5 MISTAKES YOU ARE PROBABLY MAKING THAT ARE LIMITING YOUR PROGRESS

5 MISTAKES YOU ARE PROBABLY MAKING THAT ARE LIMITING YOUR PROGRESS

(There are many more )

You have to have goals in almost everything you do, including fitness goals. But we sometimes get in our own way. We become myopic about the short term steps and forget about the long term progress. Sometimes we concentrate on doing more when we actually should be doing less.

1.     Using too much Weight

I see it all the time. I could take you in my gym on any given day and show you dozens of people sacrificing form for additional loading. It’s been ingrained in our psyche; “If you’re not progressing you are regressing”. And that statement is true. But that statement says nothing about time frames. We get focused on increasing the weight each workout or each week and forget about form.

Form is everything. Add too much weight too fast and form suffers. In other words, you are cheating. And when you cheat on your reps, you are, to a large degree, wasting effort.

2.     Adding too much volume

Your progress has stalled. You’ve gone a whole week or two and haven’t gained any muscle or lost any fat or added any weight. You must not be working hard enough. Right?

Progress, with any fitness goal, is not linear; it moves in fits and starts. You will have weeks (maybe more) when you make no progress. Then suddenly the progress will jump forward again. You’re just going to have to learn to live with that. If you keep adding more, sooner or later, you will stall completely.

Remember; you don’t get stronger or build muscle in the gym. You make progress during recovery.

3.     Setting your expectation too high

I don’t think you can set a cap on your goals. It’s the time frame (again) you probably need to manage better. That role model, favorite athlete, pro bodybuilder or Olympic lifter, even the biggest guy in your local gym did not get where they are in a month or a year or even 5 years. This is a long term proposition. If you set too short a time frame for your goals you will get discouraged and you’ll give up. Learn to enjoy the journey

While we’re on the subject of role models;

4.     Forget the workouts of the pros

The pros have been training at a high level with near perfect diet/nutrition plans for years. They have coaches, nutritionists, chefs, doctors and, unfortunately, “chemical assistance”. And this is often their livelihood.

Pay attention to tips and tricks and principles but don’t try to emulate their workouts.

Having had the opportunity to be around a few professional and college athletes, I can safely say you probably don’t have their genetics either. I’m not saying you have bad genetics. But the pros, in any athletic endeavor, are freaks compared to the rest of us.

5.     Your nutrition sucks

Entire books (hundreds of them) have been written on this subject and I’m not going o try to tell you what’s wrong with your nutrition in a couple of paragraphs.  But the old saying you’ve heard a hundred times before pretty much says it all.

You can’t out train a bad diet.

Fix the nutrition first. Fix the recovery aspects second. Then, and only then, worry about the workouts.