Leg Raise Variations
Archive for October, 2009
8 Common Mistakes a Beginner in the Gym Makes
1. Not tracking your calories. Diet is the most important factor when training, yet many people think just by going to the gym that it will make you healthier and give you the physique you want. Wrong. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle and physique is a 24/7 process.
2. Not breathing properly. Getting headaches or sharp pains at the gym? Most likely this is being caused by you not breathing properly (usually referred to as an exertion headache). Even if you aren’t getting these headaches, breathing correctly will help you get more out of your lift. Learn to breathe properly by inhaling and exhaling. For the average lifter you should be:
- Inhaling before the start of the lift
- Exhaling as you push through the most difficult portion of the lift
- Inhaling at the top (or the easiest portion of the lift)
Yes there are other methods, but this is the one most lifters should follow until you reach a higher level of training.
3. Incorrect form. Everyday I see someone with incorrect form. Seek a professional or ask for help if you are unsure on how to perform a lift. Correct form will make you incorporate more of the muscle and most of all, prevent injury.
4. Trying to the be the strongest person in the gym. This is common sense. You should not try to lift more weight than you can. No one is going to look down on you for doing light weight with correct form. Over doing it will not only most likely cause you to form an injury, it will also not give you the most out of your lift.
5. Doing the lift too fast. No, you don’t need to rep it at a 100mph pace. Slowing the rep down and controlling it will make the muscle incorporate more fibers into the rep, thus overloading the muscle, and causing it to grow.
6. Maxing out. This goes hand in hand with the being the strongest person in the gym mistake. Maxing out (or going to failure) every time will only cause unneeded stress on your joints, thus making you more prone to injury.
7. Doing too many exercises. More is not better in almost all cases, this being one of them. Rather than doing too many, do the right ones. Doing 3-5 “right” ones for each muscle group will be more beneficial in the end. As to what the right ones are, that is what you need to figure out.
8. Not getting enough rest or sleep. To keep it short and simple – you body repairs and grows when you rest/sleep, not when you’re at the gym. Need I say more?
Why is WATER important?
The one thing a lot of people forget about is how important water is for our bodies. Obviously living a bodybuilder lifestyle, or even just a healthy lifestyle at that, you are most likely going through some physical activity to keep in shape. This exposes you to water loss, which leads to dehydration, and dehydration leads to decrease in strength and endurance.
One myth regarding water intake is “only drink when you’re thirsty”. This is a big mistake. Upon the onset of thirst you are usually more than 2-3% dehydrated. That may not seem like a lot, but in regards to your strength and endurance, it will decrease both by up to 15%. Say you’re running a marathon and with 10 miles left you are at the 3% dehydration point, this means you are decreasing your endurance by up to 15%. On average, lets say you are running 6:00 minute miles at the 3% dehydration stage for the last 10 miles. If you weren’t at that dehydration stage you would have cut off 90 seconds on your total time, saving 9 seconds a mile. That’s a lot.
16 Dieting Tips Everyone Should Take Into Consideration
1. If you’re trying to cut off a lot of weight, don’t try and do it all at once. The maximum amount of time I would put a trainee on a fat loss diet would be 12-16 weeks. After 16 weeks (if you cannot achieve your weight loss goals by then) I would take a minimum of 4 weeks off an eat at a maintenance level or higher. This doesn’t mean go on a free-for-all and eat fast food everyday, it just means bump your caloric intake up to maintenance or a bit higher. This will give your metabolism a rebound as well as a mental/physical break from dieting.
2. Log and weigh all the food you eat. This is one of the most important things you can do when dieting. No, you won’t be able to guess a serving size on 90% of the foods you eat. Chances are if you aren’t weighing out or logging your food, you are not eating anywhere near what you need to be. Eventually you will be able to eyeball a serving size, but not at first. This is a must. Here is a review to a cheap digital scale I reviewed earlier this month. Click Here
3. You don’t need to eat the same foods everyday. Be creative and think outside the box. Most everyone I have talked to has said they are sick of eating chicken, tuna, oatmeal, etc…so don’t eat it. Eating something you dread will only make dieting harder than it needs to be. Use low calorie, no calorie, fat free, sugar free, etc condiments an of course spices to make your meals more appetizing. The only thing you need to worry about are your macros, if these are in check you will have no problem reaching your goals. I will go over more about macros in a later article this month.
4. Crashing dieting aka extreme caloric restriction doesn’t work. You know, the people who go on the diets where they basically eat nothing but salad all day? Yeah, not gonna do much besides shut down your metabolism and catabolize (make you lose) a lot of muscle. All you need to do is reach a decent deficit in order to lose weight. Restrict 400-600 calories under maintenance along with a decent amount of cardio and you will create this deficit. Of course, this will vary with everyone. Some may need to bump up the cardio, others may need to increase their caloric restriction. If you aren’t losing 1-2lb/weeks you should try either adding more cardio into your routine, increasing your caloric restriction, or changing your macros up (playing with your carbs/fats/protein intake).
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