Your training progress will kill by 6 mistakes

What I discuss in this article will hopefully be of immense value to you if you’re relatively new to the iron game. Even if you’re not, it may be refreshing to revisit some of these concepts and pay dividens to what probably got you to where you are today. The title is 6 Mistakes that will Kill your Training Progress, because that’s exactly what they do. Not only are they stupid, but they seem to be ubiquitous across gyms in every continent. Wherever you are, rest assured that there are people making exactly the same errors as described in this article. Some of the individuals commiting them are simply misguided or uneducated; others are perennial in their neglect of basic principles that bring success. The following, however, contribute significantly to any trainees demise. Look over them carefully, as you maybe commiting one of these terrible, wasteful acts!

Too much Volume

This tends to be a tedious issue that is vehemently debated across internet message boards, in gyms and everywhere you look in the fitness industry. The fact remains is that there is no definite answer as of yet as to what sort of volume is ideal or constitutes towards maximum muscle growth and strength. We seem to have a very good idea that moulds well into a lot of individuals’ routines – and various ways to achieve size and strength – however, as of yet, the issue of volume, has not been conclusively resolved. This is particuarly true when discussing what is optimal for muscle growth.

However, rest assured, if you’re doing too much volume, things will go bad – fast. & I have seen it happen, time and time again. Literally, people doing upwards of 50 sets per workout for a single bodypart because they have read about Arnold Schawrzenegger and the golden era boy’s annihilating muscle groups upwards of two to three hours per day, often on multiple occasions per week. News Flash: not only were these gentleman lucky enough to fall into the category of what we call the “Genetically elite”, they also had the good fortune of being able to revolve their whole lives around training. Not suprisingly, the two coincide together. Arnold & the boys’ average day focused on training, eating, and chilling down at the beach checking out hot women (I say this with a taste of bitterness in my mouth, as a typical day for me consists of spending a good few hours in an office full of men).

So finding a middle ground on volume is important. Likewise, not trying to emulate people who were genetically gited – and taking copious amounts of steroids in some cases – is equally imperative. 2-3 heavy, working sets should suffice for most individuals looking to make substantial muscle gains and strength increases. If you insist on going above 3 sets, it’s good if you can be intuitive with your training and not train to failure so frequently and fry your central nervous system out. This leads me nicely onto my next point.

Training to Failure too Frequently

This issue is predominantly intertwined into volume. A lot of the time, high volume training is not the problem; it’s the fashion that it is used in. I said used, but should say abused. Unfortunately, there are some trainees that have been brainwashed into thinking that training to failure for every single rep, set and minute spent in the gym, is a necessity. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Whilst training to failure in some circumstances is beneficial, a misuse of the concept of intensity will be severely detrimental; this rings true especially if you’re natural.

Going to failure on every set is not hardcore. It is not a compulsory requirement to fully activate muscle fibres or produce a stimulus to grow & build strength (which are very much correlated, despite what you may have been led to believe). If that were the case, training guru’s / experts such as Bill Starr, Mark Rippetoe, the pioneers of the 5 x 5 method, the Russian’s elite strength lifting teams, would be advocating this sort of brutal training theory. Yet they don’t – and they still produce the most dominant strength and power athletes in the world. (by the way, these guys aren’t exactly small either. It’s not unusual for elite powerlifters to diet down and wreak havoc on bodybuilding competitions. Likewise, the strongest natural bodybuilders tend to be the most successful in the sport as well)

Going to failure on your heaviest working sets may work out to your advantage, but vigorously trying to train beyond maximum capacity and introduce concepts such as forced reps, negatives etc, will make you hit a brick wall faster than you thought imaginable. Use failure training sparingly. It is not optimal or a necessity for the majority of athletes.

Training like a Pro Bodybuilder

For this point we can refer back to our first concept: too much volume. How many times have you picked up FLEX magazine or something similar and tried to replicate the IFBB Pro’s workout routines? Probably not too often now, but I personally attribute these training programs to a lot of unsuccessful beginners and teenagers. They are misleading and damaging at best to the overwhelming majority of us mere mortals. What they do not mention is that these bodybuilders are taking massive amounts of anabolic steroids, insulin, IGF-1, etc (do we really want to go down this path again?) and fall into the envious bracket of *drum roll* the genetically elite. Paying assiduous attention to these programs will only exacerbate your already likely poor results. These guys could do anything and grow.

If you are lucky enough to be able to carry out these programs to success, your Paleolithic ancestors probably embarked viciously upon mine, beat us daily, ate our food and bench pressed us for fun. If this is the case, I hate you (just kidding.. well, not really).
Not enough emphasis on Strength

If you think like the majority of people who class themselves as bodybuilders, you’ll no doubt shun the concept of emphasising strength training in your regimine and dismiss it with some stereotypical trash such as “We’re not powerlifters, we don’t lift for strength, we lift to make the muscles grow”. The amount of times I have had to rectify this statement (or attempt to, rather) is mind-blowing. If you think strength and size are not correlated, you are sadly mistaken; they are.

We can toss radical theories back and forth all day, or we can use some deductive reasoning to figure out what exactly makes a muscle grow bigger and stronger. Since people often like to quote pro bodybuilders as guys who emphasise volume and not strength, I always like to swiftly refer them to the weights they are lifting: I do not see Ronnie Coleman focusing on peak contraction machine rows. He is deadlifting over 800lbs, squatting the same and bench pressing over 500lbs. I honestly don’t know of any pro bodybuilder that doesn’t bench around upwards of 180kg, squat 220kg, and deadlift 260kg, for reps. Yet these are the folks whose routines are mimicked or given examples of when people say “you don’t need to get stronger – look at what Jay Cutler does in his workouts!”. That’s a pretty weak example, because a quick search on Youtube shows me Jay starting his chest workouts with incline barbell bench presses – only with the pathetic weight of 180kg mind, for 6 paused reps. The people who plug the “we’re not powerlifters” line, often forget what got them to a respectable size in the first place: lifting progressively heavier weights in a reasonable rep range. Eventually, their lack of knowledge to take the steps to further halts progress, and they start losing perspective and wasting energy on poor, misconstrued theories. This is sad.

Alternatively, as I alluded to in the last point, the best natural bodybuilders also tend to hold the prestigous accolades of being some of the freakiest strength guys I’ve ever seen. Evidently, strength is strongly correlated to size. There may be a few freaky examples – and I know of some myself – but for the majority of us, we better focus on lifting progressively heavier weights to accommodate substantial amounts of muscle.

Too many isolation exercises – not enough compounds

I know how hard it is to pull yourself away from the awesome, deep burn that bicep curls offer. Truly, I do. I speak for the masses of people who’ve lifted for years when I say that too much time devoted to exercises like concentration curls, kickbacks, cable rows, leg extentions, etc, etc, etc, is just downright inefficient. It’s inefficient in the sense that it’s a completely ludicrous concept when you look at it logically, for several reasons. The best way to demonstrate this point would be to make a strong referal to the first point in this article, and give you some realistic examples that should convey what I’m saying accurately;

How strong do you honestly think you can get on concentration curls? Sure, you can start off with 10kg for 8 reps with good form, and maybe in two years time progress to 20kg for the same amount of reps. If you’re really lucky, you may eventually progress up to 25kg for a few reps. 15kg over several years of training. Now let’s take weighted chin-ups and barbell rows. You start of chinning your bodyweight for 5 reps. Now you’ve added 3 stone / 50lbs in weight, and have also strapped 40kg / 90lbs around your waist for upwards of 5 reps. You started barbell rowing 40kg, and now row around 120kg with good form (+80kg) Which one is going to result in a better stimulus for arm growth?

How many guys do you see with big rounded deltoids (shoulders) doing side laterals in the mirror? The answer is not many. Now go and find somebody who’s bench pressing over 140kg, and barbell shoulder pressing 100kg+ or dumbbell shoulder pressing 45kgs+. Have they got bigger shoulders than the guys expending all their energy on 8kg side laterals? Of course they have. Even though these muscle groups are accessory / stabilizer muscle groups in most lifts, the stimulus is that much greater that it’s worth spending more effort on the compounds.

How many of those guys devoting their time to so much work on preecher machine curls actually have big biceps? I rest my case
Now, I’m not trying to say isolations are useless altogether. But they should always be secondary to compound, multi-joint movements, unless there are special circumstances such as specific injuries, etc (& I don’t even feel comfortable saying that, because I know guys will misinterpret this now as an excuse to still include them. Oh well, there’s just no hope for some). Even if there are injuries, it’s still more beneficial in the majority of cases to utilise compound movements as a way of rehabilitation; but it massively depends on the context of the issue.

As a side note, I should mention machines in this section as well since they’re usually isolation exercises. For the most part, machines are useless. They are inferior to free weights as they do not build muscle / recruit fibers more effectively, utilise stabiliser muscles or contribute to functional strength. Free weights reign supreme in all aspects. There are, however, some good machines that may be necessary for some bodybuilders / athletes. Good examples are calf raise machines, lat pulldowns (if you couldn’t do pull-ups), and well, let’s just say there aren’t many more worth wasting effort on. They can be used to further fatigue a muscle when stabiliser groups are drained however.

Spending Too much Time Obsessing over the gym

This is a very sad and unfortunate truth that maybe we’re all guilty of on occasions. Letting the fitness lifestyle intoxicate your mind and plough you with mythology and dogma ultimately does more harm than good. Getting a good physique does take time, effort and patience, but it doesn’t have to take over your life. Find something meaningful to concentrate on away from the gym and let the fitness lifestyle become second nature to you. This is how successful individuals function.

When you pick a training program, commit to it. Don’t chop and change it as soon as you come across some new material. I say this as I have been through this period before where I was so meticulous to detail I would always halt my progress because I was an obsessed geek over-analysing basic principles. I tried my best to put things into perspective with basic principles in this article for your own education. It is wonderful to read and extract knowledge from various authors, but whenever you come across somebody who has a stubborn, stone cold view on issue’s and doesn’t acknowledge basic principles or promotes theories exclusive to them (or they are trying to sell you something), then it’s time to be suspicious and take their advice with a grain of salt. A truly wise and lucid author is objective, modest and straight-forward in the exercise and fitness industry. Unfortunately, these qualities are lacking in abundance and the information if consistantly conflicting in this indsutry. It is up to our own moral judgement and objective analysis to decipher some of the dogma, and in that quest I wish you well!