As each summer approaches, you tell yourself that a little fitness is essential…
So, once once more, you decided to go back to the gym, convinced that this time will be the right one.
Well, maybe…
Pour make sure you don’t failhere’s what you should have in place before stepping through the doors of your local venue once more.
1. Not adapting the first sessions…
When people go back to the weight room following a long break, they inevitably encounter aches.
Anyone who has ever experienced this knows how painful it can be.
This is where the eccentric contraction.
But what is the eccentric?
It is for example the downward phase of a bicep curlwhere you hold the load while the bicep contracts and lengthens.
Doing these eccentric portions leads to serious muscle damage and therefore aches.
How then can the eccentric be a good thing to avoid aches?
Well, non-habitual repeated exercises produce protective adaptations once morest exercise-induced muscle damage and its symptoms (such as muscle pain).
In other words, the more you repeat an exercise, the more your body will adapt and get used to it, so you will have less soreness.
What does not kill makes you stronger, we are.
But there’s more than thatresearch shows you can develop these protective adaptations by training eccentric with low loadsor 10% of your RM (maximum repetition)!
This may not sound productive and I know you probably want to get to work right away with your best loads, but the less soreness you have, the fewer sessions you will miss!
Recommendation: start with 2 weeks of low loads with controlled eccentric phases on all your exercises, in order to avoid a maximum of aches.
2. Rely exclusively on yourself
Training with a companion can help in many ways.
Whether it’s bodybuilding or any other type of exercise, it’s always more fun and enjoyable to have a partner in pain.
At the venue, you can also expect this to translate by better performancesince you can try heavier bars without risking getting stuck underneath.
The mere presence of your teammate can allow you to go beyond your limits.
This is called self-efficacy, or a person’s belief in their abilities to succeed.
One of the ways to develop it is to encourage each othereither by pushing to get a few additional repetitions, or by giving indications on the technique (and the axes of progression).
Moreover, there is also an effect vicarious learningor the fact of imitating by observation a peer who performs the behavior to be acquired.
Clearly, watching your partner progress will help you believe in your own capacities for success.
It will work best if you and your partner have the same goals.
The best thing regarding it all is that each of you can be the engine and the vicarious trainer of the other, which created a virtuous circle.
Of course, make sure your co-worker isn’t a chatterbox who talks more than he spends time practicing.
3. Having no goal
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”
On your last attempt, you were going to your workouts with no real goal, just going from machine to machine.
This is the perfect recipe for getting bored and giving up, you have to change your method.
To have some concrete objectives can help, especially if it’s specific.
Instead of telling yourself, “I want to get stronger,” write, “I want to set a new personal best on my squat.”
Having a clear direction in terms of goals will put your training on the right track.
You will know what equipment to use, what volume to set up, what exercises to plan, etc.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to orient your entire plan around that goal, but it will be easier to manage and pursue one goal at a time.
Just make sure you have a plan when you head back to the gym.
4. Put your brain on airplane mode
You know what we’re talking regarding here, but to sum it up, putting away the tel goes allow you to increase your concentration and improve your state of mind.
Studies show that having a distraction from texting on the phone can negatively affect performance in addition to workout enjoyment.
You wouldn’t pull out your phone in the middle of football practice, would you?
On the other hand, listening to music or keeping a written record of your progress can have the opposite effects, it is up to you to define your use of the telephone.
5. Do not set up your “personal datacenter”
Finally, one of the biggest predictors of success is being able to self-regulate.
In our case, this means adopting the behaviors necessary to achieve your objectives.
So you need to find out what works and what doesn’t work FOR YOU and take the right steps for your progress.
But to do that, vou must have the right information in your possessionwhich will necessarily involve tracking.
You can monitor obvious things like:
- your calories,
- your protein intake,
- your weight,
- your measurements,
- your training parameters,
- your performance.
But also less obvious things like:
- the quality of your sleep,
- your overall mood,
- your stress levels,
- etc.
Using all this data, you will be able to establish correlations.
Your training was not the best last week, the very week when you had a job up to your neck, is that really surprising?
While tracking is an excellent tool for self-regulation, don’t think too much regarding it, don’t start chasing goals that are increasingly difficult to achieve.
Look at it for what it is: information available to you.
And that’s how you avoid a bitter failure!
You don’t have to put everything in place, but be at least certain that you have established a goal.
Get help from a coach for this, a good coach should be able to help you set specific goals.
Go slowly, put your ego aside and always remember that it’s a marathon, not just a sprint to look good this summer.
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