I've been a trainer since 2013 and there are some common mistakes I see people make along the way. I've made these same mistakes myself to be honest. The drive and desire to reach our goals can sometimes overpower sound logic and a smart approach to working out.
Let's take a look at them and see how we can avoid them
Table of contents
1. Doing too much too soon
So you decided to start working towards a new goal and you feel pumped about it. You start to think about all the things you have to do and all of a sudden they start to pile up.
Eat better, grocery shop, meal prep, workout, hydrate, sleep, maintain a social life, recover, water the plants...the list goes on. Try to do everything at once and you are sure to end up overwhelmed and fed up with this new goal.
You may be able to maintain this for a few days, maybe a couple weeks but I've rarely seen people who try to do everything at once succeed for much longer than that.
This leads to the yo-yo effect, of doing everything perfectly for a few weeks, then just stopping everything, only to start again once you feel like this time it'll be different.
Solution
When you start, take things one at a time and give yourself the time to get good at that one thing before moving to the next one.
One way you could do this is by being consistent at showing up for your workouts. Keep the rest of your life the same, and just get good at showing up.
When you can do that consistently, pick something else like grocery shopping, or sleeping better, or portion control. Then get good at that before adding a third thing.
Get good at one thing at a time.
2. Not having a plan
A plan is a general outline of what you are going to be doing in the future. A good fitness plan should take care of your physical activity and also all the other aspects of a healthy journey such as nutrition and recovery.
A good plan outlines exactly what you'll be doing (such as your training program and what groceries to get on a weekly basis) and also has contingency measures when life gets in the way. What will you do if you miss a workout, or miss a meal prep day?
These are answers that a good plan takes care of. After you do your first two or three weeks when you are motivated, what is the next step? How do you keep moving forward in the long term?
Solution
When you start a fitness goal, map it out 2-3 months into the future.
What kind of workouts will you do? How will you progress during the next few months? What will you eat? When will you be able to have cheat meals?
When you have the next 8-12 weeks mapped out, start planning each week when they come. What days will you work out? What happens if you miss a scheduled workout? (You should have backup days for missed workouts). What day will you go grocery shopping and what days will you meal prep?
A good plan takes care of all the "what ifs" that may arise at any point during the next few months.
3. Being impatient
Wanting your hard work to yield results is natural. Wanting it to happen in a week is problematic.
Your body needs time to adapt to the changes you are putting it through. Often time the big changes require lots of small incremental changes beforehand and you may not feel these changes instantly.
Example: You want to lift heavier weights. You will most likely need to go to the gym and work on your technique first, then gradually increase the intensity of your workouts and then, finally lift heavier weights.
The initial adaptations from working on your technique are very subtle, and you may not feel them right away. They are nonetheless necessary steps to lifting heavier, which is what you want to see.
The quickest change you can make and feel almost the same day, in my experience, is to drink more water if you are currently not drinking enough.
That is the only time I've heard people say they felt a change almost instantly. That usually is a small change in the pursuit of something much more complicated like eating better, feeling more energized or just being more healthy.
Solution
Practice feeling and acknowledging your small wins. You may not feel like a new person after a small win, but remember that small wins compound. Get good at compounding the small wins and you'll be surprised how far you will go.
Keep in mind it usually takes 1 month for you to see results, 2 months for your close friends and family to see them and 3 months for everyone else.
As James Clear (Atomic Habits) puts it: 1% every day makes you 37 times better after a year.
4. Wanting something that feels challenging
Results come from doing the right things over and over. You don't need to do the toughest workouts all the time, but you do need the right workouts consistently. You don't need a super rigid meal plan, you need to eat healthy most of the time.
I've noticed that we are not wired that way. We don't like doing something that feels easy, because where are the results in that right? Wrong.
Working on your lifting technique will make you stronger, even though the exercises are not tough. Going on a small walk will help you lose weight, even though it's not an hour of intense cardio.
In the long distance running world, zone 2 training is recommended for 80% of the training sessions. For those of you unfamiliar with zone 2, it's a very low intensity. Something that you could do for a very long time, that keeps your heart rate relatively low.
In the gym, we rarely go to failure in each exercise. The goal is to consistently do the right workouts, and doing extremely challenging workouts over and over again is not a good way of doing this.
Solution
There is a time and a place to push yourself past your limits.
Be patient, plan those workouts accordingly and train to perform well over the long term. Human performance increases in an undulating way, which means you cannot always push hard, you need down time, you need time to rebuild your muscles, and you need time to work on form.
If you've done point 2 (making a plan), you should see exactly when your intensity will be low and when it will be high.
5. Obsessing about the outcome
When you set a big goal, like losing a bunch of weight, lifting more weight, or performing better at a sport, that is called an outcome goal.
It's important to know what is the outcome you want from your training. The trick is that once you set your outcome goal, you should start focusing on smaller goals that are easy to track.
Let's say I have a race coming up, and I want to lose 15 pounds in three months. What are the smaller goals that will help me get there?
Eating more nutrient rich foods, getting good sleep and training properly would be at the top of my list. I can even break those down into smaller goals: Making sure I grocery shop properly to keep my fridge stocked with healthy food, having healthy snacks readily available with me, not being in front of a screen before bed, not missing any workouts.
These small goals will help you stay on track when you don't see immediate results. The truth is I may not lose a few pounds 2-3 weeks into my training, so instead of thinking "OMG this is not working!!!!!" I can think about practicing the small habits that will yield those results.
Solution
These small goals are called process goals. Focus on creating the best process goals and your outcome goals will happen seamlessly.
You can reverse engineer your outcome goals into process goals. The more you reverse engineer it, the more precise the process goals.
Example: I want to run a fast 10km -> I need to add more tempo/interval training -> I need to be consistent with these workouts -> I need to be fueled and rested properly -> I need to get a better sleep hygiene/meal plan -> ....you could continue even further depending on where you're at.
For weight loss:
Wanting to lose weight -> need to eat better consistently -> meal prep -> go grocery shopping regularly -> set a regular time and day for grocery shopping and meal prepping.
6. Not asking for help
Regardless of our fitness level, there are always people that can help us. These can be other gym goers, more advanced athletes or lifters, friends or coaches.
Truth is, asking for help is a way to fast-track our progress. Asking someone to check our form, or for a spot on a tough set or just asking for tips can go a very long way.
I know that for beginners it can be intimidating to ask strangers for help. For advanced lifted lifters I know it's an ego thing.
Solution
For my beginners out there, know this. The people who look big and mean in the gym are usually the biggest sweethearts. People who spend hours and hours in the gym are usually happy to talk to new people and always happy to share fitness tips.
From personal experience, I would say this is true of 95% of those lifters.
For my advanced lifters out there, if you see someone who does something better than you, why not ask how that person did it?
You're not in direct competition with them. Why not learn from them? What do you have to lose by learning something that can help you reach your goals faster?
Working with a personal trainer takes care of that issue for you. Any trainer worthy of that title should be able to answer any questions that you have. The really good ones will do so before you even think of asking.
Asking for help takes practice. It took me a while to get the hang of it. But with time it became second nature. I also enjoy working with a trainer myself. It's nice to have someone take care of everything for me.
7. Trying to out-train your diet
Does the following situation sound familiar?
You go to a social event, have a drink and a piece of delicious food. Things are well and you decide to have another drink. You know it doesn't fit in your caloric budget and you think to yourself "That's ok, do an extra workout this week and burn it off."
This right here is a situation that most of us have found ourselves in.
This is exactly what trying to out-train your diet looks like. Rationalizing that we can burn off the extra calories we eat.
Let me tell you that it is a very, very dangerous game. The reason being is that we are not good at understanding how fast we consume calories and how slowly we burn them.
One of my favourite things to do as trainer is make people do tough workouts on the assault bike. It's brutal but it works. Five minutes is usually enough to make someone nearly pass out.
Now the fun part is that within those 5 minutes, the amount of calories spent rarely match the calories ingest in a glass of wine.
I use this exemple to help my clients understand the magnitude of work required to burn off extra calories.
Solution
Regulate your calories by controlling how much you eat. Choosing whole, unprocessed foods and understanding your portion sizes is the best way to do that.
View exercising as a way to strenghten your muscles and improve your fitness. Not as calorie burning dumpster.
Yes, working out will burn calories. But no, that should not be it's main focus.
Conclusion
It's normal to be excited about our fitness goals. wanting to achieve them as quick as possible is also normal. Just be aware that burning stages can slow down your long term progress for the sake of what appears to be short term gains.
Take your time to create a plan that will help you in the next 2-3 months. Plan out what could get in the way and how to respond to it. Focus on small incremental changes over the weeks and master each of these changes one at a time.
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