Main Fitness Mistakes
Vitalyi Kozlov analyzes the typical mistakes made in the training process.
Each person comes to a fitness club with their own goal. Someone wants to lose the extra weight, decided to gain muscle mass, and is seriously thinking about working on their health. But everyone wants the same thing - to achieve excellent results. But do you strategize correctly to achieve your goal? Let us analyze the typical mistakes made in the training process.
You do not need a doctor
If you start training without consulting your doctor, you may fail to achieve the desired results and seriously worsen your health condition. A sedentary lifestyle, snacking on the run and constant stress has a detrimental effect on our bodies. Diseases of the musculoskeletal system today are no longer a feature of the elderly.
Be sure to consult your doctor or at least a specialist from a sports club during a fitness test. Get as much information as you can about the indications and limitations of exercise.
Lack of sleep
Sleep, during which the body recovers, is very important. Eat dinner at least 2 hours before bedtime and air the bedroom well. Before going to bed, it is best not to be distracted by the phone or watching a show. Sleep should take at least 7 hours.
Wrong outfit
Improperly selected clothes will make your workout uncomfortable and, therefore, incomplete. Violation of thermal regulation is fraught with the unpleasant smell of sweat, diaper rash, and blisters. Tight clothes will prevent exercising with maximum amplitude. The wrong footwear will not allow you to perform the exercises technically correctly, and this is fraught with excessive strain in the ankle area and injuries.
Workout clothes should be loose and lightweight, allow air circulation, and absorb moisture well. Choose specialized equipment from well-known brands. Select your footwear according to the type of workout you are doing, and yes, the more recognizable the logos of the sportswear brands, the more guarantee in its quality. For group exercises in a fitness center, sneakers with a tight backside, springy soles, and ventilation inserts are suitable, which will reduce the load on the spine, the ankle will be fixed and the feet will "breathe".
You know better
The fitness industry is constantly evolving, with new research on human physiology. New equipment appears and workout programs change. However, each person is different and requires a different approach, taking into account age, sex, build, lifestyle, injuries, etc. Training "by your method", "by habit", "on the advice of a friend", "by the book" can cause irreparable damage to your health.
Do not hesitate to ask for free instructions and introductions. Ask the instructors questions, ask what books and articles to study are credible to the experts, and double-check the reliability of the names with famous company logos.
Not in the mood to workout
Bad moods, urgent matters, or laziness are often the reasons for skipping a workout. Fitness as a habit is the achievement of many months or even years of work on yourself. Your body must readjust to build up your general and muscular endurance, increase your strength performance, and improve your exercise technique. All this is only possible with repeated and regular repetitions. Remember that regularity is the key to sustainable results.
Make a weekly/monthly training plan and stick to it strictly. Initially, you must try hard to change your usual life schedule. But then the workout will become a habit, and the reward for consistency will be a beautiful and healthy body.
Overpowering yourself
The other extreme is to train through sheer force. Even a professional athlete needs time to recover. A beginner or a person with average fitness is strongly discouraged from training intensely every day, let alone several workouts a day. Overexertion is extremely dangerous!
Do you feel weak and sore after yesterday's workout but still want to work out today? The desire to achieve results as soon as possible will only lead to a general deterioration of your well-being. Your sleep and metabolism will be disturbed, and your risk of injury increases.
The most straightforward advice is to take a break between intensive workouts for one or two days. If you are a beginner, train three days a week with rest breaks. Alternate intense classes with less intense ones (pilates, stretching, light cardio, calm swimming in the pool, or yoga).
Low-Calorie diet
Any trainer will tell you that nutrition is the key to a successful workout. The process of gaining muscle mass, weight loss, muscle recovery, and energy for training is directly dependent on nutrition. Fast food, overeating at night, and rigid diets (e.g., giving up carbohydrates) disrupt the body's metabolism. As a result, you're only moving farther away from your dreams of a beautiful and healthy body.
Consuming too few calories and not changing your eating plan can lead to a steady body adaptation to the diet, stopping the weight loss and leading to a "plateau".
Therefore, it is necessary to drink enough fluids (at least 30 ml per kg of weight), have a proper and balanced diet, organize days of rest and days of exercise, and consume unsaturated fats.
Monotonous exercises
To achieve your goals, you must not let your body adapt to the exercises you perform during the workout. Try to diversify them and combine different loads, work for each muscle group, and engage in other types of physical activity.
Lack of periodization
Periodization in training refers to changes in the training process to "lighten" or "aggravate" an activity at certain time intervals. Excessive exertion and over-intensity training can put your body under stress, harming your health. Eventually, after a couple of weeks or months, it's exhausting and makes you want to get off the fitness circuit without achieving your desired goal.
To avoid this, you can do intense exercises designed to increase your muscles in one class to blow off steam and recharge, and smoother exercises to work out all muscle groups and stretch in another class.
It turns out that if you have patience and approach the process responsibly, you can easily customize your fitness workouts to suit you. Training will be easy and pleasant, and the results will be noticeable not only to you but also to others.
Page Reference
If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:
- KOZLOV, V. (2021) Main Fitness Mistakes [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/article636.htm [Accessed
About the Author
Vitaly Kozlov is a boxing coach with ten years of experience and has been a professional fitness trainer since 2012.