The Biggest Mistake New Gym Go-ers Make
Okay, so you have made the decision to live a healthier, more active life by eating better with more whole foods and less processed foods, as well as hitting the gym several times a week. You wake up, eat something, put the new (or old) gym clothes on that you left out or in your car to change into on the way from work – you pull up, park, swipe into the gym, put your stuff in a locker, get onto the gym floor and boom – you have no idea where to begin.
This is the most common mistake I see anyone new getting into fitness for the first time make: not having a plan. Usually, someone who does not have a plan for when they step into the gym will do one of two things. They will either run through each piece of equipment on the gym floor or they will do any machine or exercise that they have seen on social media or TV because if it’s on Facebook, Instagram or Dr. Oz, it must be beneficial for you. A third option is to just avoid the free weight/machine areas all together and just stick to the treadmills, bikes, elliptical or stair masters, which you will find in later blogs, is definitely not the way to go either.
At the very least, anyone who does this is still far beyond someone who still hasn’t made the commitment to get off the couch and live a more active life. You should feel good about getting to the gym and by no means are you completely wasting your time being in the gym without a plan to get you to your goals. But, that is not to say that there isn’t a better option or faster route to get you where you want to be. That Is why I started WillPower Strength & Nutrition. To help people, like you, who have decided that easy is just not going to cut it and that the time is now to start training and eating better.
Why you need a plan when you walk into the gym stems from the reason our bodies undergo change when we challenge them physically. In the WillPower Strength & Nutrition blog you will see me talk about stress and adaptation often. This is because fitness is essentially the manipulation and management of both stress and adaptation. In the gym, we stress our bodies just the right amount and then our body takes over, with help from proper nutrition and recovery, adapts to this stress and changes for the better. Stay tuned for the coming weeks and we will dive more into this on the blog!
You might be thinking, “okay stress and adaptation, got it, but what does having a plan have to do with that?”. The relationship between having a plan when you walk into the gym with stress and adaptation is that you need to know precisely what type and how much training is required for YOU to get what you want out of your training. If your goal is to build muscle and get stronger and you’ve just started exercising, there is a specific type and amount of training for that. If your goal is to be a better basketball player and you have prior training history there is a specific type and amount of training for that. Over the age of 80 but still want to pick up your grandkids? There’s a type and amount of training for that, too. The list goes on and on. If you have a goal, then there is a specific training prescription that is required for it based on your experience with training.
An aspect of stress and adaptation is the principle of progressive overload. Progressive overload is essentially exactly what it sounds like. In order to keep getting better or making the changes that we want, the system (your body) needs to (in most cases) be put under a larger stress than what it is accustomed to. This is done by adding more weight, increasing sets and reps, decreasing rest times, increasing set times etc. There are many ways to increase the stress or difficulty of an exercise, but how much the stress is increased depends again, on the goal that YOU have and your experience with training. When you have a plan, you can logically and safely plan out this increase in stress and confidently know that positive changes such as increased muscle mass, strength, power and body composition etc. will come with it. When there is no plan and exercises are essentially just picked at random or based on Instagram posts we can’t plan this increase in stress and we are essentially rolling the dice on whether or not adaptation will occur and if it does, it will likely only last for a few weeks.
When you walk into the gym, whether its LA Fitness, a CrossFit gym, or your living room, it’s a necessity to know what you are going to do for that day and that workout should be a part of an even larger plan to get you where you want to be physically. Each workout should be based on the factors that I mentioned above and lay the building blocks to your goal one by one each day. Everything from the warm up, to the exercises, to the sets and reps and finally the cool down should be planned before the session begins to progressively overload your system but align with your goals and appropriately challenge you.
