COMMON TRAINING-RELATED MISTAKES
More and more people are taking up training these days to better their health and appearance. However, they sometimes make mistakes which draw them farther from the desirable goals. Read below if you wish to see whether you’re doing things the right way.
Gym sessions often consist of numerous reps and sets. Contrary to common expectations, most of them are not necessary. Talk to your trainer about how to make sessions more focused and effective. They can explain which repetitions only tire your muscles instead of making them tougher.
A common mistake when training a specific muscle group (chest, for instance) is the performance of multiple exercises followed by a second round for the same muscle group starting with the mild ones. These muscles have already been prepared for the workout during the first set. Six to eight reps of a given light-strain activity are absolutely enough to tune your muscles for the heavier ones. Over time, the essential activities will prove their benefits.
Another thing you should care to avoid is the so-called ‘pyramiding’. This is the tendency to implement weight in a certain exercise and to achieve marvelous results and then lower the weight to be able to do more sets and reps. Do you notice the gap? If you have pushed yourself that far, it makes no sense to go back. You will only invest time and energy into something that won’t pay you back. According to circulating beliefs, multiple and totally exhausting reps actually compel the muscle to work harder, which then betters its strength and resilience.
This is no more than an illusion. You probably recognize yourself as one of the people that make such mistakes while working out. It’s not that big a deal if you have understood what to correct. We cannot be aware of everything but can keep informing ourselves. So, strive harder and set ambitious goals. The results you did not even dare to dream of will come as long as you have the proper warm-up.
Finally, here come the forced reps. You should know that they’re absolutely senseless. One or two of them after muscle failure are not a problem. Don’t go on with them, anyway, if you see that you can’t cope. In forced reps, your partner helps you with a lift and what ultimately happens is that they do most of the work instead of you. With weightlifting, you aren’t straining your muscles this way, in fact you’re making things easier for them. Do you see any point in that? To sum up, a forced rep after you hit failure is OK but make sure it is only one.
Once you start putting these principles into action, you’ll see that much is contained in the little tricks we sometimes don’t know about. Rid your sessions of unnecessary reps and sets. Don’t skip lead-in activities so that your muscles, joints and ligaments get tuned in for the subsequent strain. Put execution of sets before their number and repetition.
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