It wasn’t too long ago that the gyms were flocking with the New Year’s Resolution groups. Things are already starting to quiet down. Some people cannot maintain willpower long enough for exercise to become a healthy habit. For others, they simply aren’t patient enough to realize that physical results are slow to come. For others, there will never be a healthy change because they’re simply doing it wrong.

MISTAKE #1 – CARDIO BEFORE RESISTANCE TRAINING

Most people that join a gym have the same tired goals…losing weight, getting healthier, getting fitter, feeling better, etc. There are no specifics, and no date set. They set themselves up to fail before they even walk in the door for their first workout.

They come in, do a little cardio warmup, workout, do some stretching, then leave.

If that sounds like you, you need to stop doing your cardio training before your resistance training. Doing cardio before resistance training will:

• slow down your body fat reduction
• slow down or prevent any strength gains
• prevent improvements in energy system performance
• do nothing to maximize your cardiovascular function
• and wreck your workout

Here’s how you should organize your workouts:

• 5 – 10 min joint mobility warm-up
• Resistance training
• HIIT and/or Cardio-vascular training
• Joint mobility & flexibility training
• Joint Mobility Warm-Up

Starting your workout with short joint mobility warm-up is a good idea for a few reasons.

• It physically warms up your muscles, making them more flexible and less prone to injury
• It causes your joints to be lubricated with synovial fluid, helping them move more smoothly, preventing injury
• It transitions your mind-body from your real-world problems into a “it’s time to crush it” mode. This may seem inconsequential, but trust me – it isn’t

Sample Joint Mobility Protocol

• Joint Circles – Starting with the ankles and moving all the way up to your neck, gently make circles with all of your joints – 10 revolutions each joint in each direction
• Dead Bug – Push your lower back into the floor and articulate your arms & legs as in the video. 1 set of as many reps as possible with your lower back pushed into the floor. When your back starts to arch…STOP. This warms up your core muscles and establishes a quick mind-body connection to some very, very important muscles.
• 1 Arm Swing Snatch – 25 reps per arm – Dumbbell or kettlebell – choose a light weight – the goal is to warm-up. After the swings, just about every muscle in your body should be nice and pliable and ready for the rest of your workout.

Resistance Training

The type of resistance training you perform depends on your goals. Strength, size, endurance, looking good naked, etc.

The main reason you should perform resistance training before cardio is that resistance training requires a higher level of intensity than cardio training and as you fatigue, your ability to perform at a high level of intensity is the first thing to go.

And if you perform your resistance training in a fatigued state, you are going to wreck your workout, miss out on the weight loss benefits, miss out on strength building benefits, and lose out on the energy system boosting benefits, etc.

HIIT and/or Cardio Training

Whether you perform HIIT or longer duration/lower intensity cardio training or some combination of the two depends on your training goals.

Joint Mobility & Flexibility Training

You have lots of options here…

• Foam rollers,
• Resistance stretching
• Micro stretching
• “normal” stretch & hold stretching, PNF stretching, etc, etc, etc.

MISTAKE #2 – DRINKING GATORADE WHILE DOING CARDIO

Unless you are putting in more than 60 minutes of hard, sweaty cardio training, you don’t need the sugar calories found in Gatorade and other sports drinks. You do need water…but you don’t need Gatorade. Or Powerade. Or any other brand of this crap. Don’t try to lawyer yourself an excuse.

In fact, drinking sugary sports drinks minimizes one of the great benefits of of exercise – improved insulin sensitivity.

What is insulin sensitivity and why should you care about it?

Insulin sensitivity describes how sensitive the body is to the effects of insulin. Someone said to be insulin sensitive will require smaller amounts of insulin to lower blood glucose levels than someone who has low sensitivity.

In short, being sensitive to insulin is good. Being insensitive is bad and is a sign that you are on your way to developing type 2 diabetes. Nobody wants that.

Exercise, Insulin Sensitivity & Gatorade

Lots of research shows us that cardio exercise makes your body more sensitive to insulin. What happens during exercise is that your body pulls stored sugars out of your muscles & liver to fuel your activity. And for most gym-goers, you have more than enough sugar stored in your body to get you through your workout. (that’s why you don’t NEED Gatorade unless you are a serious cardio athlete, and if you’re even wondering, you’re not.)

Post workout, your sugar-depleted muscles are going to be screaming for sugar. And when you chug down a post-workout protein smoothies or make yourself a meal at home, your muscles & liver are going to take priority over most other body processes.

And this is good because it means that your muscles are going to get all the nutrients they need to recover faster from your workouts.

Takeaway Message – Unless you are a serious cardio athlete, don’t drink a sugary sports drink during your workout. You will perform just as well, recover faster, while getting leaner, stronger, fitter, faster.

MISTAKE #3 – TRAINING CHEST & BICEPS THREE TIMES PER WEEK

This message is for all the young studs who think that getting a buff chest and jacked biceps is going to make all the girls swoon. It won’t. You’re just going to wreck our workout, plus:

• All the other guys think you’re a poser
• Your arms & chest would grow faster if you started training smarter

What does training smarter mean?

• Train your entire body, not just your beach muscles
• Get stronger through your core & legs and you will be able to handle heavier weights over your entire body. 70% of your muscle growth hormones are stored in your legs. Want to be big up top? Work your legs hard
• Remember that training your back also trains your biceps at the same time

MISTAKE #4 – BELIEVING THAT LIFTING HEAVY WEIGHTS MAKES WOMEN LOOK LIKE MEN

You would not believe how many women believe that if they start lifting weights, their body with morph, grow and swell into this:

When in reality, after years of lifting weights, eating tons of protein & nutritional supplements, favourable genetics and a lot of sweat & hard work, fitness model Jamie Eason looks like this:

Not exactly very manly.

The truth is that you are already lifting weights.

• Every time you stand up from a chair you are lifting weights
• Every time you go for a walk you are lifting weights
• Every time you pick up your kid you are lifting weights
• And you don’t look like a man

As the old saying goes, the poison is in the dosage. If you choose to lift weights like a bodybuilder, eat huge like a bodybuilder and inject steroids, growth hormone & insulin like a bodybuilder, you might end up looking like a bodybuilder.

But, if you lift weights in an intelligent manner, eat in an intelligent manner and take a few crucial supplements, you will probably end up looking fitter, healthier, stronger and sexier than ever before.

MISTAKE #5 – EXPECTING IMMEDIATE RESULTS

Diet experts around the globe will tell you that to lose body fat, you need to eat less calories than you consume. Referencing two of the laws of thermodynamics, they say that if you eat 500 fewer calories than your body requires to function, your body will free up 500 calories of stored body-fat to make up the difference.

And if you do that every day for a week, you will lose one pound of body fat by the end of the week (7 days x 500 less calories per day = 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat).

Unfortunately, as logical and “sciency” as that sounds, it doesn’t work as advertised in the “real world”.

The human body is a beautifully messy piece of work. Two identical twins with identical bodies can follow the exact same diet & exercise program and get totally different results.

And while that seems totally unfair for the twin who isn’t seeing results, that’s real life. Transforming your body is going to require a process of trial and effort.

• Find a nutrition/training program that has a good track record and seems to fit nicely into your lifestyle
• Give it your honest best for six weeks
• Evaluate how it worked for you
• Give it another six weeks or try a new plan
• Evaluate how it worked for you. Detail every pro and con in a journal as you go

Repeat over and over and soon enough you will become an expert on what works for your body.