Today I’m going to share with you the top three mistakes most people make in their workouts, when trying to lose fat and reshape their body.
It surprising how many people still make these mistakes with all the information that is available on T.V., internet and in magazines today. But the fact is they still do as I find out every day when a potential client comes walking through our doors looking to change their bodies and frustrated with the lack of results they’re getting from their workouts.
Now don’t get me wrong your nutrition plays a very important role for fat loss, but that is for another article. But research shows that a supportive nutrition plan without the intervention of an workout plan poduces little in the way of fat loss and reshaping your body.
Three Common Workout Mistakes…
Mistake #1: Performing daily body part workouts .One of the longest running inside jokes within the fitness industry is the fact that Monday is ―international chest day where most gym-goers will do endless sets and reps of bench presses and chest flies until their chest burns so good.
The fact is that training your whole body more frequently will result in bigger strength and muscle gain, greater fat loss, and more metabolic boosts than training each muscle group once per week– and the science supports this.
In a recent study at the University of Alabama, researchers had two groups of men perform two different strength-training programs with the same total training volume (sets and reps) for each muscle group. However, one group split the work across three total body workouts while the other group trained each muscle group separately one time per week. They discovered that the total body workout group gained five additional pounds of lean muscle mass compared to their body-part training counterparts.
It’s critical to understand that the more muscle you have the greater your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Your RMR is the total number of calories you burn every day regardless of activity and adding several pounds of lean muscle mass will result in an additional daily calorie burn of up to several hundred extra calories per day. This translates into an awesome fat-smashing snowball effect over the course of weeks, months, and years.
Plus working your entire body each workout will torch more calories and thus accelerate metabolism and fat loss results. More muscles used equals more total work performed equals more total sugar, fat and calories expended– all good stuff!
So if you’re looking for the biggest bang for your fitness buck, best results will be achieved with 3 total body workouts per week with ideally 48 hours between workouts to maximize muscle growth, fat loss and recovery.
Mistake #2: Performing workouts lasting 60 minutes or longer. The first thing most people do is either sign up to run a marathon and/or join a gym to do endless hours of long, slow, boring cardio on a treadmill, elliptical, bike, or step machine to lose weight.
The fact is that long drawn out workouts result in diminishing returns and creates a negative hormonal environment in our bodies. That’s because during one-hour plus exercise bouts our body enters survival mode and releases a catabolic stress hormone called cortisol that both causes muscle loss and results in unwanted fat gain in trouble spot areas.
According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), anabolic, muscle-building hormones like testosterone are maximized in about a 30-minute high-intensity workout window. It is at about the 45-minute mark that anabolic hormones begin to fall as their catabolic counterparts, mainly cortisol, simultaneously begin to rise.
So you should focus on shorter more intense workouts which will give you much better fat results that long duration workouts lasting 60 plus minutes. If you have to work out for longer than 30-45 minutes to feel satisfied than you probably weren’t working hard enough in the first place.
Mistake #3: Using single-joint isolation exercises that address only one plane of movement. It seems there are still a lot of people out there who not only still do body part training as discussed in mistake number one, but do so with useless single-joint isolation exercises that often take place in plane of movement.
Single-joint, isolation exercises involve the use of only one joint at a time, such as leg extensions and leg curls (only involve the knee joint) and biceps curls and triceps extensions (only involve the elbow joint). These single-joint, isolation exercises do not result in the optimal muscle-building stimulus when compared to their multi-joint, compound counterparts.
Multi-joint, compound exercises involve functional movement patterns that occur in the real world across multiple joints at the same time thus resulting in greater total muscle activation and heavier loading and subsequently greater calorie burning, fat loss, and muscle growth.
So think of movements as Hip dominant: (Dead lift two legs or single leg), Knee dominant (Squats-two leg or single leg), Pulling (Vertical-Pull-up, Horizontal-Rowing), Pushing (vertical-shoulder press, Horizontal-Push-up), Core (anti-flexion-Knee Tucks, anti-extension-Front Plank, anti-side flexion-side planks, anti-rotation- Landmines). Total Body: Any exercise that integrates any combination of the aforementioned movement patterns or simultaneously calls upon your upper and lower body.
The key is to perform the exercises in free space using free weights or your body weight. Machines limit movement to a fixed path and do not properly engage your body’s key stabilizers, particularly your hip, spinal, and scapular (upper back) stabilizers, which will put you at a much greater risk of injury outside of the gym. Also machines do not engage nearly as many muscles as free and body weight exercises, which result in a much higher metabolic boost for fat burning and reshaping your body.
So you should employ functional multi-joint, compound movement patterns that address all three planes of movement for maximum muscle growth, fat loss, and metabolic spikes.
There you have it. Fix these three mistakes in workouts and you will not only reshape your body by building more muscle and burning more fat, but you will have more time to spend outside this summer enjoying your new body.
Let us know what workout sins you’ve committed in your fat loss workouts
