold true with our bodies. You must warm up your Central Nervous System to prepare it for the stress that is about to be placed on it. Not properly stretching and warming up before exercise will lead to injury, lack of performance, and an insufficient CNS. 

Solution: “Rev up the Engine”: Before every training session, start with some type of stretching. Click here for a previous post I wrote on proper stretching techniques and the benefits from stretching before and after each workout. After you have stretched, go through a proper warm-up, 2-3 times. A general warm-up may consist of prisoner squats, push-ups, forward and lateral lunges, jumping jacks and planks. A proper warm-up should get the blood flowing and fire up the CNS. I generally recommend a warm-up to last around 10 minutes, depending on your fitness level. To be completely honest, sometimes my warm-ups last just as long as my actual workout. I can’t stress enough the importance of this. Just do it!

4) Starving Yourself: What I am about to tell you might sound preposterous, but hear me out first. Eating too few of calories can be a very harmful thing to your body. Yes, it is true that a calorie deficit is the only way to lose body fat. However, the calorie deficit must be kept minimal. You see, when you cut calories too much for an extended period of time, your body goes into what is known as a starvation mode. This ultimately leads to muscle loss, slow metabolism and the word no one wants to hear, Plateau. Think of your body like a furnace. When you don’t fuel the fire, the flame (which is your metabolism) burns out, producing less energy. Food is usually not the problem but more of the solution.

Solution: Eat more, Burn more: Instead of trying to cut more calories, try adding in extra activities to your daily lifestyle. This can be termed as Eating More To Burn More. Like I stated above, to lose weight you must create a caloric deficit. Why not do this by exercising a bit more, which allows you to consume more calories? The best way to accomplish this is to consume a small decrease in calories instead of a large deficit, and increase your activity. Decreasing your calories slows down your metabolism. Exercise increases metabolism. Therefore, eating more + exercising more = a double increase in your metabolism. One final point: when I say increase activity, this doesn’t mean go to the gym 7 days a week. Increase your activities outside of the gym.

5) Excuses: When someone doesn’t get the results they want, they expect it is automatically someone else’s fault. When they don’t lose any body fat or gain any muscle, it’s their genetics or their diet that is the cause. When people fall off the wagon, it is their friends and family’s fault. When we miss a workout we tend to blame it on our boss or co-workers for keeping us at the office too late. We never consider looking in the mirror and realising that the problem is staring right back at us. How about trying to take some responsibility and owning up to your mistakes.

Solution: Take Responsibility: People who become successful with weight loss (and anything in life) take responsibility, no matter the outcome. Take some time and really get to the root of why your fitness is not where you want it to be.

Remember, success always comes with failure. It’s what you make out of the failures that will ultimately lead to your success.