Most Common Workout Mistakes – Tim Taylor

Tim Taylor brings his experience as an ACSM health fitness instructor, personal trainer, group fitness instructor and weight management consultant to Team Fuel. We asked him to talk about some of the most common mistakes he sees people make in their workouts.

You know? – I’m going to take a slightly different track on this question than most, and let me start it with a story that hopefully illustrates what I’m getting at.

When I was younger, just starting out managing my first hospital-based wellness center in central Florida, I hired a girl to teach aerobics. She had a good physique, but not completely dialed in like you see often on today’s competition circuit. She told me that she was going out to eat at some local restaurant later that evening and mentioned (with some drool at the corner of her mouth) exactly what she was going to order. At the time, I was young and very gung-ho and naively jabbed at her, “How can you eat that?! You’re a fitness instructor here.” And she replied telling me that, “I exercise so I can eat what I want.”

Now this is just one example of a very common mindset I’ve witnessed over the years. “Oh, I’ll go ahead and eat this and work it off later. I’ll spend more time on Workout X,” (whatever their favorite machine, exercise class, or workout happens to be at the time) “and I’ll be fine.” Or my favorite, “I’ll go for a walk after lunch.” And while I’ve had this same mindset at various points in time, I walk into so many gyms across America and see people who have never quite maximized their potential because of it—basically training very well, whether by themselves or under the direction of a personal trainer, but never quite reaching the physique they were dreaming about when they started, and really are indeed capable of attaining genetically/physiologically-- i.e. having a mindset/head-game problem getting in the way of true physiological/aesthetic success.

It’s the two steps forward, two steps back approach to progress. I’m reminded of a couple years earlier. I was in college, studying Exercise Phyz & Kines, etc, and would be busy experimentally applying my newfound knowledge to my own exercise routine during the week and seeing the new changes it produced, results I really liked and felt proud of. Cool! After a typical weekend eat-fest, I would make a new-week’s resolution on Sunday morning and eat well Sunday through Friday, but then on Saturday, I would tell myself, “I’ve done well all week…” and then proceed to make whatever excuse I could dream up at the time as to why I deserved a break, like: “I’m over-trained and my body needs some catch-up nutrients; I have a strong, bottomless-pit type appetite; I can eat more than most; I’m having a good time hanging with friends and they’re all going out to eat and whoops, I didn’t bring a healthy snack along;” or the previously-mentioned “I deserve it and will work it off later”—so I’d have whatever I wanted all day, and that usually meant eating all my favorite foods on that one day. Felt good, tasted great going down, right? Well, come the beginning of the week, Sunday or Monday, I’d notice I felt more “puffy” and bloated, last week’s abs were a bit smoother now, but of course, I was back on a new-week’s resolution again, training hard and determined to get back to the last-Friday-condition that I had been really proud of attaining (just before the weekend social scene, too) and by the second Friday I did, but then…another Saturday splurge, right? And the subsequent disappointment with the early-week bloat. Are you with me? Have you been there? ;-( A couple of weeks of that standing-still cycle, and I had a light bulb moment and decided to experiment with a two-week time period of hard training. The weekend came and I trained and ate well right through it and found that by the time the second Friday came, I was further along in my physique-building journey than I’d ever been in my life. Needless to say, I was hooked, made the consistency-connection and kept extending that timeframe of strict training/clean nutrition to three, four, and eventually ten or 12 weeks before a “cheat day.”

So there you have it, the most common workout mistake is not in the workout itself, although workouts can always be improved, especially for the novice. But many people do, in fact, workout pretty well, but it’s what they “eat/drink, even sleep” at home, away from the “workout”, that keeps them from realizing the potential that they have locked away inside them. I used to tell clients to really try committing to the whole enchilada for six to twelve weeks without a mistake, mess-up, or cheat day and see what good shape they ended up in, for after all, “if you don’t like being in totally fantastic shape, you can always go back…” ;-) But you might be hooked for life, and truly realize where your genetic potential is.

So in a word, inconsistency is the most common mistake I see people make when gunning for their goals.

{Moving forward, my goal is to pen some articles on exactly what that six to twelve week training cycle looks like. All the right training that should take place in the gym, (and let me mention that in this blog, I don’t want to downplay the importance of the “workout” itself) but ultimately more importantly, the necessary consistency in the kitchen, lunchbox, and on the road. Many opinions abound on what training/nutrition combo is best, so I’ll simply be fleshing out what I’ve found works for me.}

All the best,

Tim Taylor