Exercise Mistakes Avoid them and Maintain Great Fitness
A poor warm up does have to top the chats at number 1 quite comfortably. Did you know the most common injury in the gym is a pulled muscle and what causes a pulled muscle? It is a stretch of the muscle which isn’t quite warmed up properly. I am sure by now you must of read numerous on-line guides and spoke to fitness trainers who all stress warm ups and there is a reason behind this and this is to prevent muscle injury and also to prevent connective tissue damage. If you damage your muscle, you will find that muscles are very quick to heal, however if you are ever in such an unfortunate place to damage your tendons or ligaments then the healing process is a very long one. A warm up gives your body a safe start.
Too much machine use has to take the spot at number 2, whilst machines are great and some exercises are invaluable, such as leg extensions or hamstring curls or bicep curl machines, the fact is, that a free weight exercise equivalent will tend to always be better and more effective as they will incorporate stabilising muscles and also promotes ‘real world’ strength too. Take a bench press machine, you will mostly hit the pecs, and shoulders and triceps too, however doing a free weight bench press or dumbbell press will incorporate the surrounding muscles and stabilising muscles too. As another example take a machine leg press, it will mainly work the quads, with perhaps a little hamstring work too, however a squat will work your glutes, your quads, your hamstrings, your calves, it will target nearly every single muscle in your leg indirectly. As a general rule of thumb you should look to start off with free weight movements and finish on machine exercises if you feel so obliged.
In at number 3, is poor exercise technique and this does apply to both machine and free weight use however it mostly applies to free weights as this is more room for error in such exercises. Many people will be focused on strength in the gym and there will be a point where sometimes form of doing the exercise will give out in favour of increasing in strength! For instance standing bicep curls will be done perfectly to begin with, however then the person who lifts may well tend to put their back into the lift. I have know so many people who have put their lower backs out via this method. You need to maintain perfect form even when increasing the weight you lift.
Poor exercise progression is the next culprit, sometimes people will become complacent with their routine and this may not be a bad thing depending on what your goals are. If your goals are just to maintain your current physique or maintain your current fitness levels, then obviously staying at the same level on all your exercises may be desirable, however if you are striving to become fitter or stronger then you need to focus on increasing activity level this can either be in resistance or in frequency or time etc. Push your body more often, this is how it adapts.
Lastly but by no means least, is overtraining. It is all too easy to get the gym bug and get really into your training and become enthusiastic to the point where it can become ineffective for your body. Lets take a look at a weight lifter example, he starts training in the gym and notices some big improvements in muscle size and strength, so he wants to continue to exercise that area over and over again, however muscles need time to recover so listen to your body and dial back when you need to.
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