5 Common Gym Mistakes the Guys Make

Posted by
July 15th, 2008

Through out my years of working out and competitive sports I have seen a lot of friends and foes either excel or fall short of greatness. There are countless reasons why people fail and many of them originate in a gym. I can look back at my life and see many mistakes I had made; I can see how I corrected them to excel past their sticking points.

Majority of these are actually quite basic but you would be surprised how a person's ego or lack of experience dictates failure. Unfortunately many of my upcoming points tend to fall on deaf ears, which is rather funny since I am making gains and they are not. So first and foremost I ask you keep an open mind about the information I am about to reveal; besides if you read it on the internet it must be true right?

Using light weights and never pushing your self hard

If you look around the gym you will notice lots of people falling victim to this. Women train this way to get in shape while avoiding packing on the muscles, so why would you think it would be a good way for you to train. You have to push your self to use heavier weights, or you will always be doomed never to get bigger and stronger. There is a place for light work outs, but you must always find the balance between them and hard work outs.

You don't always have to go heavy to go hard. In fact it is always a good idea to shock your system. Some ideas you could go with are:

1. Heavy weights for sets of 5 reps
2. Throw in a few more sets then usual
3. Do more reps then usual
4. Occasionally do heavy sets of 1-3 reps
5. Use training methods such as 21's
6. Use free weights over machines

I remember one of my friends and I would go and work out at a crappy gym, though we were there together we didn't train together at first. He would always use machines and never push his weights up. I finally said it to him "Dude stop being a girl and lift some real weights". In 6 weeks he had almost caught up to me in the strength department, and he was looking bigger and more muscular.

Going too heavy all the time

I've trained for both Powerlifting and Professional Wrestling. The one constant thing is I can never push my body at 100% all the time. In fact pushing it more then a few weeks at a time tends to leave me worn out and feeling more aches and pains then usual. If every work out you do involves top sets of 1-3 reps, you are going to get decently big and strong but be injury prone and never able to see your true potential.

Don't be afraid to take a day off if you feel you need an extra day of rest, at the very least you could go in to the gym and do a light work out. You could even try things such as lowering the weight and doing reps really slow, even if you stuck with 3 reps it is training your body differently and stressing it in a different fashion.

Depth of your Squats

This one will be debated until the end of time and unfortunately the more popular side of the debate is misinformed. Going all the way down in your squats is healthy and doesn't risk injuring your knees. When you don't go all the way down your knee has a lot more stress placed on them as they act as breaks stopping you short of full reps. I have had knee problems on and off for years, and full squats always made them better. The likely way you could injure your knee is if you don't lower the weight in a controlled fashion, if your legs are wobbly you are putting unnatural stress on the sides of your knees.

Too much Jaw Jacking

Lets face it the gym is a very social environment, but there comes a point where your socializing is preventing you from working out. My training style allows me lots of rest betweens sets, I do have time to talk if I want but I don't always. Instead of getting bored between sets why not try focusing on your next one?

I see people walk into the gym late and instead of trying to get a short work out in, they start talking about other things and next thing you know they wasted a whole trip to the gym. We are all guilty of talking too much, but if you do it all the time you are setting your self up for failure.

Just last week I had a 20 minute conversation with a former NHL player, and sure enough I had cooled off and lost the last 7 sets off of my work out. I was training really hard, the moment I cooled off my body went into recovery mode and even as I tried to jump back in I could barely move the weight.

So instead of talking the talk, walk the walk.

Spotters who spot too much

Well one of the biggest benefit of having a spotter is the ability to go to and past failure safely. Unfortunately some spotters can actually hold you back. The spotter should never at any point touch you are the weights during you set, unless you are actually failing or they are helping you get the weights in position to start.

If you are doing bench presses and your training partner is hovering above you and is visibly showing signs of bulging veins from his unintentional set of upright rows, you aren't lifting effectively. When you are lifting effectively how can you judge your gains? You can't at all. Your spotter is better off being vocal with you through out the set reinforcing your strength with words of encouragement, and when you do fail a good spotter will only add enough pressure to get the bar moving. Some times all that is needed to help the lifter is the appearance of the hands touching the bar to help the lifter get the weight moving.

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