6 common mistakes when doing gymnastics
1) Have an “All or Nothing” mentality
“Without pain there is no gain”
“Give him EVERYTHING you have”
“Feel the Burn”
“If you’re not sore, you’re not working hard enough”
“110% effort all the time”
Some of you can make good progress with this mindset, and some of you may need to think this way to get past plateaus or get to the gym. But if you constantly live by these quotes, or something similar, chances are you’ll either stop with your lifting, your weight loss/muscle building progress, or just hate lifting weights (because most people don’t like to be sore 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) .
This doesn’t mean you should never push hard. There will be days when you have to give 110% in the gym. But I am referring mainly to those who leave the gym and are not able to sit, climb stairs or raise an arm without pain or discomfort after each session. You know who you are.
It is possible to burn out very quickly if your goal is to go all out at every gym session.
You have to 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 need to be in the gym 7 days a week to reach your desired fitness goals.
Most people get great results from just 3 days in the gym (as long as they do the work required). However, if you like being in the gym 7 days a week and it’s not a problem for you, go 7 days a week. It’s just that sometimes people push themselves into the gym when they know for a fact that they don’t want to be there because they’re too tired from all the other gym days, which will only create an unhealthy habit. Or maybe they just don’t have the time, but keep telling themselves they “need” to go to the gym, which will continue to stress them out because they missed that extra day they “planned” to go. .
As for cardio, if you do it every day for the fun of it, keep doing it. However, if you have created this thought that the more cardio you do in a week, the faster and better results you will get, you will be disappointed. Very disappointed. Not just because you’re spending a ton of time doing cardio and you hate every second of it, but because cardio isn’t the best option for fat loss. You would be better off using that time to design a better diet that fits your lifestyle and fitness goal while using a combination of weight lifting and conditioning instead of cardio to reduce the time you spend in the gym and improve your results.
Also, our bodies are pretty amazing 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.
What does that mean?
Well, if you started out doing 50 minutes of normal, steady cardio burning 200 calories (this is not exact, just an example), your body will get “better” at doing cardio and you’ll burn fewer calories for the same amount of cardio. This is pretty annoying because your goal is to burn calories, right? So you will have to do more to burn what you used to. When using a weight lifting program with conditioning, there are multiple ways to change the stressor (increase weight, reps, sets, decrease rest, etc.) so that the body does not adapt and become so “energetically 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, curvy, 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 performing (increasing the reps per set or keeping the same reps and increasing the number of sets), or a combination of both.
Ex)
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 = 3150 pounds
3×12 with 100 pounds = 3600 pounds
4×10 with 100 pounds = 4000 pounds
If the goal is to build more muscle, I would personally go for the 4×10 option due to more overhead reps and work. However, if you are short on time, I suggest options 1 or 2.
By increasing the total work you can do (we refer to this as “bulk” = your weight in pounds in the example above), you will expend more energy (calories). 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 a higher number of 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 leaning over?
“Getting Too Big”
First of all, you need to get serious about training, programming, and dieting to grow. Most gym goers generally don’t have the desire to put in the amount of mental and physical work to get “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 drop the gym for a bit or eat a little less. You’re 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 flaccid.
You want your love handles to disappear.
You want definition in your thighs.
“We get it, you want to peek out.”
Doing crunches will not show your abs.
Doing triceps extensions will not reduce flab under the arms. (It’s a mix of your triceps muscle hanging out with a bit of fat covering it, so it’s never going to go away completely.)
Wrapping a waist trainer won’t reduce the fat around your love handles. (But temporarily it will make you look thinner)
Leg extensions will not define your thighs. (We’ll do this because you’ll build quad muscles)
You cannot target certain areas of the body to lose fat mass, unless you have liposuction. Please don’t go that way.
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 midsection compared to our calves. So there may be 1 inch of fat in the calves but 2-3 inches of fat in the midsection. When we lose fat, that single fat cell gets a little smaller. You can’t point where it gets smaller, it just gets smaller everywhere. So now you may have ½ inch of fat in your calves but 2 inches of fat still in your midsection.
YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. So it’s better to keep doing what you’re doing when you hit the gym and stop worrying about targeting specific body parts to lose fat.
5) Expect results without paying attention to the diet
Most people think that going to the gym is enough to get the desired results.
Some people will find that they CAN get away with not having to worry about what or how much they eat.
Most other people will find they CANNOT get away with fighting. They will try to do more in the gym and often end up thinking that since 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 already did and prevents any kind of fat loss (if that was your original goal). Then they keep fighting or they 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 the gym a habit. It can be 2, 3 or 4 days a week, as long as you are realistic with your lifestyle and don’t create any problems with your schedule.
Once you’ve gotten into the habit of sticking to a set gym schedule that doesn’t impact your lifestyle, spend some time educating yourself on the science of fat loss.
Once you understand how fat loss happens, you can look into different diet methods to suit 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 to fit your goal and lifestyle.
*Try not to take gym and diet at the same time. This will stress him out and overwhelm him very quickly.
6) Not having a gym plan
Lastly, having a gym plan makes all the difference in the world. Have you ever gone to the gym, warmed up on a treadmill, and then asked yourself, “so what should I work on today?” So maybe you hit some arms, some ab machines, then stretch and go.
What do you do next session? What weight did you use on the ab machine last session? How many repetitions were you able to do?
Sure, this can be fun for a while and I definitely don’t expect a newcomer to jump right into an exercise program. But having a program will give you direction and give you something to improve on. Tracking his workouts, sets, reps, and weight will show you the progress he’s made over time. It will also give you an idea of areas you’d 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 move you make. But keeping track of workouts here and there and going to the gym with a plan will help you a lot more than going to the gym without a plan.
SUMMARY:
– You don’t have to kill yourself every session. But don’t be a fagot and don’t try.
– It is not necessary to force more days in the gym to obtain good results. But if you enjoy it and it’s not affecting you mentally or physically and it’s not ruining 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 concentrating on getting stronger and doing more work.
– Some of you can get good results just by going to the gym without any changes in diet. Most of you will need a plan for both the gym and the kitchen. Don’t expect crazy results if you’re not doing the necessary work.
– Having a training plan will give you better results VS not having a training plan. So plan.
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