Workout programs are a dime-a-dozen. At one time (pre-internet and social media), bodybuilding and fitness magazines were the only place you could find a structured resistance training program, short of hiring a coach or personal trainer. Nowadays, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of top-notch training programs available for FREE!
In fact, we provide customized training plans tailored to your preferences and goals (for FREE) when you download the 1UP Fitness App.
That being said, there are still a lot of crappy training programs out there (for free). So, how can you spot a poor training program or avoid making a less than optimal workout routine yourself?
Let’s discuss the 5 biggest workout mistakes.
#1 Doing Too Much
We have a tendency to think that if a little of something is good, a whole lot more of it should be that much better.
But, that’s not necessarily the case when it comes to designing an effective workout program for muscle building or fat loss.
The reason many of us believe that more is better is due to a combination of factors, including popular training routines promoted by well-known bodybuilders, physique athletes and fitness influencers as well as scientific research indicating that greater training volumes lead to greater muscle gains.
However, there comes a point (in all things in life) when doing more actually is worse.
For instance, you don’t need to have five different chest exercises in your workout to build a bigger chest. You also don’t need to constantly change your workouts each week to “confuse” your muscles.
Sometimes less is more.
What is fairly consistent across research, top level coaches (of natural athletes), and our personal experience is that 10-20 “hard sets” per muscle group each week (not each workout) is best for muscle growth. A “hard set” is defined as one in which you end your set within 1-2 reps of technical failure (the point at which you can no longer perform another rep with good control).
Ideally these sets will be broken up across 2-4 training sessions per week in the form of a total body workout, upper lower split or push/pull/legs split.
The takeaway here is to focus on making every set count -- getting the most out of each and every rep and avoid the trap of performing volume for volume’s sake.
#2 Neglecting a Warm Up
Warm ups are an important part of an effective workout program. They prepare your central nervous system (CNS) and target muscle groups for the intense work ahead which helps to reduce the risk of injury. This ultimately allows you to push harder during your workouts and get better results over the long term!
As important as warm ups are, some trainers (especially celebrity trainers) and workout programs overdo them. Warm ups don’t need to take as long (or longer) than your workout. So if you see a warm up that includes something like 10 minutes of walking, 10 minutes of pre-hab work, 10 minutes of mobility work, 5 minutes of foam rolling, and then “activation” drills, you know you’re overdoing it.
Warm ups don’t need to be bloated or time-consuming. They exist to prep your muscles for the exercises they will be performing, increase circulation, raise core temperature, and excite the nervous system.
So, if you’ve been sitting for most of the day, do 3-5 minutes of walking, jogging, or bodyweight circuits to increase core temperature, warm up your muscles, and enhance circulation. You may also want to have a serving of pre workout, such as 1UP Pre or Stim-Free Pre Workout, before beginning your warm up to help get your body ready mentally and physically.
After your brief cardio warm up, go to your first exercise and perform a warm-up set for 10-15 repetitions. Rest a minute or two, add a little bit of weight then perform another warm up set for 8-10 reps.
Depending on your working weight for your first exercise, you may be ready to begin your first working set. If you’re an intermediate or advanced lifter, then you may need another warm up set or two, depending on your working weight.
#3 Not Understanding Anatomy
When we think about workouts, we tend to think of the individual body parts that we want to train that day -- chest and tris, back and bis, legs, etc. This can lead us to think of the body as a collection of individual parts rather than an interconnected network of muscles.
For instance, you may think that chest day just involves the chest muscles; however, compound pressing exercises typically performed on chest day workouts like bench press, push ups, and dips also involve the triceps and shoulders (anterior delts to be specific).
What this means is that you would not want to train shoulders or triceps the day after you had a heavy chest workout since your shoulders and triceps received a fair amount of indirect work.
Similarly, you wouldn’t want to program heavy deadlifts after a squat day since your upper and lower back are involved when performing heavy loaded front or back squats.
Basically, you need to have some fundamental level of understanding of how the body works if you want to design your own workout program or check the workout program you’re getting from a trainer or coach.
If you don’t want to worry about any of that, we can help!
As we mentioned at the outset, the 1UP Fitness App provides free, customized training programs tailored to your goals and preferences. We’ve worked with expert coaches and trainers to design these training programs and avoid the pitfalls and follies of poor training programs.
#4 Not Having Enough Variety
Minimalist training has gained popularity recently in part as a push-back to the bloated high-volume workouts popularized by “enhanced” athletes. And, it’s true that doing too much in the gym, as we discussed above, can be detrimental. But, so can doing too little.
Ultra-minimalist training programs can lead to overuse injuries or muscle imbalances. It can also lead to certain areas of the body being under-developed like the side delts, biceps, triceps, and calves.
The truth is that some variation is good, especially if you train the same body parts more than once per week.
Exercise variation serves a few purposes, including:
- Training the muscle from different angles and resistance profiles which enhances overall strength gain and physique improvements
- Reduces the risk of overuse injuries
- Increases enjoyment
An effective training program strikes a balance of variety, volume, and consistency in your training so that you stay healthy and excited for your workouts while also maximizing your potential results.
#5 Program Hopping
Despite what you may have heard or seen, you do not constantly need to change up your workouts to avoid plateaus or keep your muscles “guessing.” This notion was born in the 1970s bodybuilding era, but regained popularity in the early 2000s thanks to home workout programs that capitalized on the idea of muscle confusion.
The idea was that if you keep doing the same exercises and workouts all the time, then your muscles will eventually adapt to them and progress will stall. This is true…somewhat. If you performed the exact same exercises with the exact same loading and number of repetitions, then you would eventually plateau.
But, to prevent a plateau and “confuse” your muscles, you don’t need to change your workout every week or even every 4 weeks. You just need to make them do more work!
Simply increasing how many reps you perform or how much weight you lift on an exercise (even if it’s just a pound or two) or shortening your rest periods between sets (while performing the same number of reps) are all ways to increase the challenge on your muscles (aka muscle confusion).
Constantly changing what exercises you do every week doesn’t really allow you to adapt to any particular exercise, which means you don’t have a reliable way to measure if you’re actually getting stronger or improving. Your nervous system spends more time trying to figure out how to do the exercise properly than doing more work.
A good rule of thumb is to stick with the same workout plan for 4-6 weeks, take a deload week, and replace a few exercises with ones you want to try. There’s no need to completely swap every exercise in your training program, especially if certain variations are working really well for you.
The Bottom Line
Building an effective workout program doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complicated. It does require a reasonable amount of understanding of how the human body functions as well as what your particular goals and needs are.
Use the tips discussed here to help you build or vet your own workout program. And, if you don’t want to deal with any of that and just focus on training hard and eating right, we’ve got you covered with the 1UP Fitness App!
