Gym mistakes

Every day you can see people going into the gym to improve their health. Yet every day they are making the same mistakes and can erode their health.

These are some of the most common mistakes that can be seen:

No mobility work.

As we age our joints start to get stiff and we lose range of motion. Our movement quality becomes gradually worse.

This increases the stress on the body. You are now demanding of your body to perform a training session on top of this dysfunction.
You do not move as efficiently as you can so it requires more energy to perform the exercise. This causes increased aging of the joint because it is not moving and working as it should.
By incorporating 3-4 minutes of mobility work before each training session you can gradually improve movement quality. As a result your training will be more efficient and the stress on your joints will be lessened.

Your body will stay younger for longer as a result.

 

No Tissue Quality Work.

A foam roller is something that you rarely if ever see being used in a commercial gym. If it is being used it is not being used for what it should be.
By foam rolling before your training sessions you are improving the quality of your muscle tissue. Foam rolling follows a similar process to a massage.

It is by no means as effective but if done regularly it will keep tissue quality good.

It has also been shown to invoke a more relaxed tone within the muscle. This is good for the whole body and is really good just before the next step.

Stretching

Stretching is another area that is often not given the time it should be.

It is quite often skipped over completely. All because of some research that came out that said stretching before a workout reduces performance.

But when the research was examined the results were extremely exaggerated. The effects of stretching where nowhere near that stated.

Particular attention has to be paid to technique when stretching. If you stretch with poor technique the stretch will become a wasted effort. You will not get the desired results and your efforts will have been in vein.

Too Much Time Spent Under the Bench

This is a problem that you can see with such a high percentage of gym goers.

They go every day and bench press every day. They are obsessed with bench pressing and comparing their scores against each other.

Sorry to say this guys but the bench press is the least functional of all exercises you can do in the gym.

You can always easily see the guy that spends too much time under the bench. He will have a tight chest and rounded shoulders. They will often have a sore shoulder and back as well.

This is because they spend all this time working their push press but never develop their backs. As we age we have muscle that progressively gets tighter and shorter and muscles that get weak and longer.

Your chest muscles get short and tight and your back muscle get long and weak. That is why you see old people hunched over and rounded backs. So unless you want to look old with a hunched and rounded back don’t spend as much time under the bench. You should do at least twice as much back work as you do chest work.

Forget they have Legs

This is a huge mistake by a lot of people going to the gym.

They forget they have two legs that they use to support the rest of their body on.

The fact is your legs are the most important muscle group to work on. They are the foundation that the rest of you is built upon.

I really do not understand why people neglect leg work. Maybe it is because they spend so much time covered by trousers or shorts. Nobody ever really sees them and if they do it is not as interesting as big biceps or a six pack. Or maybe it is because it is just hard work developing real leg strength.

Either way it is not an excuse and nobody can afford to neglect leg strength.

Every training session should have a well-designed flow. All aspects of health and vitality should be worked on in every week.

At the end of the day we are going to the gym to look better and feel younger not accelerate our aging.