Listen to this scenario. You’re young and the energy is skyrocketing through your every bone! You want to try everything in every possible way. You love the gym and you’re very enthusiastic when it comes to working out. Is this you? Do you find yourself in any of these statements?
You might want gains and maybe you’re working hard in order to achieve them, but there is such thing as doing too much! There are a couple of things you need to avoid while you’re still young, or you’ll notice that these things will come back and haunt you later, when you’re in your 30s or 40s.
- Not doing a proper warm-up
When you are prepared to exercise and don’t have much time to begin with, it gets tempting to get right to it and take advantage of the time you do have. Or when you go for a run, maybe you just put on your snickers and burst out the door without thinking of anything else. Neglecting your warm-ups can lead to pain that can really affect your workouts. You need to take every warm-up seriously, because if you do them just so you can say you did, you will be jeopardizing your joints, your bones and your entire body. This will certainly impact you later in life.
- Not adding enough variety to your workouts
Repetition is the key to mastering each movement, but it can also lead to boredom, losing motivation or muscle imbalances. To be strong and have a healthy, well-built physique, you must train your entire body, working each group of muscles. You can use different variations for the exercises you like doing or learn something new. There are endless exercises you can choose from.
- Not changing things up
There is such a thing of being over-consistent. If you are that guy who trains every body part week by week, never missing one workout, things aren’t probably going to well for you. You need to change your training frequency at least every three months and keep your muscles guessing. It’s important to stay ahead of your body’s ability to adapt and to take it by surprise, at least once a while.
- Training way to heavy
If you think that the most efficient way of getting big and strong is adding more and more weights onto the bar, you’re doing a bad job as far as your long-term health is concerned. You need to stop pushing yourself over the edge EVERY TIME you lift weights or work out. I’m not saying you shouldn’t train hard and heavy. But you shouldn’t train hard and heavy ALL THE TIME. If, however, you decide you’re strong enough to do it and you think doing it all the time is best for you, then you’ll most likely have some sort of chronic injury in your 40s or even earlier.
- Doing to many “deadly” exercises
There are some exercises that have a higher risk of injury. It's really not that difficult to imagine that you can get injured lifting weights. For instance, if you know that you can’t totally rely on your shoulders, you should probably avoid doing the behind-the-neck press, the lying triceps extension or the triceps dip. The same goes if, for instance, you have problems with your back – you probably shouldn’t be doing behind-the-neck lat pull-downs.
