Fitness Mantra: Common mistakes newbies make at the gym

However, you can’t be as nonchalant as those who have that familiarity and muscle memory that comes with years of practice, dedication and repetition in the gym. It is important to be mindful of the concept of making steady, progressive gains while preventing injury before you become one of those knowledgeable fitness freaks. 

So, here are a few some common but not obvious mistakes that are often made by new fitness buffs. 

The first thing and one of the biggest mistakes newbies make with training is also one of the simplest things one can do, and that is to not track your progress. Tracking your progress is very important because it allows you to see how your weight is changing week to week and how your overall strength is increasing. It’s such a simple thing that can be as easy as weighing yourself at least two times a week in the morning to see a change in weight and just recording your personal bests/ records on exercises in your phone. This will really help to keep you on track.

Trying to do too much too soon might just set yourself up for failure. It’s important to understand that the results you want won’t come through in a couple weeks of practically killing yourself at the gym. Using that method will only leave you frustrated that you haven’t gone through a very noticeable transformation yet, plus you’ll need too much recovery time, if you don’t get injured first. Slow and steady wins the race — doing too much can lead to burnout. 

This is one of the most common mistakes newbies make. They don’t realise how critically important warm-up is. Warming up helps prime your nervous system for exercise, helping you prevent skipped heartbeats and premature fatigue. This is especially important if you’ll be doing high-intensity exercises, which may lead to injury if you’re not properly warmed up. To warm up properly, all you need to do is some light activity that causes you to break into a light sweat. Brisk walking, arm circles, marching in place, squats, shoulder shrugs… any (or all) of these can be used to get your body warmed up and ready to exercise. 

If you’re doing an exercise like squats or something with free weights with incorrect form, hopefully, someone will come over to help you. Then again, a lot of guys aren’t watching out for that, plus he may not know the exact proper technique himself. Obviously, without proper technique, you’re risking injury any time you do such an exercise, and if you’re lucky, you’ll just feel uncomfortable and won’t gain as much as you should from any given exercise. Even if you don’t want to hire a trainer on an ongoing basis, pay one for a session just to get all of the proper techniques down, whatever exercises you might be interested in.