4 common workout mistakes and how to avoid them

You certainly know that you can do quite a lot wrong when training. If you don't know that, just take a look around the gym and see what other people are doing.

That's a pity, because it prevents you from building up muscles and becoming stronger in the optimal way. That's why we're going to go into detail today about 4 common training mistakes - and then, of course, find solutions for these mistakes. Let's get straight to the point:

Changing the training program too often

The most common mistake is changing the training program at frequent intervals (or "program hopping").

You do Kollegah's new training program for 6 weeks, then switch to Jim Wendler's 5,3,1 system for 4 weeks, then do a 4 split for 2 weeks, then a 2 split, then a full body plan for 2 weeks as well.

If these training systems were ingredients for a smoothie that you blended together, it would result in a big brown smoothie that doesn't taste good at all.

There are 2 big disadvantages if you fundamentally change your training program too often:

First, you do not know if you are improving. To determine if you are improving, you must perform the same exercises for a lengthy period of time.

But if you are now doing completely different programs with completely different exercises over 4 months, then you have no reference point to go by to see if you are making progress or not.

So it could well be that you have absolutely not improved at all in these 4 months, or have perhaps even deteriorated without noticing.

If you had changed programs less frequently, you probably would have noticed much sooner that you were not improving. Then you could have made targeted adjustments earlier so that you could improve again. The emphasis here is on "targeted" adjustments and not just arbitrarily changing the training program fundamentally.

The second disadvantage of program hopping is that you always have to get used to the technique of the swapped exercises. This is especially bad if you too frequently change up the big, technically demanding exercises such as squats or deadlifts.

If you do squats for 3 weeks, then do the front squat for 3 weeks instead, then do normal back squats again for 3 weeks, each time you will have to work your way back into the technique of the particular type of squat - especially if you are untrained or a beginner.

You'll probably feel unsteady under the bar and thus won't be able to load your muscles as much as you could if you had performed the squat for a longer period of time.

This is not to say that you should never swap out exercises. Regularly changing exercises and/or rep ranges is useful in hypertrophy training to train the muscles from different angles, to stress all muscle fibers, and to prevent injuries, because you do not always stress the same joint structures.

But you should not change exercises too often. This applies especially to the large, technically demanding exercises and less for any curl variations, for example. You do one set and master the technique again - even if you haven't done this curl variation for several months.

To give you a rough guide: Perform the large, technically demanding exercises for at least 10 weeks at a time and the smaller, less demanding exercises for at least 5 weeks.

Going straight back to full throttle after a short break

A short break here refers to a vacation, an illness, or a deload.

You were on vacation for 2 weeks, and are now really recovered and super motivated. Then you go to the gym and do just as many sets as before the vacation, and you also use just as much weight and do just as many reps as before.

So for your chest alone, for example, you do 5 sets of the bench press, then 5 sets of the incline bench press, and then 5 sets of pec flys followed by 3 more dropsets (and all sets to muscular failure, of course).

What does that lead to? It leads to you experiencing deathly muscle soreness the next day. You probably know this. Sure, you were super motivated and just felt like working out again. At the time of training it probably felt good.

But if you want to build muscles optimally, then unfortunately you can't just focus on the feeling during training; you also need to consider the consequences of this training on the following days, weeks, and months.

There are 3 important reasons why you should pull yourself together a bit after the vacation and not overdo it right away:

First, overdoing it is dangerous and you could injure yourself. Your muscles, but also your joints, tendons and ligaments, are no longer accustomed to a high training volume or high training intensities and are accordingly no longer as resistant.

If you get injured, you won't be able to train for a long time. If you can't train for a long time, that's not going to be good for muscle building.

Second, you will build LESS muscle if you do too much. Your muscles will be more sensitive to less training volume after your vacation. So your optimal training volume is lower than it was before the vacation.

Third, you will accumulate too much fatigue and have to deload again sooner. If you would do less after the vacation, you could train effectively for a longer time without having to reduce the fatigue by doing another deload too early.

It's like buying a car. One dealer offers you a VW Golf for $15,000. The other dealer offers you the same Golf - only without airbags and with lots of scratches - for $18,000.

Which car will you choose? Of course the first car! It's better and also cheaper! So, back to training, why not just do less after the vacation and get better results?

For example, after the vacation, do not do 5 sets per exercise; instead, only do 3, and use a little less weight and leave about 3 reps in the tank at the end of each set. Then you will probably feel a little muscle soreness - but not too much. Then you can increase the sets and the weight or the reps from week to week.

The same applies, by the way, if you have been sick for a while or have done a deload.

Getting lost in the details and not focusing on the essentials

You read every day on the internet how to perfect your workout:

"Is it better to rest 2.5 or 3 minutes between sets?", "Should I do biceps curls standing or sitting?", "How should I place my feet during the leg press? Wide stance or medium wide stance? Or halfway from medium-wide to wide stance or 3/4 of half from medium-wide to wide stance? What about the tops of the feet? Rotate outward 10° or would you prefer 11°?"

These are minor details! Paying attention to these little things will bring you next to nothing if you do not pay attention to the important things and make fundamental mistakes, like only training very irregularly.

Sometimes you go 2x a week, sometimes 4x (if you are motivated) and sometimes not at all (if you don't feel like it). Of course, this should not be the case if you want to achieve good results.

Optimizing these little things will also do next to nothing if you don't train hard enough. There are so many people in the gym who want to build muscle well, but don't exert themselves at all.

However, a bit of discomfort and exertion is definitely necessary to signal to the body that the current muscle mass is not enough and that it needs to build more muscle mass to survive the dangers you expose it to.

So don't train like the woman on the leg press who reads a book during sets, or the man who wanders to the next machine after 3 casual warm-up sets on the chest press without having done even one strenuous working set.

You probably know such examples, too. There are quite a few of them. When you train today or tomorrow, just keep your eyes open. You'll notice that most people train far too lightly, at least if their goal is building serious muscle and strength.

The tragedy is that many of these people go to the gym relatively often. That is, they sacrifice quite a lot of time. Accordingly, it is important for you to go to the gym.

Now, of course, you could say that maybe they don't want to set a training stimulus at all and just enjoy exercising. But if we're honest, that's probably only true for 1% of these people. The other 99% want results, but they don't achieve them because, among other things, they do not train hard enough.

So don't worry about the little things IF you don't yet pay perfect attention to the essentials of training. This includes, for example, training regularly and training hard.

This is not to say that you should go to failure on every set. However, there should be no more than 3 reps left in the tank (RIR) at the end of a set.

This may sound easy for some people. But if you REALLY only leave 3 reps in the tank for, say, the leg press, and you don't lie to yourself, then it's really exhausting! If you are not sure if you are training too easily, just do a strength test.

Focusing on specific muscle groups too soon

First you go to kindergarten and grade school before you start an internship or a college program. During the kindergarten and grade school years, you learn general things and find out what you are good at and what you are not so good at. During the training or college years, you then focus on specific topics.

This is exactly how training should be. At the beginning of your training career you train all muscle groups equally. Over time, you will find out what your weak points are. After a few years of training experience, you can then focus on them.

The problem, however, is that people often focus on specific muscle groups far too early.

For example, it's not uncommon for sixteen-year-old boys to want to do an arm specialization program to improve their supposedly lagging arms. In reality, of course, it's not the arms that are their weak points, but the whole body.

That is not meant to be mean. That is quite normal. If you've never trained before, then you usually don't have any really visible muscles anywhere and you simply don't yet know what your actual weak points are.

Namely, what are the problems that occur when you focus on certain muscle groups too soon? Putting a focus on a specific muscle group implies the following points:

First, you do more sets per training session for this muscle group and/or, second, you train this muscle group more often during the week and/or, third, you train this muscle group at the beginning of a training session when you still have a lot of energy.

As a result, you will train the non-focused muscle groups with fewer sets per training session and/or train them less frequently and/or train them at the end of a training session. In other words, your non-focused muscle groups suffer from the disproportionate emphasis on a specific muscle group.

This is not good for beginners, because you want to train all muscle groups evenly when you are starting out.

You may even find that your biceps grow well from the lat pulldown alone and you don't need any or need very few additional biceps curls, or you may find that your triceps develop well from the bench press alone. Since your triceps are already growing just fine, then you can save yourself the time and fatigue from doing many isolation sets.

So train everything relatively evenly as a beginner. For example, check out the plans for the untrained athlete or the beginner in our Facebook group. If you then gain a few years of training experience and really notice that 1,2, or 3 muscle groups are lagging behind, then focus on these muscle groups for a few training cycles, for example.