Why Your Workouts Don’t Work
Did you know the average health club exerciser quits after just six months for one of the following reasons:
- Not Enough Time
- Not Seeing Results
Sadly, most people become frustrated and quit exercising before they see any real results. But it’s not surprising given the common mistakes many people make with their training programs. Are you making these workout mistakes?
### Common Reasons Your Workouts Don’t Work
#### All Quantity, No Quality
Take a look around the gym (if you haven’t quit going yet) and see how many people are really getting a quality workout. I’m always amazed by how many people are wandering aimlessly, walking leisurely on a treadmill while reading a book, lifting weights so light that not one hair moves out of place, or simply look bored. A lot of exercisers head to the gym out of habit, and as if on automatic pilot, put in some time and head back to work or home.
If you are one of these people, ask yourself, "What do I want to get out of this?" If you want serious results, you need to do serious exercise. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it and have fun. But it does mean you need to focus on what you are doing and increase the quality of every movement. Once you start exercising with a real purpose and pushing both your aerobic capacity and your strength, you will find your workouts take half the time and give better results.
#### Overestimating Your Exercise
Most exercisers are far too generous with estimates of exercise intensity and time, weight lifted, and the frequency of their workouts. To avoid overestimating, it’s helpful to keep an exercise log and track these items. Additionally, many people mistakenly believe that if they exercise at a moderate pace for 30 minutes, they have burned lots and lots of calories and fat. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. While exercise does burn calories over time and consistent exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off, it’s hard to lose body fat through exercise alone.
#### Underestimating Your Eating
Many people are in denial about the foods they eat and especially the quantity consumed. If you really want to lose weight, you need to be honest with yourself about what you put into your mouth and how that helps or hinders your weight loss goals. To get real with yourself, write it down. Tracking what you eat in a food diary will help you break the cycle of food denial. (Besides, you are the only one who needs to know).
#### Doing the Wrong Type of Workout
Where did you learn your current exercise routine? Watching others at the gym (who are exercising incorrectly)? From your friends, coworkers, the web, TV, newspaper, the latest research findings, or perhaps your 5th-grade gym teacher? What you are doing for exercise directly determines the results you will get. To learn what you should do, there is no better place to start than by writing down your goals and then working with a professional trainer to design the right workout to meet those goals. Haphazard exercise will provide haphazard results.
#### Never Changing Your Workout
When you do the same thing day after day, you get very good at it. In exercise, this is called the principle of adaptation. It basically means that we become very efficient by doing the same exercise over and over. This is great for sports performance but not that great for weight loss, strength increases, or physical fitness progression. If you always do the same workout for the same amount of time, you will eventually hit a plateau where you fail to see any additional change. One way of overcoming this plateau is to modify your workouts every few weeks or months. You can change the type of exercise you do, the length, the amount of weight lifted, or the number of reps. This is why professional athletes change their program during the off-season.
#### Setting Unrealistic Goals
So, what are your goals? Are they realistic for you? If your goal is to be the next Lance Armstrong, and you only have 30 minutes a day to train, or wanting to lose 25 pounds in a month, well, how realistic is that? Again, it comes back to being honest with yourself about your abilities, your level of commitment, and your lifestyle. We need to set appropriate goals that start from where we are and progress at a reasonable rate, or we are sure to get frustrated and quit.
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