The mistakes I see people make in every gym I visit are consistent, no matter what city or country I happen to be in. Here’s a shocking statistic: nine out of 10 people join a gym for fat loss but only one per cent are successful in their goal.
There are a number of reasons why but here I have compiled a list of seven common mistakes people make in the gym.
Excessive cardio
The common selling point of a large gym is the 20 plasma screens, 40 treadmills, cross trainers and a spin studio. At peak time you’ll often see the same people occupying the same piece of equipment every time they go to the gym.
They train at a low-intensity, speed, incline or resistance for a steady duration.
We are creatures of habit but our bodies adapt to the stresses we place upon them. We adapt to the challenge of steady-state cardio after about eight weeks, so we need to manipulate different training variables to illicit a training response.
Long-distance runners eventually cannibalise their fat-burning muscle, slowing down their resting metabolic rate. This rate is the energy you need to just keep your body alive.
Interval training is a more efficient method for fat loss. Twelve all-out sprints on a spin bike with heavy resistance, for 30 seconds sprint with a two-minute rest, would expend more energy than 30 minutes walking on a treadmill.
Excessive weight training
Consistent weight training helps your body raise its metabolic rate by building more lean fat-burning muscle. The correct repetition range, exercise tempo and rest periods can cause your tissues to become smaller in size, more dense and more toned in shape.
We can enhance this fat burning by incorporating sprint intervals alongside your weight training on different days. We cannot replicate the twisting and turning and stretching in muscles in sports in a weight room. That is why it’s essential to sprint, box or play competitive sports alongside your weights.
You will sweat, which releases toxins and accelerates your fat-loss goals. Modified strongman training is an excellent way to combine both methods into one training session.
A programme design based on guessing, not assessing
We all have strengths and weaknesses. The best programme, like the best suit, is the one that is tailored to your individual body. I see a lot of people following Men’s Health-style body-builder programmes.
The body-builder has been training for years and has more training volume in his programme than you can tolerate.
These Men’s Health-inspired workouts often include exercises that are weird but not wonderful. They attract the kind of people who think that the best exercise is the one they are not doing.
Too long on the same programme
Another of the seven common mistakes people make in the gym is staying on the same training programme for too long.
A training programme is only as good as the time it takes you to adapt. Most people should only follow the same one for four to six weeks at best.
Not recording your workouts
Recording the weights you lift in your workouts means you can analyse the success of a programme when you review and compare the total volume. This way you can easily see if the average weight you lifted with each workout has increased. If it has it means you’re getting stronger.
Length of time in the gym
This rule is simple: if you are in the gym longer than an hour you are making friends and socialising, not training.
Whey you are disciplined and train hard it won’t take you long to tire yourself out. We produce testosterone in the early stage of our workout and we maintain it until about 40 minutes in.
Testosterone builds muscle that burns fat. Men produce 10 times the amount women do, so it is a lot harder for women to get bigger. The longer you go over an hour, combining one class with another, you are producing more of the muscle-eating hormone cortisol, which will inhibit your fat-loss mission.
Not training often enough/hard enough
The final thing on my list of the seven common mistakes people make in the gym is to do with frequency. People who train four times a week have a 50pc higher success rate than those that train two or three times a week.
The intensity with which you train is also important. There is a difference between exercising and training; exercising is going to the gym while training is pushing yourself hard each time towards an end goal. At the end you will have a result or an excuse – you can’t have both.