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10 fitness training mistakes to avoid (part 1)

Suwijuk Pintusornchai of Thailand flexes his muscles during the Men's Master +51 years category of the Asian World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship in Bangkok October 7, 2011. (Reuters photo)
Suwijuk Pintusornchai of Thailand flexes his muscles during the Men's Master +51 years category of the Asian World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship in Bangkok October 7, 2011. (Reuters photo)

When trying to achieve a goal, it is often better to focus on what to do right rather than what could go wrong, however there are usually critical mistakes that you should try to avoid to achieve success faster. In this three-part series, we will discuss 10 things that could seriously derail your fitness goals.

1. Follow a 'magazine' workout program blindly

Unfortunately, many of the workouts in your favorite bodybuilding or fitness magazine are written for bodybuilding professionals. Not the average person like you or me.

Why does this matter?

Well, the guys you see in magazines usually have some serious advantages over regular people.

  • They are genetically gifted and are naturally quite athletic and fit looking.

  • This is their job and they have much more time and energy to train and eat properly than the average stressed Singapore worker.

  • They are often on performance-enhancing substances which can have long term health consequences.

2. Have no plan

One of the questions my team and I always ask a client when they visit for the first time is: "What is the program you are currently on?"

In almost all cases, it is a random mash-up of exercises and activities that may even contradict each other in terms of training goals.

For example if you wanted to gain lean muscle while burning fat, long jogs are probably not your best option!

Training needs to have a plan because:

  • Different activities result in different results. For example, doing heavy weights once or twice makes you strong, and doing light weights many times gives you strength endurance.

  • In most cases, if you combine activities wrongly you may get neither of the desired results as your body becomes confused as to what to improve on.

  • If you do not plan and instead train randomly, you cannot track your progress. If this week you focused on heavy weight lifting, next week you decided to do canoeing, and the week after that you decided to do 800m runs on a track, it is very hard to determine if you are making progress!

  • If you do not plan and train the same all the time, you will stagnate as you body has already adapted to that kind of exercise.

3. Do imperfect reps — two common mistakes

Uncontrolled speeds If you do not control the speed of your exercises, you get different difficulty and training effects. For example, when you do a kipping chin-up (using your legs and body to help you up) you can get better at the skill of doing these kipping chin-ups but you may not actually be getting stronger!

So, to make sure all your reps are consistent, make sure that you perform them in a controlled manner. Yes, you will need to lower the weights you use, but you will end up with better strength gains.

Just give biceps curls a try with a three-second up, and a three-second lowering phase. You will probably get a much better arm workout than you are getting at the moment.

Only partial reps For most of your training, you should do exercises with a full range of movement. Doing half chin-ups or half squats or half bench presses only develops strength in those "half" ranges. And that can lead to muscle imbalances which increase risk of injury and decrease stability of joints.

For the best fitness boot camp program, ExpressFIT program in the CBD, and personal training in Singapore visit www.genesisgym.com.sg or the Genesis Gym facebook page. Or visit Coach Jonathan's homepage and blog at www.coachjon.com