5 Mistakes People Make
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1. Lack of clearly defined goals
This is the most important aspect of successful programming. It is also the most difficult to figure out. If you asked people what they want from fitness you get a variety of different answers. They have a shotgun approach, meaning they don’t target anything specific and go after anything in sight. They might be something like, “I want to be more toned,” “I want to lose weight,” “I want to stay in shape.” I understand those answers, but make them more specific! Take the sniper approach, and use words like. “I want to lose 10 lbs and 5% body fat while keeping my 5k time under 30 min.” Or, “I want to increase my deadlift by 50 lbs without having my 5k time increase and endurance go down.” These two are much more specific answers that can be delt with. The others are too general and lead down the road of lackluster results. Be specific with what kind of results and qualities you want to improve upon.
2. Not writing things down
Progressive Overload is the key. But how do you know what you did last week if you did not write it down? How can you progress if you did not know how much you did last week? Trust me you won’t remember, I have been there done that. Write EVERYTHING down in a journal and keep track of it. This goes for food logs too. How many calories do you know your taking in if you don’t write it down and track everything? This is common sense! If you take in more than you expend, then you probably don’t look like you want. Figure out your caloric expenditure based on physical activity levels and then figure out how much your taking in. Stop shooting darts with your eyes closed trying to guess everything. You end up with less than ideal results. You have to know where you are before you begin to to figure out where your going.
3. Poor Balance
This can take on many forms but basically poor balance in the sense of overemphasizing one aspect of fitness while neglecting others. If you are weak then get stronger, if you are inflexible then get more flexible, if you get out of breath from reading this, run more or do other forms of cardio. If you cannot recover from your workouts then decrease your volume, intensity, or frequency and replace them with more recovery workouts. I am a big fan of exercising EVERY DAY, just don’t be stupid. Work on what you need to work on to get better. Exercise can be as simple as standing on 1 leg to work on your balance, or stretching those tight muscles out, just don’t lay around doing nothing. If your lacking in one area, overemphasize that area, but don’t neglect the other areas. Train your BODY…EVERYDAY in some way shape or form. In an hour workout you can hit multiple biomotor abilities which looks like….
10 min – warm up/flexibility + mobility
10 min – core + pillar strength
20 min – total body strength + agility + speed
10 min – cardiovascular conditioning
10 min – cooldown/ balance + coordination
4. Poor Nutrition
You can’t out train a crappy diet. You can’t run 10 miles and eat whatever you want. Overweight people finish marathons all the time. I don’t know how else to say it except stop lying to yourself. The effort it takes in a gym to burn those ______ calories off….is A LOT of effort. It is much easier to NOT eat that 100 calorie pack of cookies then it is to burn off 100 calories. A calorie is NOT calorie. You cannot try to tell me 2000 calories of pizza, cereal, sandwhich, and cookies is the same as 2000 calories of broccoli, salmon, rice, and beans. Quality of food reigns supreme. Food also helps you recover from those hard workouts. Your sore, fatigued and in a bad mood because your eating like a bird. Eat some quality foods like sweet potatoes, brown rice, asparagus, tilapia, walnuts, and chicken to help give your the body the nutrients it is desperately wanting. You wouldn’t build a skyscraper from water logged wood and sticks you find a in pond, just like you don’t build a great body by feeding it M&M’s, spaghetti Oh’s, and ice cream. Quality raw materials (food) will help you construct that beautiful skyscraper (your body).
5. Not Committed
You can have the best goal, figure out your caloric intake/expenditure, have a great workout program, but if you don’t follow through with that and be committed, you won’t get anywhere! Health and fitness is like a savings bank; Everyday you save a little bit which doesn’t look like much, but after a year or two, you have build up a good amount of money. Just like a savings account, if you train your body a little bit everyday over the course of a year you will look 100x better. You may be super sore one day and not be able to make it or be super busy, but the next day you better be working out making up for that lost day. If you were supposed to do cardio but had to skip, then it would be wise to extend the conditioning portion of your workout the next day. You don’t have to be super intense and necessarily work harder, just work smarter. Most people quit right before they are about to succeed and never really know how close they were. DON’T let that be you.