The 3 Big Mistakes You Are Making With Your Workouts

Earlier we talked about the four things you should change in your diet to give you maximum leverage in building a lean, strong, healthy body. Of course, diet isn’t everything and you should incorporate physical exercise into your life as well. But before you start pounding away at the gym, make sure you read the following list, which will save you hours each week and give you better results than if you do what 99% of everyone else is doing.

1. You Are Wasting Time With Your Resistance Training

All right, it’s legs day at the gym again today! Time to hit the machines and pump out those leg extensions, leg curls, and calf raises! Then, like every workout, we’ll throw in enough crunches or vertical leg raises until our abs burn… Well, that’s the way I was for many years. I’m not gonna say it doesn’t work, just that it’s a highly ineffective way to build muscle and get in shape.

Let me explain. The human body has been formed over eons by the brute force of evolution to do such things as chase down dinner, get away from predators, and gather wood for the fire. The movements that our bodies used to thrive in these environments were complex and involved the entire body. Hauling a wooly mammoth back home, climbing a tree to get to safety, bending and stooping to gather objects, these are the motions our bodies are designed to thrive at doing. In contrast, it is only very recently that we started doing things such as bicep curls and leg extensions. In fact, you can pretty much trace it to when people started to go to gyms.

If you can do exercises that work many different muscle groups, then why not? You can drastically cut down on the time you spend in the gym that would be better utilized in other areas of your life. You also get to work on your coordination and agility, two of many key elements of fitness that get ignored with isolation exercises. Instead, try your hand at squats, deadlifts, presses, pull-ups, and dips. You’ll get an amazing ROI and will still be able to have a life.

2. All That Running Is Doing More Harm Than Good

Is there anything more soul-deadening than doing cardio? Running like a hamster on a wheel day after day in an attempt to burn fat? Thank goodness for TV and iPods, otherwise I truly believe that scientists would find a link between treadmill usage and homicidal behavior. Much like isolation exercises for resistance training, sweating it out for hours on elliptical machines is a poor use of time and energy. Not only that, but it defeats its own purpose.

In spite of the cultural assumption that “cardio” is necessary to keep a lean physique, the best way is to eat a diet that doesn’t promote fat accumulation. Namely: lots of meat and vegetables, and some fruit, nuts, seeds, and eggs. That way you don’t have to deal with the fat in the first place.

The biggest problem with doing lots of cardio stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics. Specifically, that energy consumption and energy expenditure are independent variables. In other words, when you burn calories you get hungry. You then have two options: chow down and undo everything you’ve done over the past workout, or use up all your willpower to keep yourself starving. Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.

Instead, do the two types of cardio that our bodies are naturally inclined to do. Short sprints and lots of walking. You won’t work up an appetite but will give yourself a long-term advantage with your fitness. The benefits of these exercises are much greater than anything you could hope for by pounding away on a treadmill every day.

3. Your Workout Routines Are Too, Well, Routine

Have you ever started a new exercise program that you were completely gung-ho about at first? Maybe it was January 1^st and, filled with optimism, you’d just planned out a week-by-week routine to get back in shape. The first few weeks were great. You felt refreshed and energized. You even started to see some results in the form of weight loss or strength gains. Then, after a while, things start to get a bit dull. You’re in much better shape than you used to be, but haven’t achieved your lofty goals yet. Your workouts, once fresh and exciting, are now dull and boring. This gets worse and worse until you reach the inevitable conclusion, the plateau, where you drag yourself to the gym and do the same things you’ve always done and yet see no results.

You can only make positive gains with your exercising when you put your body into a state of eustress. This is achieved by doing things that are slightly outside the “comfort zone” of what our bodies are used to. Do a certain movement many times, and you can do it unconsciously. This is where the term “muscle memory” comes from.

To get the biggest ROI from your workouts, vary them constantly. Go to the gym and do more (or less) weight than you’re used to. Do your exercises in a different order. Do exercises you haven’t done in a while. It’ll keep things fresh and exciting. Oh yeah, and it will help you gain a lot more strength than you were before.

Do you have any other tips on how to increase the ROI on your workouts?

Tagged as: boredom, cardio, confusion, plateau, resistance training, sprinting, weightlifting