Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 16

16. I Want to Get Fit, Strong, Big and Loose Fat all at the Same Time.

As you have hopefully learned by now your training has to be specific to your goals. If you have too many goals then you can not be specific.

You can be fit but fat, you can be thin but unfit, you can have big muscles but be weak, you can have strong muscles but small muscles. What defines this is partly DNA but mostly specific diet and specific training.

What most people do is join a gym and start a diet at the same time. They then do lots of cardio (See No 5) to burn fat and weights to get big and strong all at the same time. This is WRONG.

Lets use an example to prove the point. You normally eat 2500 cal a day and go on a diet reducing your calories to 2000 a day. You have also joined a gym and go 4 times a weak burning 300 cal per session.

The maths shows that you are now eating 3500 cal a week less, over a days worth of food, and are also now burning 1200 cal per week in the gym. That is a cal difference of 4700!!!! Do you really think that is healthy let alone productive? You will initially loose weight doing this but within about 10-14 days you will be exhausted, probably get ill and then rebound (get fat). If you join a gym do not reduce the calories too, clean up your diet ( reduce cr@p, not calories) and adjust to suite. And that’s just the calories side of things, now the exercise bit.

I wont repeat what I wrote about Cardio in Part 5, please re-read it.

To get strong you need to lift heavy weight for 3-5 reps with a rest period of approx 3 mins between sets and will mainly use the creatine phosphate energy system. 

To get big you need to lift medium to heavy weights, 6 - 12 reps with a rest period of 60-90 seconds and use the lactic acid energy system. 

They are different training systems, different energy systems and strength training also requires more co-ordiantion, power, CNS and is partly governed by individual biomechanics. Therefore, trying to do both at once will always be a compromise and how big a compromise will depend on DNA, Form, Diet and so on.

So what is the answer? Periodisation of course.

In simple terms (for the average gym goer) this is just training once element at a time, in sequence to optimise gains.

So your average newbie to gym who wants to loose fat, gain muscle mass and get stronger could now train like this:

Week 1          -           Light cardio, stretching, mobility

Week 2          -           Light cardio, stretching, mobility

Week 3          -           Medium cardio, stretching, mobility

Week 4          -           Medium-Hard cardio, stretching, mobility

Weeks 5-8     -           Hypertrophy (build muscle size)

Weeks 9-12   -           Strength/Power

Week 13        -           De-load, low intensity cardio/weights

So whats the logic in all this? I think its simple, but its my job so it should be for me. We start by getting the body moving, nothing fancy and a low risk of injury. We then gradually increase the intensity getting the heart and lungs working harder. As we move into the hypertrophy phase the heart and lungs are still working as we build muscle. Finally, we use our now (slightly) bigger muscles to move some big weights. After this we have active rest, we deload and train light to recover.

Each training phase compliments the next training phase where as the original example has all the training contradicting itself.

Whatever your goal or starting point periodisation is the way to go about it. Work in cycles of 6-12 weeks, deload, adjust, repeat.  For an excellent book on periodisation check out Periodisation Training for Sports by Tudor Bompa.

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 14

14. Excessive use of Functional/Sports Specific Training (F/SST).

I am a fan of F/SST, I believe it should be part of everyone’s training regime. However, too much of it will decrease performance as much as not enough F/SST will decrease performance.

Firstly, as per Part 7 and Part 3 your F/SST needs to be appropriate to your sport or goals or it will be ineffective. Sounds obvious enough but it’s a common problem even with qualified coaches.

For example, It may seem like a good idea for a tennis player to work on their base line strokes by using a cable machine in the same range of motion to their racket swing. But is it a good idea? I would argue not because the movement on the court will be a lot faster than the movement on the cable machine. Also, in tennis the shot will be followed through, on the cable machine the shot will come to a slow stop and then be reversed with a loaded eccentric phase. It looks the same at first, but it is a different movement.

Lunging onto a Bosu ball is great if you are recovering from or trying to prevent ankle injuries but ultimately you will be limited in how much weight you can lunge. Less weight equals less power/strength so this is less effective than conventional lunges or split squats.

Going backwards on a Cross Trainer is proven to help knee injures recover but that does not mean it will help strengthen your knees. I have always regarded backwards Cross Training to be far too easy an exercise to improve anything and has limited functionality.

What F/SST is great for is converting your strength/power/fitness gains into sports specific movements. Therefore, it is great for the final few weeks of pre-season and then top-ups during the season. It is also excellent for overcoming issues such as plateaus and weaknesses (see Part 13) and fixing form.

For example, squatting knees forward, hardly bending at the hip is really common with most newbies in the gym and even some of the regulars. I have a lot of success using either functional trainers (cable machines) or TRX (Suspension Training) in fixing this issue. So, for example, using the TRX I will get the client to hold onto both handles and squat backwards and down until their bottom is nearly on the floor (if they have the flexibility). It is rare that people cannot do this as part of the original problem is their conscious/sub-conscious thinking they will fall over if the push the hips back in a squat. By holding onto the straps their brain knows they wont/can’t fall over and suddenly the hips bend! A couple of sessions squatting with TRX can be followed by normal squatting and from then on its onwards and upwards. Once their back squatting has got better and they are able to squat with weight I may bring them back to the TRX to carryout pistol (one legged) squats or lunges. However, the main strength/performance gains are from squatting with weight, not TRX/F/SST.

Common Gym Mistakes and Simple Solutions to them - Part 13

13. Dealing with Training Plateaus and Overcoming Problems.

This could end up being the biggest topic; I will try and keep it short and simple. So you have been training well but for whatever reason your squat is stuck at 100kg. Every time you try and lift more you fail or can’t get to full depth. You can squat 97 kg fine so what do you do now?

First thing is to study your training log and look for clues. If you don’t keep a training log then do 20 burpees as punishment and go to WH Smiths and buy a notebook and start logging everything. If you don’t log your training then how do you know you have plateaued? Maybe you have inadvertently tried to lift too much too early? Maybe a training log would show you have actually been lifting too much volume so are simply tired. Maybe you have not been training your squat enough so it is no wonder you are failing. Log everything!!

So you were a good trainee and have logged everything and you log shows no obvious reason why you cannot squat 100 kg. There are now 3 likely reasons: Nutrition/rest, Form or a weakness.

So first are you eating enough and resting enough? You may have just had a week of night shift followed by a week of restless nights sleep. You may have been skipping lunch each day due to work etc.

What is your form like? Sloppy form will only allow you to go so far. Ask one of the Personal Trainer at your gym to check your form it wont cost anything. Or ask someone who can squat big at the gym (anyone can squat light properly, it’s a big difference once its 100kg plus). If the form is bad go back to basics, drop the weight, fix the form and build again.

Do you have a weakness? This will probably be revealed with your form. If you are tall you may be hamstring dominant so your quads could be weak. If you arse comes up before your back then you back/glutes are probably weak. If you knees buckle in then again its glutes or abductors and so on.

For the cardio guys/girls the same logic applies. Check your log, check your diet and rest, check your form/technique and check for weaknesses. I have met many competitive runners with tight/weak hamstrings, weak glutes who don’t appreciate how much this impacts their race performance. Some simple Kettle Bells swings once a week can take minutes off a 10 km race time for these people.

For any other problems keep it simple. Are you missing any part of the body when you train? This is common (for guys its legs, for girls it upper body) so stop missing bits and train the whole body. If you normally train with machines try free weights, if you normally use a barbell use dumbells. If you normally use a wide grip try a close grip etc etc.