6 common mistakes when doing gymnastics

1) Have an “all or nothing” mentality

“Without pain there is no gain”

“Give it EVERYTHING you have”

“Feel the burn”

“If you are not in pain, you are not working hard enough”

“110% effort all the time”

Some of you may make good progress with this mindset, and some of you may need to think this way to get through stages or to hit the gym. But if you constantly live up to these quotes, or something similar, chances are you will stop with your lifts, your weight loss / muscle building progress, or you will just hate lifting (because most people don’t like to be sore 24/7). .

This doesn’t mean that you should never try too hard. There will be days when you will have to give 110% in the gym. But I am mainly referring to those who leave the gym and cannot sit, climb stairs or lift an arm without pain or discomfort after each session. You know who you are.

It is possible to burn out very quickly if you like to throw balls against the wall at every gym session.

You must find a balance for yourself, physically and mentally, when you go to the gym. Some days may be your “all or nothing days”, while others may be a day to do gymnastics and not kill yourself.

2) Thinking you need to be in the gym every day (or you need to do cardio every day)

You don’t have to be in the gym 7 days a week to reach your desired fitness goals.

Most people get great results in just 3 days in the gym (as long as they are doing the necessary work). However, if you like to be in the gym 7 days a week and it is not a problem for you, then go 7 days a week. It’s just that sometimes people force themselves to go to the gym when they know for sure that they don’t want to be there because they are too tired from all the other gym days, which will just create an unhealthy habit. Or maybe they just don’t have the time, but they keep telling themselves that they “need” to go to the gym, which will keep stressing them out because they missed that extra day they “planned” to go. .

As for cardio, if you do it every day for sheer pleasure, keep doing it. However, if you’ve created this thought that the more cardio you do in a week, the better and faster the results you’ll get, you’ll be disappointed. Very disappointed. Not just because of the fact that you’re spending a ton of time doing cardio and you hate every second, but because of the fact that cardio isn’t the best option for losing fat. You’d be better off using that time to design a diet better that suits your lifestyle and fitness goal while using a combination of weightlifting and conditioning instead of cardio to reduce the time you spend in the gym and improve your fitness. results.

Also, our bodies are pretty good at adapting to stressors (cardio, weight lifting, etc.). So if you do cardio continuously for long periods of time, several times a week, you will adapt and become more efficient at it.

What does that mean?

Well, if you started out doing 50 minutes of normal steady-state cardio burning 200 calories (this is not exact, this is just an example), your body will become “better” at cardio and will burn fewer calories for the same amount of cardio. This is quite annoying because your goal is to burn calories, right? So you will have to do more to burn what you used to do. When using a weightlifting with conditioning program, there are several ways to change the stressor (increase weight, reps, sets, decrease rest, etc.) so that the body does not adapt and becomes so ” “energy efficient” when compared to regular low intensity cardio.

3) Being afraid of gaining muscle or becoming “too big.”

Increasing muscle mass and decreasing fat mass is what everyone praises. They just don’t know.

This creates what some call “toned, curved, slim, etc.”

To increase muscle mass, you must lift weights. You should also increase the amount of work you do over time.

Work can be increased by increasing the weights you are lifting, increasing the total number of repetitions you are doing (increasing the reps per set or keeping the same reps and increasing the number of sets), or a combination of both.

Former)

3 sets of 10 with 100 pounds

We can increase the amount of work we are doing with these 3 options (colored in red):

3×10 with 105 pounds = 3,150 pounds

3×12 with 100 pounds = 3600 pounds

4×10 with 100 pounds = 4,000 pounds

If the goal is to build more muscle, I would personally choose the 4×10 option because of the more overall reps and work being done. However, if you are short on time, I suggest options 1 or 2.

As you increase the overall work you can do (we refer to this as “volume” = weight in the example above), the more energy (calories) you expend. You will also expend more calories at rest with more muscle mass compared to if you had less muscle mass.

More calories will be expended to fuel more muscle mass and do more work. You will be able to consume more calories while dieting to lose fat compared to someone who is not lifting weights or doing a good amount of work. Would you complain about eating more while bending over?

“Getting too big”

First of all, you need to seriously get into training, scheduling, and dieting to grow. Most of those who go to the gym in general have no desire to put in the amount of mental and physical work to be “too big.” But then again, everyone has their own idea of ​​what “too big” is.

So I’ll just say this:

If you think you’re getting “too big,” all you have to do is get out of the gym a bit or eat a little less. You are not going to get stuck with huge muscles.

4) Do exercises to lose fat in specific areas.

You want your abs to show.

You want your lower arm to not be so flabby.

You want your love handles to disappear.

You want definition on your thighs.

“We get it, you want to peek out.”

Doing sit-ups won’t show your abs.

Doing tricep extensions will not reduce sagging under your arms. (That’s a mix of your hanging triceps muscle with some fat covering it, so it will never completely go away)

Wrapping a waist trainer will not reduce the fat around your love handles. (But temporarily it will make you look slimmer)

Leg extensions will not define your thighs. (We will do it a bit because it will develop the quadriceps)

You cannot target certain areas of the body to lose fat mass, unless you have liposuction. Please don’t go down that route.

I need you to get creative for a second and imagine fat as a single giant cell that surrounds your body (this is just an example). There are certain areas of the human body that store more fat than others. For example, we tend to store more fat in our midsections compared to our calves. Therefore, there may be 1 inch of fat in the calves, but 2-3 inches of fat in the midsection. When we lose fat, that whole fat cell gets a little smaller. It can’t point to where it gets smaller, it just gets smaller everywhere. So now you can have ½ inch of fat in your calves but 2 inches of fat still in your midsection.

YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. So you better keep doing what you are doing by going to the gym and stop worrying about targeting specific parts of the body to lose fat.

5) Expect results without paying attention to diet

Most people think that going to the gym is enough to get their desired results.

Some people will find that they CAN get away with it and not have to worry about what or how much they eat.

Most other people will find that they CANNOT get away with it and fight. They will try to do more in the gym and often end up thinking that because they did more, they also deserve more “rewards” (food, ice cream, wine, you know what I mean). This causes them to consume more calories than they were already consuming and prevents any type of fat loss (if that was your original goal). Then they continue to fight or think “nothing works” and give up.

Don’t be that person. My advice when starting out in the gym:

Spend your first 2-4 weeks making gym a habit. It can be 2, 3, or 4 days a week, as long as you are realistic about your lifestyle and don’t create any problems with your schedule.

Once you’ve made a habit of setting a fixed gym schedule that doesn’t affect your lifestyle, take some time to educate yourself on the science of fat loss.

Once you understand how fat loss happens, you can look into different diet methods that will follow your lifestyle.

* Please note that this is not a quick fix. This is a lifestyle change. If you are going to try a diet “temporarily”, you will only get temporary results. If you want to lose fat and keep it off, you need to understand the process of how fat loss works and create a change in your eating habits that suits your goal and lifestyle.

* Try not to go to the gym and diet at the same time. This will stress you out and overwhelm you very quickly.

6) not having a gym plan

Lastly, having a gym plan makes a difference in the world. Have you ever gone to the gym, warmed up on a treadmill, and then asked yourself, “So what should I be working on today?” Then maybe you hit some arms, some abs machines, then you stretch and voila.

What do you do in the next session? What weight did you use on the abs machine in the last session? How many reps could you do?

Sure, this can be a bit of fun and I definitely don’t expect a newcomer to jump straight into a training program. But having a program will give you guidance and give you something to improve on. Tracking your workouts, sets, reps, and weight will show you the progress you’ve made over time. It will also help you get an idea of ​​the areas you would like to focus on (like increasing your squat or deadlift) and help you better plan your next lifting session. You don’t have to follow a super complex program or record every little movement you make. But keeping track of workouts here and there and hitting the gym with a plan will help you a lot more than hitting the gym without a plan.

ABSTRACT:

– You do not have to commit suicide in each session. But don’t be a sissy and don’t push yourself.

– No need to force more gym days to get good results. But if you enjoy it and it doesn’t affect you mentally or physically and it doesn’t ruin your lifestyle, then do 4, 5, 6 or 7 sessions a week.

– Don’t be afraid of muscles.

– YOU CANNOT choose where you want to lose fat. So stop trying to target specific body parts with a fancy workout you saw on Instagram and start focusing on getting stronger and getting more work done.

– Some of you can get good results just by going to the gym with no dietary changes. Most of you will need a plan for both the gym and the kitchen. Don’t expect crazy results if you are not doing the necessary work.

– Having a training plan will give you better results than not having a training plan. So plan.