So you’re making slow progress…
You feel like you’re doing all the right things
The exercises you watched that guy do on youtube
And you’re friends told you to do
But you know you could be doing so much better
You know you could be reaching your goals
You know there could be a more effective way than what you’re doing
The problem is… You don’t know what you’re doing wrong
I used to be just like this too
Fortunately I figured out what those mistakes were and got back to hitting PRs and moving forward. So here’s the mistakes I wish I didn’t make so you can hopefully not fall in the same trap.
Sport Specific Training
We’ve all seen video’s of guys doing crazy ladder drills for agility, putting bands on people to mimic sporting actions so they are working on getting specifically stronger in an action.
The problem is you never actually see the elite athletes following these methods. It’s always coming from someone claiming their an expert and trying to get people on board following their ridiculous methods.
I got caught up into this when I was new to lifting and wanting to get better at footy. I looked around for the best sports specific programs and read through all the articles on functional training. Luckily for me at the time I didn’t have access to a lot of the equipment these guys were claiming were must haves.
I kept searching while feeling like I would never get the best results because of not having the equipment and funnily enough what I found was that the guys getting the best results on the field were those who were focused on developing basic movement skills like Squats, Hinges, Pushing, Pulling and performing explosive movements like weightlifting, jumps, throws and sprints. On this topic a relevant athlete right now, GSP in his prime spent a lot of his time training in gymnastics strength training as a means of developing body awareness and strength. He wasn’t doing fancy bullshit. Gymnastic Strength Training is one of the areas of training that is only now being appreciated yet the best athletes have been using these for years.
Don’t worry about sport specific training, become a stronger, more resilient, better conditioned athlete and then if you are closing in on an elite level then maybe specificity in some regards will become important for you. But for most of us we should be building a bigger base to work from.
Spending too much time on the big lifts
Have you ever been to the gym to work your butt off in your first lift and then feel like there’s nothing left in the tank for the rest of your session and just left?
I spent a lot of time doing this after reading articles like;
‘Squats are all you need to build strong legs’
Or
‘Why Accessory lifts aren’t giving you bigger lifts’
The problem here is although the return on training the little movements might not be huge in terms of improving your numbers, they keep you healthier and help develop your weak points. I’ve seen guys who just train squats all the time end up with beaten up knees, tendinitis and have little to no hamstring and glute development as one of the primary reasons for their pain. I was one of these guys for a while with my knees feeling beaten up nearly every session. You can get away with it for so long but eventually it catches back up with you.
I remember squatting 160kg x4 about 3 years ago one week only to the next week feeling like my knees were going to blow out at 120kg while warming up. A week later I could only squat 80kg before the pain set in and a few days after that I couldn’t do a bodyweight squat without some degree of pain.
This is an issue that no amount of physio or anti-inflammatories is going to fix. If your problem is you’re too lazy or don’t like doing the accessories like I was, any bullshit article that backs your view becomes fuel to your fire and justifies your choices without actually providing context to your individual need.
Since I stopped fighting against my bodies desire not to just squat 3x a week and starting back on accessories all my lifts have gone up, I very rarely have pain any more in my knees or hips like I did and overall I’ve gotten bigger and stronger.
Stop skipping your accessories, your body and future PR’s will pay you back for it later on.
Looking for the perfect program
I don’t know how many programs I hopped between or tried to manipulate early on in my training. Every time a new training ebook would come out I would jump onto the new program while changing it so it became more ‘sport specific’ for me as most of the programs were written for powerlifters or american football players so I thought I would outsmart them and tweak it for rugby league.
Here’s the problem, I was always waiting for the perfect one to come along that I wouldn’t jump away from but, if I hadn’t changed it in the first place I would have probably got more out of the program and been able to make a more educated decision on what I needed next in my training.
Instead I went through months where my results were slow or stagnant because I didn’t give my body time to adapt and build upon any consistent type of stimulus.
The lesson here is to find a program that fits what you’re after and see it through. Hold the standard and you will be much closer to what you’re looking for than where you will be if you keep looking for the next big thing.
I don’t regret my mistakes
If you found one of these hit home for you. Don’t feel bad about it, I made these mistakes but it now helps me share what not to do and what to do with my client’s training and without them I may not have been where I am.
Your mistakes help you shape who you are so own them and make a choice to stop making the same ones.
I want to hear what mistakes you know you were making with your training. Shoot me a message on facebook @newstrengthhq and let us know