You’ve been going to the gym for about a month now. Not once a week, but three times…
The most common mistakes during exercise – avoid them!
You sweat more than a top athlete, but the needle on the scale doesn’t move and what’s more, the effect of the exercise is not visible to your eyes. Where did the error occur?
The truth is that there can be several of them. According to a healthy lifestyle and exercise expert, Dr. James A. Peterson, many visitors to exercise facilities do not properly prepare themselves for how to most effectively combine physical activity, a proper diet, and gradual adjustment of body proportions.
“Many people think that when they sweat, they also lose weight. That’s stupidity. Sweating primarily means that your body’s internal functioning system is hyperactive. “Sweating has nothing to do with burning calories, because only water leaves the body, which immediately returns when it is replenished with fluids,” says Peterson.
According to him, another problem is that many women and men do not know how often to exercise and how to exercise properly. “Look around you in the gym. You will find many laymen using the devices incorrectly. If they don’t trust themselves or ask for the advice of a professional trainer, they can ‘kill’ time like this for several months,” thinks the doctor and expert.
And what fundamental mistakes do gym goers make most often?
They talk too much
You certainly know a couple or an individual from the gym you visit who spends most of their hour chatting. Many trainers also complain about a similar problem. “People don’t realize that they are wasting their time like this. They can talk after the workout in the fitness bar, but they should work hard during the class,” thinks the unnamed trainer.
Lack of intensity
It’s no surprise if you find a few specimens in the fitness center who spend the bike ride with a newspaper or a book in their hands. Others are even able to learn while running on a treadmill. However, in this case it is nothing more than a lack of intensity in the exercise. “Unless the intensity of the exercise is at the required level, it’s actually a waste of time,” says fitness coach Scott Lucett. He recommends, on the contrary, to increase the intensity of physical activity to the maximum possible. You can do this by working out a few minutes longer than usual, using a vest or sleeves with weights, and doing a heavy circuit training with a series of exercises without rest.
Enticing numbers
Although the manufacturers of exercise machines and treadmills may not be happy, several trainers say that one should not blindly trust the machine and the numbers it produces. “These are very general values, and although the stepper will show you that you have burned 500 calories, it may actually be only 250,” says Lucett. So don’t adapt your program to the letter to the numbers generated by the devices.
Without change or progress
As part of exercise activities and a time-extensive schedule, it is necessary to change the degree of load and the method of exercise, to vary individual exercises. Without change and progress in the form of adding weight or level of load, the body has no reason to change.
Training focused only on specific games
Do you want to shape your calves and lose a few centimeters from your hips and do nothing but run? It might help, but according to trainers, it’s a mistake to focus on just one area and believe in myths about how you can lose “only” your stomach, butt or side belly fat. Losing weight and distributing fat in the body is clearly a genetic matter, and when the body burns, it burns everywhere. It is therefore important to try to involve the whole body in exercise and, in the case of trying to lose weight, to focus on losing weight in general and not on losing weight in certain parts.
Exercise often
Why do you think that top athletes, even with perfect condition and hard training, often suffer from injuries and when they do, they are forced to rest for several months? The body does not have to handle the load without a response. If you go to the gym often, the effect of progress can turn in the opposite direction – it will cause tired muscles, joints and pain that comes with too frequent loading. This is also reflected in the intensity of your exercise and its benefits for the body.
It’s not the same without a coach. Good coach!
If you have the means – both financially and locally – start training with a professional. A trained specialist with a certificate of competence for his work and abilities will help you create a program that is most suitable for your body, but at the same time you can see it as a service that you can complain about in case of shortcomings or failure.
Text: lp, for Žena.Pravda.sk, with the help of Redbook Magazine
Photo: SHUTTERSTOCK
