Fitness Mistakes You Should Avoid
Having a fitness program is one of the best choices you can make for your overall health. You’re entering a journey toward a stronger, more energized, and happier you. From your efforts, you will also be decreasing your risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
Common workout mistakes cannot only interfere with the health benefits of exercise but can also put you at a greater risk of injury.
There are a lot of counterproductive workout habits and its best to be aware of them to get the absolute most out of your workout.
Simple Fitness Mistakes To Avoid
- Skipping the warm-up. Warming up your muscles before your workout helps your muscles adjust to the exercises you will be doing and it’s a great way to slowly increase your heart rate and reduce injury. Warming up prepares your heart, lungs, and muscles for the main focus of your workout.
- Improper nutrition. If you embark on a fitness program without making a few adjustments to what you eat, you’ll find it a lot harder to get to where you want to be. On one end of the spectrum, you could potentially either end up gaining fat or, on the other end your body won’t have the energy supply it needs to work hard. Regardless, you will never out-exercise poor nutrition.
- Not having your water bottle with you. Water is crucial as it regulates your body temperature and lubricates your joints. It helps transport nutrients to give you energy and keep you healthy. If you’re not properly hydrated, your body can’t perform at its highest level. Also, valuable time will be wasted running back and forth to the water cooler, it’s always best to keep a bottle with you.
- Avoiding strength training. Strength training increases your muscle strength and elasticity, and it also builds strong connective tissues, tendons, and ligaments. It helps improve muscle tone, this is the ability of your muscles and connective tissue to hold your body in position. Examples of strength-training exercises include yoga, body-weight exercises, and resistance training using elastic bands and/or free weights or weight machines.
- Avoiding flexibility training. Maintaining muscle flexibility as a critical component of overall fitness. Flexibility can be termed as the ability of your joints and body parts to execute their full range of motion. To achieve proper fitness you really need to be able to move freely in all directions without any limitations to your range of motion (ROM), as this is what allows you to participate in all of life’s wonderful activities.
- Not changing your routine. Your workout routine should change every few weeks either by alternating the exercises or the variables like sets, reps, and rest times. For the greatest benefits, you should stay with a workout routine for about three to four weeks before changing it up.
- Forgetting why you are exercising. There will be days that you are feeling down, drained, lazy and the last thing you want to do is to do your work out. You want to just stay under the covers when the alarm goes off or be a couch potato and hope the day passes. On these days you need to remember the “why” behind your goals. Remembering the essential reasons behind why you are training will help keep you going on the tough days.
- Not having the advice and support of a trainer. If you’re not sure how to best exercise to reach your fitness goals whether they be to lose weight, build strength, or improve performance, a qualified fitness trainer can be invaluable. He or she can guide you in a fitness program that will be the appropriate intensity and duration to help you meet your goals while avoiding injury. A trainer can also teach you the proper technique which also reduces the risk of injury. Even one session with a trainer can give you worthwhile insights into proper form when you workout.
- Not having accountability. If you miss a workout day or eat a meal that you know is not ideal for your goal, it won’t matter because nobody will know any different. Not having someone to be accountable for you lets you roam free with no consequences. Get a work out buddy to keep you accountable.
- Not having proper rest and recovery time. It is important to balance your exercise with rest and recovery. Your body has limits. Remember, the greater the training intensity and effort you put into your workouts, the greater the need for the body to have planned recovery time. Without proper rest and recovery, you will also be at risk for injury.
The Takeaway
If you’ve been struggling to shed a few pounds and your exercise plan isn’t yielding any results, see if you are making one of these common workout mistakes.
Avoiding these fitness mistakes will allow you to become focused on the type of movement that will customize and reshape your body and your fitness levels.
Although some of these mishaps may be minor, they can actually lead to huge setbacks in your fitness gains.
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