Do You Do These Common
Mistakes When You Exercise?

   If you feel that you’re not getting the results you want from your exercise regimen, check this list of the most common mistakes about exercising and see how you can modify your routine to your advantage.

1) Lack Of Direction:

   Set your goals right from the moment you start your workout plan. Start a journal where you’ll jot down everything that’s essential to your objective.

   This includes:

• What you went to get out of your workout: weight loss, muscle toning, improvement of your cardiovascular health, or increase in muscle mass?You may be thinking of multiple objectives at once, and this is perfectly fine.
  
  What’s important is you list down each one and see if the exercises you’re performing are appropriate for the goal you have in mind.
  
  
• How long you’re giving yourself to achieve this objective.Do you want to lose ten pounds in 2 months? Do you want to finally remove those love handles before hitting the beach this summer?

  Don’t be tempted to have an open-ended timeframe. If you give yourself too much leeway, you’ll easily slack off.
  
  

2) Thinking That More Is Always Better:

   Exercising effectively involves a combination of quality and quantity.

   There are certain types of exercises that, no matter how many repetitions you make, won’t give you significant results. On the other hand, there are also routines that just take a small amount of time but are so taxing that you’ll see amazing results in just a few days.

   You can also decrease the number of repetitions in a set to avoid exhaustion, but make sure you increase the number of sets.

   In weight training, another effective technique to make your exercise more effective is to cut the weights you are using in half but do the repetitions to fatigue. This method has been shown to quickly improve strength.

3) Settling Into Your Comfort Zone:

   If you keep doing the same routine over and over, you’ll eventually stop gaining muscle mass. “No pain, no gain” is still true to some extent in this sense, if you want to see the results you’re aiming for.

   Muscle is built when they repair themselves after a rigorous routine.

   When you feel pain after a difficult session, this means that your muscle fibers have sustained tiny tears, but these are soon repaired.

   Those who are new at exercising may commit the mistake of overworking themselves, not allowing sufficient time for these tears to heal. What happens is that the ligaments, tendons, and muscles may become permanently damaged, making exercising excruciating.

   Always remember to perform stretching exercises as warm-ups and cool-downs too, no matter how physically fit you are.

   This point also touches on another exercise mistake – not putting enough variety into one’s exercises.

   To keep from getting bored and from getting the same results (which, in many cases, may mean no results if no changes are made), try a new variation of your usual exercises.

   Also try those that push you to use different body joints, such as lunges and squats.

4) Focusing On The Wrong Things:

   Many people stick to doing what they’re good at, what’s easy for them, or enhancing their assets. However, for overall health, you also need to focus on your weaknesses.

   If you have a well-developed upper body, for instance, perform exercises that would help your lower extremities, too.

5) Taking Power Bars And Sports Drinks For Non-Strenuous Workouts:

   Well, okay, they may be strenuous to you, but researchers believe that if you haven’t exercised for more than 2 hours in a day, these bars and drinks will only add to your calories.

   Just drink plenty of water and have a balanced diet to be able to meet your daily exercise needs.

6) Resorting To The Gym Slouch:

   This is when you lean on the equipment too heavily instead of just holding on to the bars for support.

   When you do the gym slouch on, say, a treadmill or the Stairmaster, you lean over and round your back, thus not giving your spine the required support.

7) Starving While Exercising To Quickly Lose Weight:

   This may seem contrary to that point mentioned above, but there are too many people skipping breakfast, taking a hurried lunch, and gorging at dinner.

   This is an ineffective weight loss formula because it slows down metabolism.

   A better plan is to have 5 or six meals in smaller portions, with meals evenly spaced throughout the day. This facilitates digestion and improves metabolism in the long run.