Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 15

15. Being Unscientific

Far too many people are completely unscientific in there training. Typically the people chop and change their training at will or because they saw something on Youtube, or Facebook or the want to copy someone they saw in the gym. For women it often the opposite, they do the same old routine week after week, month after month and wonder why they get no gains.

So choose your training plan to meet your goals ensuring it is specific and appropriate. If you don’t know how to do this most gyms will provide you with either free generic plans or for a small charge you can get a Personal trainer to write you are personalised training plan. Once you have you plan follow it for at least 6 weeks before you re-evaluate it and change or update it to suite. Do not add or subtract exercises without a good reason (injury), do not skip a weight (ie add too much to the bar), do not increase the intensity for the first few week then, because your jeans now fit, stop increasing the intensity.

What you do need to do is log everything, the more you log the better. Top bodybuilders are all completely and utterly OCD and will log everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them log their toilet output. Log the weights you lifted, the reps, the rest, how easy/hard it felt, warm-up activity, cool down, cardio (distance, pace, speed), heart rate, weight, body fat, calories, macros and so on. Top body builders take regular photos of themselves doing their poses too, how vain!

At the 6 week point, armed with your log you have scientific and objective proof of your whether or not your program works. Have you gained strength, lost weight, lost fat, improved cardio vascular fitness etc. Your log should tell you.

You can then evaluate your training and if required make changes due to weaknesses, poor gains etc. You then carryout your new plan for 6-8 weeks, logging everything and repeat. It is actually really simple when it comes down to it, don’t make it complicated, do not over think it.

If you haven’t gained anything or gains have slowed you may just need to swap one exercise out/in or change from machines to free weights, swap Spin for Body Pump or simply increase or decrease calories by 5%. I always describe this to clients as a like stepping stones across a river, lots of small steps forward in the correct direction to reach your goal. It does not matter where you start as long as you get to the other side ideally by the most direct route!

Doing something once does not prove anything. Give me a rifle and I bet I could hit a target 500m away so am I a sniper? Well that depends how many rounds I needed and how repeatable this exploit was. Why am I mentioning this? Simple, time and time again you see, for example, scrawny guys coming into the gym to train with a muscle bound guy. They copy the big guys workout set for set just with smaller weights. What is wrong with that? Well potentially a lot…..

So this big guy must know what he is doing otherwise he wont be big and muscley? Maybe but you need more information just like we still don’t know if I’m a sniper or got lucky. So the questions are:

            How long did take this guy to get big? 2 years, awesome. 10 years poor.

Is he big because he had an excellent training partner in the past? Yes, well train with his old training partner instead. No, ask more questions.

Has this guy always been naturally big? Yes, maybe he has good genetics. No, ask more questions

Is this guy on steroids? Yes, walk away fast. No, ask more questions.

If all the above works out ok 2 more questions.

Has he only ever trained himself? Yes, he could have got lucky. No, lets see some other results from other partners.

Finally and often forgotten,

Did he get big using this current workout, or is this the workout he now does for better definition or another goal? Yes, great. No, this is for definition/another goal well then this is not specific to the scrawny guy.

I have used a bodybuilding example but it works for strength, cardio, sports etc. To be scientific you have to do some research and ask the right questions. This day and age you should consider who is liable if you get hurt too (or you hurt someone else accidently), I would not let some one unqualified and uninsured train me. I may discuss training ideas theory with a customer though as you never stop learning.

You also need to consider that if you have never trained before, or it has been a while, or this is your first time training with a program/partner/trainer you will make gains regardless.

We call this “Newbie Gains” and the gains can be quite big and quite quick at first. I have a client who despite being a gym regular (but cardio only) gained 53% in the leg press in 8 weeks. How do I know this, because he logged everything in detail (well taught of course). So even if you don’t train as hard as he did, nor keep as good form etc you can still gain quickly and that is why logging and re-evaluating is important. If you keep gaining then clearly you are doing something right, if you are not the read this entire post again. You gains will reduce as you get fitter/stronger but they should not stop, especially for the average gym goer (all of us) as we will probably never get close to our genetic potential.

Conversely, don’t go to sciencey and only trust something if a study proves it. There is a thick line between what works in a lab and what works in the gym. A lot of the science stuff Is meaningless in the real world and often gets misquoted by trainers/writers/marketing so be careful.

Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 7

7. Inappropriate Exercise Selection

Firstly, the most common cause of poor exercise selection is the misguided belief that our bodies burn fat from the area of the muscle we use.  This is incorrect so training your triceps is not going to get rid of your bingo wings, sorry.

I have already touched on the over use of isolation exercises, but I am going to say it again. If you are trying to loose weight do you really think that seated bicep curls are going to burn through loads of calories?  Biceps are a tiny muscle, even if you are a top body builder like Phil Heath, and burn few calories and hardly tax the heart and lungs. Your legs are the biggest muscles so squats, lunges, jumps are going to burn calories for fun.

Training for a cross country run on a treadmill is not going to prepare your body for the undulating multi-surface terrain you are going to encounter during the race. The odd treadmill session is fine and productive but you need to get outside and train in similar conditions to the race, regularly.

If you are trying to make your core stronger, then doing 3 sets of 100 crunches is not going to help as that is a cardio workout, not strength (See Part 3). Plus that only really trains one muscle so what about the others? Train the entire core hard, twice a week for no more than 15 mins a session.  Use this for guidance:

http://www.nsca.com/education/articles/core-training-evidence-translating-to-better-performance-and-injury-prevention/

If you play hockey every Saturday there is little point in doing any cardio where you maintain constant speed as that does not mimic your sport. Intervals, Fartlek’s, 10-15m sprints and agility is far more specific along with a basic strength and conditioning program.

Do not miss any part of your body out in your training programme. You are only as strong as your weakest part. Typically guys don’t train legs and girls don’t train arms but most people miss something out. Train the entire body within every 7 days. The easiest way to do this is to do exercises that recruit the most muscles in one go such as squats, deadlifts and presses (chest/bench, overhead) and pulls (barbell rows, lat pull-downs).  Some people consider exercises such as these as ‘only for bodybuilders’ but they are far from it and fundamental exercises that have worked for generations for all.

Often the exercise you want to do the least is the one you need to do the most. Too often people skip the difficult exercise to do more of the easier exercises.


Doing something easy lots of times is not the same as doing something difficult once.

It is rarely wise to copy a workout from the internet, a book or magazine as the author is unlikely to have written the programme for you. Most workouts in magazines are poor, gimmicky and written to fill magazine pages rather than to have helped someone.  Choose exercises that are suitable to your specific goals.

Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 10

10. Logging

Log everything, the more you log the better. Top body builders are all completely and utterly OCD and will log everything. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of them log their toilet output!

For most gym goers keep it simple and log the weights you lifted, the reps, the rest, how easy/hard it felt, warm-up activity, cool down, cardio (distance, pace, speed), heart rate, weight, body fat, calories, macros (macronutrients consumed in %) and so on. Top body builders take regular photos of themselves doing their poses too, how vain!  However, there is nothing to stop you taking some before, after and during photos to keep you motivated and on track.

Then when, for example, 6 weeks into your plan, armed with your log you have scientific and objective proof of your whether or not your program works. Have you gained strength, lost weight, lost fat, improved cardio vascular fitness etc? Your log should tell you in black and white, a factual record.  Without this all you can do is guess and this is where so many people go wrong.

Do not under estimate how important logging is.

Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 9

9. Goal Setting

People who set goals are more likely to reach those goals. You need to put some sort of measurable quantity to what you are trying to achieve. ie

I want to be able to run 2km in less than 15 mins.

I want to be able to squat 50 kg.

I want to reduce my body fat by 3%.

Then set a time limit for this such as 6 weeks.  Every time you reach a goal then set another goal and continue pushing yourself on.

It is no good simply thinking ‘I feel fitter’ my clothes ‘feel looser’ as that is subjective, and training should be objective.

Even if you have no great desire to achieve something, i.e. take part in Race for Life, it is still effective to train based on goals.  What you could do is spend 8 weeks on cardio goals, then 8 weeks on body composition goals and then 8 weeks on strength goals.  Then repeat.

This is important so I will say it again: Experience shows people that set goals achieve more from their training than those who do not set goals.

How to test your body fat?  Use one of these

Bodyfat Monitor

Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 8

8. Poor Technique

If it were as simple as lift some weights and do some cardio then everyone in the gym would look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or JessEnnis-Hill.  Sadly, in most gyms 99.9% of people do not look anything like the superstars of sport and fitness and that is mostly down to poor technique.

Simply, if you do not perform the exercise correctly you will not get the correct results and risk injury. Key to this is the need to be in control of the weight at all times, so that means you can only use momentum to help in Olympic/dynamic lifts (rarely seen outside specialist gyms).  The positioning of hips, knees, feet, the back, elbows, palms and so on all play an important part in determining whether you are targeting the correct muscle(s) or not. In this video Pro-Bodybuilder Ben Pakulski shows how the little differences affect tricep isolation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3AbFlyLYOA

In general it is best to work each exercise through the entire range of motion in order to work each muscle(s) fully. Half squatting, for example, is likely to make you quad dominant and ignore the glutes (bum) and hamstrings muscles. Another is rounding your back during any exercise as this is a fast way to injury, and will decrease the performance of the upper back muscles for upper back exercises (Rows, lat pulls).

This is an area where knowledge of human anatomy becomes really useful as once you understand how a muscle, or movement works you will understand the little, but vital differences, to technique that matters.  Taking a bit of time to learn how some of the main muscles work will pay dividends in improved training performance and therefore results and simple apps can be purchased for a couple of pounds if you have a smart phone or tablet.

However, if you can maintain perfect form throughout every set and rep, you are not lifting enough weight. It should take effort to maintain form for all, but the last 2-3 reps of each set as by then your muscles will be fatigued. If you have to use poor form more than that (ie all but first 2-3 reps), then the solution is simple, reduce the weight you are lifting.