5 Terrible Training Habits. Can You Fix Them?
1. Goal-hopping.
If you want to be a better ______, you should ______ More. Answer: Runner, run. It's that simple. Easy, not necessarily.
Quickly giving up on goals to continue to chase goals unsuccessfully. An utter lack of patience can destroy your destiny. Repetition, repetition, repletion is the way the body will begin to change. Stick to a plan for a significant amount of time. It's not that difficult for somebody to improvise a difficult workout. It's not difficult for somebody to create a workout that makes people sore. But can you strategize, and devote a weeks, months, potentially years to building your endurance? What about training for a photoshoot, one year from the day? Whatever the goal might be, there needs to be a general plan, and trajectory toward that goal. It doesn't have to put in a letterhead fashion neatly in filing cabinets filled with manilla folders full of exercise history filled with minute details, but the aim should always be higher, in one way or another. If exercises are performed at the same level of difficulty, there will be maintaining, not gaining. If performance improves, the body improves. Know what methods improve the results, and stick to them! If it's not improving, time may be the answer. Or another culprit.
2.Lack of consistency.
The term by the book can bring about positive practices in the training program, but it can also set somebody up for failure. It's not that difficult for a body to improve, following some type of progressive overload. This doesn't just include resistance training exercises, but also speed and distance in endurance events. As long as abilities are improving from session to session, in one way or another, the body should be improving. Whether the training program was randomized, improvised, or calculated precisely to a tee by trainers who double as scientists and statisticians, the training program won't do anything if the sessions are not consistent. Arnold Schwarzenegger's bodybuilding coach advice will only produce results if the subject sticks to it, and doesn't swap the leg days with chest days more often-than-not. The program is worthless, no matter how empirically backed or funded it may be, if the sessions are not consistent! It's better to perform a basic, maintainable program that can be performed routinely, than savagely chase intense workouts, but only periodically. If you're wondering why you don't look as good as you did 3 years ago when you were training for a photoshoot, it's probably because you're not training as routinely as you did for that photoshoot. What's simple and doable will get anyone further than a complex franken-program, if the program is kept to.
There was once a fad in the early 2000's about "Muscle Confusion." While trainers and scientists debate whether that or long-term programming will improve results can go both ways, but Muscle Confusion is most certainly not convincing your muscles that they don't have to work anymore (by skipping sessions) and then shocking your muscles with intense workouts. Don't continue pushing the rock up the hill just for it to roll back down after quitting. Little movements, and always moving forward. Always. That's how progress happens. Over-reaching is essential for improvement. You have to train at the upper limits of your capability to see success from training.
Heavy weight, but don't let it fool you, this swing movement pattern has to be out of order, and built on shaky foundations. This will cause anyone to miss the positive impact of performing swings.
3. Bad technique, and over-training.
There is a difference between modified exercise, and crappy technique, also known as ego-lifting. Some people should modify their exercises. If a full-depth squat won't be in the cards due to physical injury or limitations, that's fine. Box squatting would be a great way to modify that depth, yet give the athlete a tangible goal, but if an athletes squat finishes higher from the floor, as the weight on the bar gets higher, that doesn't mean the set got harder, the athlete's just cheating. Cheating on the lifts to make artificial personal records is one of the reasons I have to clarify that this list is not in any particular order. More consistency will help somebody improve their results, though more consistently awful form will just send the athlete closer to injury.
Make no mistake, the technique is what leads to the improvement. When resistance training, our bodies are trying to perform optimal movement, and THEN and weight! Optimal movement builds optimal athleticism. The gains left on the table from sacrificing your athletic abilities for clunky one-rep maximum lifts won't lead to improvement, and if the internet gets a hold of it, it can, and should lead to trolling.
There's no way to rationalize the trade-off of movement quality and resistance. Powerlifters, bodybuilders, Olympic Weight Lifters, and Kettlebell Giruveks understand this. The one's who do understand this on the better side of the heap. The ones that let their ego get in the way are yet again stuck at the bottom, unable to climb higher. Be humble, start light, and do it right. There is some argument in the fitness community for finishing sets with cheat reps. While taking the central nervous system to fatigue can cause hypertrophy, bear in mind that the faulty reps are most likely to cause injury. With that, choose the path of training wisely, and train longer, and harder, for years to come.
While difficult, and most certainly complex, this move should not be a part of your routine if you can't perform a significant number of pushups, like 10. Work on the pushup instead!
4.Lack of Essential Movements, or an overall poor movement selection.
Picking feel-good movements that give you an amazing pump is the training equivalent to getting most of your calories from cake and pastries. Don't expect to look just like a champion bodybuilder if you spend most of the time on the preacher curl machine, and leg extension. In the long term, machines, single-joint movements, and open chain exercises should be used sparingly, just like desserts. The best movements challenge a primary area, but come with a lot of synergist muscle activation. Do a bent over row with a barbell, and compared to a bicep curl, the body will have to exert so much more force. Force for doing the concentric movement, force for stabilizing the load, force to maintain stability in the legs. The body is getting more bang for it's buck. It might be better to superset your squats with the leg press, than the leg extension to torch the quadricep muscle. Yes, proper pull-ups will work your biceps, but that's just a part of the work the entire back will do to get you over the bar.
It's a safe bet to perform closed-chain (squat or leg press, feet are in contact with a surface) exercises more than open-chain exercises (a leg extension, where the feet are not on a surface). They require the body to work more, and contract all the synergistic muscles needed to perform the movement. Instead of doing crunches with feet in the air, crush your abs with a weighted plank, or Zercher squat. These movements will require the athlete to tense every muscle they have, including the coveted sick pack. Don't listen to wannabe bodybuilders, your body works in unison with itself. Don't try to train it to isolate everything!
The best compound movements have plenty of "locations" to fail at. Seeing the sticking points and first fatigued areas in these movements can help trainers and athletes assess their weaknesses accurately. If an athletes biggest obstacle on a deadlift is the grip slipping first, we know those forearms need work. That might never have been addressed if hamstring curls were the primary hamstring exercise. There are plenty of excellent closed chain exercises. The choices aren't only limited to the big 3 of powerlifting, or olympic lifts. Find a series of closed chain exercises that appear in your sport or hobby. Perform them, and perform them properly. As abillity improves, add weight, add reps, or safely add velocity. Machines can be excellent for developing a great physique, but if interested in strength and conditioning, pick more complex tasks that challenge the body, and athleticism.
5. Too Much/Not Enough Variety
Complete transformations are hard to attain, but can be done. So many stars have to align, and one of them is the amount of variety in training. Is it at the right amount for you? Bad variety can be had at either end of the spectrum, so goals should always be chosen purposefully, and conservatively. Too much variety will lead to over-training and widespread but negligible performance improvement, if any. Training programs should address weaknesses first and foremost, but as one weakness is improved, new ones may pop-up from a lack of specific training for that exercise. Again, this is why the training program should typically consist of closed-chain exercises. When only so much variety can be had in a week of training before reaching over-reaching and over-training, the movement selection should cover all of the aspects of fitness needed in order of priority.
On the side of too much variety: If you have a powerlifting meet 2 months from now, don't worry about the distances you'll be rowing, running, or doing rounds of HIIT with on a VersaClimber. That's a time where focus is needed more than variety. Throughout a more casual training routine, one for maintenance and a better overall level of fitness, you'll have to realize that you can build your skills vertically (more advanced at a select few movements) , or build them horizontally (more of them, with less proficiency). This is where you and your trainer have the final say. It all comes down to having goals to work on, and having the right amount of movement variety to reinforce every aspect of your improvement.
While I know this will be rebutted by many who want a surprise workout every day, they have to investigate and determine if their training routine has a path, or mindless bread and circuses. Training sessions aren't new episodes of your favorite show on Netflix, the routine might be boring, but the trajectory must be clear. I need to improve at ______, so today, i'm going to work on ______. You do this over, and over, until you finally see satisfactory improvement. As you walk into your session, ask yourself "am I a Quarterback hitting my receivers, or throwing a football at a tailgate, while holding a beer in hand?" If the focus of your workout looks more like the latter, you're going to want to get serious about the fundamentals.
What to do next:
1. Pick an improvement based goal. Something S.M.A.R.T. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-stamped. If your goal fits in that category, get ready for lift-off, and stick to your plan! Keep the focus on the goal!
2.Start small, and build a habit. Don't come out of the gates with your new program, aiming to put yourself through pain, or do movements for the sake of burning calories. Build a hobby, training split, routine, and stay on it. It doesn't have to be an every day thing , though more frequency can help expedite progress. As long as the body experiences safe, repetitive stresses throughout the training program, the body will adapt to the specific demands of those stresses. Need more cardio in your routine? Add 2-3 spin classes to your routine a week, and begin to notice the improvements! Change can be straight forward.
3. Leave the ego at the door. There are levels to everything, and limits to everything. Know each of yours. That's what training is meant to address! Progress is difficult to make if injuries frequently occur. Perform the movements properly, above all things. Strive to put yourself through something besides pain during the training session. The faster your recovery, the more often the training can happen, and happen at high performance. The more good training sessions you have, the better it bodes for your performance. If training days are ending in quick failure, or disappointing performance, you need to address one of those 2 things, technique and overtraining.
4.Choose the movements wisely. Are burpees the right thing for you? Do kettlebell swings give you back pain? Don't put yourself through popular training techniques if they're above your caliber, our create contraindications. Assess your abilities with the basics. If there's any difficulty with bridging, squatting, pushups, or lunge technique with bodyweight exercises, start in those areas. Standing on one foot and doing battle ropes probably won't help overall fitness anywhere near as much as fixing a faulty squat pattern. Promote good foundational movements in training, and watch the body parts required to do those movements improve. Fancy and complicated doesn't always mean, effective.
5. Again, choose wisely. There are only so many hours in a day, and don't underestimate how many of them are needed for recovery. A training routine is a lifetime commitment, but the pieces of it can change. As goals and priorities may change after certain levels of success, realize that with addition, subtraction will most likely be needed. As more exercises enter the training split, each exercise gets less volume, and the body might become overtrained due to excess variety. Less can be more. Pick movements that give you bang for their buck, and pick the ones that promote reaching the goal. Focus is always key.
