10 Most Common Weight Training Mistakes

10 Most Common Weight Training Mistakes

Weight training mistakes are often a barrier to lean muscle building success. Avoid the following mistakes and you are left with the potential of a long, healthy lifting career and ultimately the fit healthy body you have always been hoping for.

Mistake 1: Training with no-written goal(s) 

Without any written goals, it is pointless to work out at all! Many train aimlessly and hope for the best. However, this is a mistake. Goals must be specific, clearly defined and written down to be your best guide in training. Writing a goal down is the first step in making it a reality.

Mistake 2: Training While Injured

If you are injured in any way, it is best to seek treatment. Never attempt to train through pain. Pain, regardless of location, will create altered muscular tension across the joint and lead to edema and inflammation. This will cause excessive muscle tightening which will ultimately lead to limited muscular elongation, restricted joint movement, and tendon function limitation. If left unchecked, functional disability may occur.

 Mistake 3: Ignoring Proper Form

Proper form prevents the muscles, joints, and tendons from injury. Proper form is the positioning of your body from when movement begins to the point which it ends, which should be the starting position. When proper form is not used you will develop muscular imbalances throughout the workout. These muscular imbalances can lead to rounded shoulders, forward head position, walking with pronated feet, as well as many other issues.

Mistake 4: Ignoring Nutrition

Proper nutrition provides the basic building blocks and energy you need to build lean muscle and burn fat. Without it the chances of building lean muscle and burning fat efficiently are dramatically reduced. Your focus should not only be on eating high quality protein, fresh vegetables, and fruits, but also on the portion sizes.

Mistake 5: Training like a Bodybuilder

Many bodybuilding programs that you see in magazines and online are not balanced, as well as fail to teach the basics and help you develop a functional foundation. They are typically designed for seasoned lifters, which hopefully have already developed the functional foundation needed to avoid injuries from training. Most of the programs that you will find in magazines and online have very little scientific proof of effectiveness and are not truly a real periodization plan. Thus, avoid blindly following some program you saw in a magazine. 

Mistake 6: Lack of Training Variation 

Training routines must be varied to avoid boredom and muscle plateau. A properly designed periodization plan will vary the exercises in each plan to avoid over-training as well. Every periodization plan should start by developing the functional foundation so that no muscle imbalances are developed during training. Muscle imbalances can also be developed from poorly designed plans that focus on only strength and not endurance strength as well.

Mistake 7: Training with No Periodization Model

Periodization refers to the training plan. Training can be broken into mesocycles (yearly plan), macrocycles (monthly plan), and microcycles (weekly plan). Every periodization plan should be designed and altered as you progress. The periodization plan is your guide, but if the body adapts quickly or more slowly that’s when alterations need to be made to the plan.

Mistake 8: Ignoring the Principle of Specificity

The body's adaptation to training is very specific to the type of training that has been performed. Training the body for strength and size will require you to challenge the muscle in different ways.

For example:

·       High volume and heavy weights

·       Low volume and very heavy weight

·       Changing of the exercises being performed

These are just 3 examples of changes that can be made in the plan without losing strength or lean muscle size.

Mistake 9: Overuse of Unstable Surface Training

Unstable surface training is basically training using wobble boards, dyna discs and BOSU balls. Although, this method has shown to increase core muscle activity and stability, its application is very limited as it alters neuromuscular recruitment patterns and may interfere with stable surface training. If it is to be used, know what you are doing instead of blindly following a functional training fad. Most importantly, it should be performed appropriately according to your target goals. 

Mistake 10: Excessive use of machines

Machines operate on a fixed axis of rotation, meaning the same ligaments, tendons and muscles are utilized each time and in the same order every time to complete a given repetition. This causes the neuromuscular system to recruit less stabilizer muscles, which are typically used to protect joints from injury. Plus, only using machines also increases the risk of overuse injuries and repetitive stress.