There are many training mistakes that a beginner can make in their first years of lifting. It is often said that if you avoid mistakes early on, you will get stronger much faster. There may not be a massive strength difference between a casual gym goer that has trained for 10 years, not knowing what he is doing, and a dedicated individual with 6 months of proper training.
That said, I will discuss below on how not to end up like the first guy. I’ve seen people make colossal gains in a short amount of time, by simply training the right way. The mistakes that I made during my first year of training resulted in me seeing zero progress in any lifts, the whole year, until I’ve fixed them. So without further ado, let’s break down the most common mistakes that may hold you back.
Mistake #1 – Not Pushing Hard Enough
This is the biggest mistake I have EVER made in my training. And for a lot of people as well. If I had known this earlier, I would be FAR stronger and bigger at this time, with an extra 20-60 kilos for every compound lift.
When go around asking some fitness gurus for help, they will tell you the same unimportant tips over and over again: “Just do push pull legs”, “You need more recovery bro”, “Just fix your form: do it like this and that”, “Do pyramid sets”. If you, as a beginner, are following a decent program it won’t work if you stop your sets at mild discomfort. And this is why people go YEARS with zero progress, even while consistently showing up in the gym.
“How hard exactly should I push?” you may ask. To get stronger and build more muscle, in general you should leave a rep in the tank – not going to failure, but being close to it (unless it’s your last set). Do not underestimate how hard you should be pushing, your final reps should be long and hard. Do not be afraid to struggle at the end of your sets.
I had really bad plateaus across all of my lifts, especially on my squat. I thought that I was doing everything I could to get stronger, and was told to focus on improving my form, instead of trying to up the weight/reps.
What helped me to make a breakthrough was… just pushing harder. Upon realising this, on my next workout I planned put blood, sweat and tears into getting an extra rep. Or a little bit more weight. It worked, and suddenly started progressing very fast. Every 1-2 weeks was an extra ~5 kilos on bench press, ~10 on deadlifts. It felt amazing.
Focus on progressive overload
You need to know how your body actually grows stronger. According to healthline.com, progressive overload is when you gradually increase the weight, frequency, or number of repetitions in your strength training routine. This challenges your body and allows your musculoskeletal system to get stronger.
Mistake #2 – Not Being Consistent
This should be obvious. If you want to get good at something, you cannot just do it for a few months and stop it. This goes for anything: chess, basketball, kickboxing, bodybuilding, you name it. Some people think that “Oh, I’m just gonna sign up for a month, and if I don’t see results I will leave” or “I will go there for 3 months, get swole, and never touch a dumbbell in my life again!”. And some people are just lazy, and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much you convince them.
Fitness is a lifestyle. And if you want to live a better life, make going to the gym a habit. This is not a time consuming activity; 3 times a week, 90 minutes per session is enough to see most of your gains.
As Arnold Schwarzenegger said “You can have results or excuses. Not both.” Holds true in the gym. If you tell yourself that you are tired after working your 9-5, and decide not to go, you are effectively cutting of a day of progress. Your chance to lift weights that day is lost, and you will never get it back again.
Think about how you will look in 5 years, all spent on hard and consistent work in the gym. Imagine how much you would change – not only with your physique, but also your discipline, mental health, confidence, energy levels, and the amount women in your bed.
Now think about the opposite. What if you don’t put in the work?
Well, you will have to endure the pain of regret.
Mistake #3 – Not Sleeping/Resting Enough
I used to be one of these guys. Staying up late, watching youtube and playing video games until 1 AM, and having to wake up at 6 AM to school. And it was 100% not enough sleep for me. I was tired all day, sleeping on the school desk during lessons, then going to the gym and training while tired. It was HORRIBLE. And it went on for about 3 months until I have read a couple of articles, watched some videos that made me realise how bad for my health it was. I got scared and at the same time motivated to fix it.
Your muscle only grows while you are resting. While training in the gym, you are stressing the muscles, which builds up fatigue and muscle damage. Your body then repairs the damage, adapts your body to the stress, making you stronger. This is why going to the gym every day, hitting every muscle group with no rest days is suboptimal – you don’t give yourself enough time for recovery. If you have previously fixed mistake #1 and started training harder, chances are you may need a little more rest than usual to recover from the heavy sets.
But even if you give your muscles time to recover, the chances are they will hardly grow if you sleep 5 or 6 hours daily. You need 8 hours sleep per night minimum. You will find your body keeping hold of so much more muscle.
Now here is what made me change my habits: There was a study 2019 study from Wang and Colleagues where they split 36 subjects up into two groups. Both entered a caloric deficit, but one group slept 60 minutes less, five nights per week. They were also allowed to sleep one hour extra on the weekends. After eight weeks both groups lost the same amount of weight. But the group that had less sleep had lost 85% weight of their weight as muscle mass, whereas the group with more sleep lost 83% of fat their weight from fat.
So, if you want to rather lose fat than your hard gained muscle, you need to sleep more.
Conclusion
I hope that you learned something useful from this article. And that you do not make these mistakes, ever. Avoid those and you will save yourself years of effort with little to no return, and make the most gains in the shortest time possible. Trust me!
What mistakes did you make?