1) Have an “All or Nothing” mentality

“Without pain there is no gain”

“Give him ALL you’ve got”

“Feel the Burn”

“If you’re not sore, you’re not working hard enough”

“110% effort all the time”

Some of you may make good progress with this mindset, and some of you may need to think this way to break through plateaus or make it to the gym. But if you constantly live by these quotes, or something similar, you’re likely to stall with your lifts, your weight loss/muscle building progress, or just hate lifting weights (because most people don’t like being heavy). sore 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) .

This doesn’t mean you should never press hard. There will be days when you have to give 110% in the gym. But I am mainly referring to those who leave the gym and are not able to sit down, climb stairs or raise an arm without pain and 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 in every gym session.

You must 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 work out 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 with just 3 days in the gym (as long as they put in the necessary work). However, if you like to be 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 force 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 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 fun, keep doing it. However, if you have created this thought that the more cardio you do in a week, the better and faster the 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’d be better off using that time to design a better diet that suits your lifestyle and fitness goal while using a combination of weightlifting 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 regular, steady cardio burning 200 calories (this isn’t 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 than you used to. When using a conditioning weightlifting program, there are multiple ways to change the stressor (increase weight, reps, sets, decrease rest, etc.) so that the body does not adapt and becomes so “energetically efficient” when compared to regular low-intensity cardio.

3) Being afraid of gaining muscle or getting “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, lean, etc…”.

To increase muscle mass, you must lift weights. You should also increase the amount of work you do over time.

You can increase the work by increasing the weights you’re lifting, increasing the total number of reps you’re doing (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 x 10 with 105 pounds = 3,150 pounds

3×12 with 100 pounds = 3600 pounds

4 x 10 with 100 pounds = 4,000 pounds

If the goal is to build more muscle, I would personally choose the 4×10 option due to more overall reps and work being done. However, if you’re short on time, I’d suggest options 1 or 2.

By increasing the total work you can do (we refer to this as “volume” = weight in pounds in the example above), you’ll 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 for fat loss compared to someone who is not lifting weights or doing a good amount of work. Would you complain about eating more while bending over?

“Getting Too Big”

First of all, you need to seriously engage in training, programming and diet in order 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 out of the gym a little 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 flabby.

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 sagging under the arms. (It’s a mix of your triceps muscle hanging down with a bit of fat covering it, so it will never go away completely)

Wrapping a waist trainer will not reduce fat around your love handles. (But it will temporarily make you look slimmer)

Leg extensions will not define your thighs. (We will because you will build quad muscles)

You cannot target certain areas of the body to lose fat mass unless you have liposuction. Please don’t go down that road.

I need you to get creative for a second and imagine fat as a single giant cell surrounding 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 target 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 best to keep doing what you’re doing when you hit the gym and stop worrying about targeting specific body parts for fat loss.

5) Expect results without paying attention to 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 it and not have to worry about what or how much they eat.

Most other people will find that they CANNOT get away with it and fight back. 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 were already consuming and prevents any kind of fat loss (if that was your original goal). Then they keep fighting or think “nothing works” and give up.

Don’t be that person. My advice when starting in the gym:

Spend your first 2-4 weeks making a habit of going to the gym. It can be 2, 3 or 4 days a week, as long as you are realistic with your lifestyle and don’t create any issues with your schedule.

Once you’ve gotten into the habit of sticking to a regular gym schedule that doesn’t affect your lifestyle, spend some time educating yourself on the science of fat loss.

Once you understand how fat loss happens, you can look at different diet methods that 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 the gym and diet at the same time. This will stress 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 wondered, “so what should I work on today?” So maybe you hit some arms, some ab machines, then stretch and voila.

What are you doing next session? What weight did you use on the ab machine in the last session? How many reps 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 ​​the areas you’d like to focus on (such as increasing your squat or deadlift) and help you better plan your next lifting session. You don’t have to follow a super complex schedule 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.

ABSTRACT:

– You don’t have to kill yourself every session. But don’t be a fag and don’t force yourself.

– It is not necessary to force more days of 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 focusing on getting stronger and getting more work done.

– Some of you can get good results just by going to the gym with no change 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.