Fitness
8 of the most common mistakes everyone makes in the gym
As a personal trainer for over a decade, Ben Longley has seen it all. Twice. Here are his top tips for avoiding gym-inflicted injury, niggles and pain.
1. Not warming up properly
Think of warm-ups like a yoga flow.
© Bruce Mars
Given the fact that most people sit at a desk all day, a proper warm up is essential for optimising gym performance and safety. Jumping on a bike or treadmill for 5-10 minutes is not the best warm up, and you’re leaving a lot on the table if that’s your go-to.
A proper warm up should aim to:
- Mobilise your ‘tight’ areas like hips, thoracic spine, shoulders, ankles
- Activate important and often inhibited muscles like glutes (your butt)
- Increase core temperature
- Excite the nervous and hormonal systems.
While this deserves an article all to itself, running through a more dynamic sequence of various movements (almost think like a yoga flow) along with some foam rolling and dynamic stretches will better prepare your body for a great session and help you maintain your movement quality.
2. Poor technique
Practice perfect form before you lift anything heavy.
© Victor Freitas
This is one of the biggest issues in gyms everywhere. More often than not, people are doing their exercises with bad technique, increasing risk of injury and long-term niggles, aches and pains.
Your average person buys a gym membership and is often left to their own devices to figure out what to do on their own. Pair that with modern-day desk posture and its accompanying muscle imbalances, and you have a recipe for disaster. Seek out some help and learn proper training technique if you think you’re in this boat. You’ll reap the rewards forever.
3. Too heavy, too soon
Lifting too much before you're ready is a one-way ticket to injury town.
© Arthur Edelman
Related to the previous point, going too heavy, too soon, is a common mistake. Men are generally the biggest offenders here. Call it ego, an inflated sense of capabilities, or the desire to impress the ladies, but all too often this is what you’ll see if you walk into any public gym.
Lightening the loads is one easy way to tidy up a lot of training technique straight away, and will save a lot of injuries (and forced time off training as a result). When you enter the gym, leave your ego at the door, start light, practice the proper form and gradually progress the weight.
4. Too light for too long
Not progressing up weights can make your fitness goals hit a plateau.
© Cyril Caulnier
This might seem a contradictory point to the previous one, but they’re both common mistakes. It’s time to pick on the ladies here (and some of the guys too, actually).
The whole point of strength training is to lift a load that is challenging in order to create stress on the body. The body adapts to this stress over time, in the form of increased strength, bigger or more toned muscles, improved work capacity etc.
Assuming form is acceptable, then it’s important to progressively increase your weights to keep getting results. If you keep lifting the same weight week in, week out, your body won’t change.
5. Incorrect breathing
Practice deep belly breathing to aid recovery.
© Unsplash
Another point which deserves its own article. Incorrect or dysfunctional breathing is a common issue for many people in these modern day, highly stressful times. Instead of ‘belly’ breathing using our diaphragm, many people develop shallow chest breathing and mouth breathing. Mouth breathing means you’re inhaling through the mouth instead of through the nose.
Incorrect breathing can lead to increased stress, blood pressure, anxiety, muscular tightness, compromised cardiovascular output and it will hinder your ability to train hard and lose body fat. When exercising and getting your heart rate up, focus on inhaling through the nose (your belly should inflate as you do so) and exhaling through your mouth.
6. Poor exercise selection
Make sure you program your workouts wisely.
© Alora Griffiths
It’s common to see people show up to the gym and just randomly hop from one machine to the next, or pick an arbitrary sequence of exercises with no rhyme or reason. Exercises are tools that can help us achieve a goal, so it’s important we choose the right tool for the job. Bicep curls should not take up half of your training session.
Focus instead on compound strength exercises, these are exercises which use multiple muscle groups at the same time, think of them as BIG movements. Squats, deadlifts, push ups, lunges, chip ups, rows and variations of these exercises should be the staple of your strength training workouts.
These exercises give you the biggest bang for your buck and will give the best results. Save all the smaller isolation exercises for the end, or many time-poor people could even scrap them altogether and replace them with these bigger lifts.
7. Poor Programming
Push the prowler for a dose of punishing cardio.
© Jesper Aggergaard
Exercise selection is important, and the order in which you do them is also important, for both safety and progress. Don’t start your workouts by smashing yourself with a lot of cardio first or focusing on direct arm work like bicep curls.
Start with the most complex exercises first which are the most taxing and have a higher risk of injury, (like deadlifts and squats) and then move through exercises which coincide with your goals.
Splitting your gym sessions into separate body part for separate days (ie. arm days and leg days) is a common program many people adopt, but it’s not the most effective way for your average 9-5 desk jockey and family man (or woman) to program.
I encourage full body training, incorporating all the big lifts in a sensible order. Something like this:
- Double leg exercise (deadlift or squat)
- Pushing exercise (like a push up or bench press)
- Pulling exercise (like rows or chin ups)
- A lunge
- Another push
- Another pull
- Core stability work
- Cardio
There are endless ways to devise a sensible and effective program, and individualise it based on your training frequency, history and specific goals. But this is a good, basic template to get started.
8. Not enough effort
To get the most out of any gym session, you need to put the most into it.
© Alora Griffiths
This is pretty straightforward. If you’re not breathing heavily, sweating, or uncomfortable in any way, then it’s unlikely you’re going to get any meaningful results. All the good stuff happens outside of your comfort zone, so train yourself to get there if this is not a natural thing for you.
Most people know intuitively if they’re working hard and putting in enough effort. You don’t have to kill yourself in the gym, but like anything in life, some hard work is required if you want to succeed.
About Ben Longley
Ben Longley has been a personal trainer for over 12 years, and is the owner of The Fit Stop - Personal Training & Group training in St Kilda, Melbourne, specialising in strength training, functional movement and fat loss. For more info about their services, you can visit: www.stkildafitnesstrainer.com.au/blog
