It is a shocking figure but only 10-15% of exercisers achieve their health and fitness goals! At Get Results Fitness it is our passion to improve these figures by providing our clients with simple, quality information that will help them achieve a leaner body and optimal health. With this in mind this week’s newsletter was written to help you avoid the 5 most common mistakes that we have witnessed during our 14 years in the health & fitness industry.
1. Doing Ineffective Workouts
Many fitness enthusiasts choose the traditional ‘fat burning’ workouts. These involve doing cardio exercise for 30-60 minutes at a steady pace (using treadmills, bikes & cross trainers). This is by far the least time-effective way to lose body fat. These sessions have a minimal effect on your metabolism after the session is finished, they do not increase lean muscle (the key tissue for boosting your metabolism), and crucially, they have a detrimental effect on the hormones linked to fat loss and increase the hormones linked to fat storage.
2. Doing the Same Workout for Too Long
If you follow the same exercise routine for 6 or more sessions in a row your body will have adapted to this workload and the after effects of the session will rapidly begin to reduce. The key to exercise is to overload the body with a new stimulus so that is continually has to adapt and change between sessions.
3. Not Enough Emphasis on Nutrition
80% of your health and wellness results are linked to your nutritional strategies. Very often exercisers make the mistake of putting all their eggs into the one exercise basket. This will only reap minimal results. You must establish a clean, well balanced nutritional plan to really achieve outstanding results.
4. Training like a Body Builder
When asked why they joined a gym, only a small percentage of gym users will state that body building is their number one reason. Despite this, when you look around gyms a large percentage of gym goers follow body building-type routines. If your goal is to be lean, athletic, healthy and achieve great health, you should move away from machines, split routines and isolating muscle groups and instead move more towards big dynamic movements that challenge the body in all three planes of motion. These movements will overload the cardiovascular system and improve core and stability strength.
5. Not Having a Vision
Countless research shows that when you have a goal, write it on paper, and read it regularly, you will be much more likely to achieve success when compared to someone with vague or no goals.
Walk into any gym in the world and you will hear many new members telling the sales staff or gym staff “I want to lose weight and tone up”. This goal is far too vague and has no feeling. The chances of it being achieved are slim.
Write your goal as if today is the date you want to achieve it by and write exactly what it is you would like to do (it is January 2014 and I am now a size 12). Now create your plan to go make it happen.
Take a minute and ask if any of these mistakes sound familiar and think about what you can to avoid making them in the future.
