Top 5 Workouts Mistakes You’re Making (Fix Them Now!)

Here are the top 5 mistakes I want you to avoid making if you're trying to get stronger and build muscle. Mistake number 1, only doing high reps. And when I say high reps, I mean 8 to 20+ reps. And this is a mistake for 2 big reasons. The predominant way that you are going to build muscle is through something called mechanical tension. And don't worry, let me just explain what mechanical tension means very simply. It just means the amount of tension that you are creating inside your muscles needs to be very high so your body can say, oh shit, there's a lot of stress going on here. We need to make sure we can build muscle to be able to withstand this stress. And there's 2 main ways you're going to get the most mechanical tension in your workouts. The first way is by making sure that you go close to failure. How do you know if you're going close to failure? I'm going to put a video right here as I talk and show you. This is a set that I am taking very close to failure, and the way you know that is because the last couple of reps on the way up are starting to involuntarily slow down. I'm not trying to slow the reps down; my muscles are just getting very close to failure, and that's how I know I'm going close to failure. Now you might say, "Well, Eric." If you just go close to failure in the 8, 15, 20, 30 rep range, aren't you going to still build muscle? And you know what the answer is? Yes, you could. But here's the issue. As you start to get higher reps, 12, 15, 20, 30 reps, usually you're not failing from like a muscular strength perspective. You're usually failing from a cardiovascular perspective or you're failing from a muscular endurance perspective. So while yes, you might go close to failure with 20 reps, and I'm not saying you can't build muscle with 20 reps, but what I am saying is usually that's going to work a little bit more of your muscular endurance system as opposed to you actually building more strength and building more muscle tissue. Or again, you would just work your cardiovascular system instead. And the second way you get the most mechanical tension is by having and lifting heavier weight. And now heavy is relative, but if you're lifting 8 reps versus let's say if you're lifting 5 reps in a squat, for example, if you're doing 10, 12 reps on a squat versus 5 reps on a squat, don't you think you're going to be able to inherently lift more weight if you're doing less reps? Because you don't have to do as many reps. And so when you lift a little bit less reps, you are going to get heavier weight, which can help you get more mechanical tension, which can help you build more muscle. And the second reason only doing high reps is a mistake is because you're not going to build as much strength in that 8, 10, 12, 15, 20 rep range. Because for you to build strength, you need to expose yourself to heavier loads. And again, heavy is relative, but inherently, no matter who you are, beginner, advanced, intermediate, whatever, you can lift heavier, more weight for less reps. And so when you expose your body to these heavier loads, your central nervous system is going to get stronger, which can not only obviously help you get stronger, but think about it like this as well. If you are building strength in, let's say, the 3 to 6 rep range. If you're doing sets in the 3 to 6 rep range, don't you think if you get stronger overall as a whole, when you come back to doing 8 reps, 10 reps, 12 reps, you'll be able to lift heavier weight in the 8, 10, 12 rep range because you incorporated some strength work in this 3 to 6 rep range? And so now instead of lifting 10 pounds for 50 reps, because you worked in some 3 to 6 rep range work, you can now lift 55 or 60 pounds or 70 pounds for 10 or 12 reps. So when you go to do your higher rep work, you will be able to lift heavier weight, which will allow you to build more muscle because you're lifting heavier load. You're going closer to failure. And all of this funnels back to you seeing more progress in your workouts. So I'm not saying you can't or you shouldn't do 8, 10, 12 reps. But what I am saying is you want to make sure you're incorporating anywhere in that 3 to 6, 3 to 7 rep range for your exercises. Main exercises I would usually tell you to incorporate a little bit of lower rep work is going to be your bigger compound movements. Things like your squats, things like your chest press or your shoulder press, things like your deadlifts, things like your chin-ups. Those movements can allow you to lift a bit heavier load and it would make sense for you to do a little bit less reps with those exercises. And one last note of this, because you might be asking me, usually if it were up to me, I would say 10 to 15% of your reps should probably be in that 3 to 7 rep range for the strength. Then 6 to 12 reps should probably take up 70 to 80% of your training. And then last but not least, more than 12, 15, 20+ reps. I would say maybe, and honestly I'm going to make this a zero because you might not even have to incorporate any of this work, but maybe 5% of your training can come in that like, you know, 12 to 15 to maybe up to 20 rep range. The second mistake when it comes to building muscle and strength is not resting long enough in between your sets. And let me back this up by saying a few things. Number one, I'm going to link a study I'm going to link a study here below that people did on longer rest times versus shorter rest times for muscle building. You can check it out if you'd like to. That study showed that longer rest times were more conducive for hypertrophy and muscle building. And when I'm saying longer, I mean 2 minutes of rest in between your sets. So the first reason resting longer in between your sets is going to benefit you is because of what we talked about earlier in the first point, which is mechanical tension. If you are resting longer in between your sets, you're usually going to do what? You're going to go into your next set with more strength. You're going to be more recovered. You'll be able to lift heavier weight. You'll be able to go closer to failure from a muscle and a strength perspective, as opposed to if you only rested for 45 seconds in between your sets, what do you think is going to happen to your performance? Your performance is going to decrease set over set, right? You're going to have to lift less weight. You're going to have to do less reps. You're going to— you might go close to failure, but again, you're going close to failure from that cardio or that muscular endurance perspective that we talked about earlier. You're not going close to failure from a muscle and a strength perspective. And if you feel like you don't need 2 minutes of rest, I hear that often. Eric, what am I supposed to do for 2 minutes? I don't need 2 minutes of rest. If you don't need 2 minutes of rest in between your sets, you're not lifting heavy enough. You're not lifting heavy enough weight. You're not pushing yourself close enough to failure in your, in your sets that you're doing. Because if you were, Trust me, take it from myself, take it from all the people that I coach inside of my clubhouse. If you are pushing yourself as hard as you should be doing and as hard as you can, you're gonna need that 2 minutes of rest, which plays into this entire cycle again. You'll be able to fully recover, which means you can push yourself once again, which means you can do this over and over and allow yourself to see the most progress. And so for the most part, I would say 2 to 5 minutes of rest in between your sets. I'm not saying you can never do something like 90 seconds of rest, for example, but for the most part, I would stick to at least 2 minutes in between your sets. You might be saying, oh my God, Eric, my workouts are going to take forever. Here's what I will say: you don't have to do as many exercises in your workouts. And we're going to touch on this a little bit later in the video, so stick around for it. But because you will be resting a little bit longer in your sets, When you go to actually do your sets, you're going to be able to get more out of the sets that you're doing and out of the exercises that you're doing. So you won't need to do as many exercises or as many sets because the sets you are doing are going to be better quality. Most people just think more is better— more sets, more reps, more exercises. It's not about more is better; better is better. Quality over over quantity. That's how you don't even need to spend as long in your workouts. Just make your workouts better by resting longer in between your sets. Really quickly, I don't know if you want them, I don't know if you need them, but I do have 45 totally free workouts that I'm willing to give to you for free just because I want to help you. So if you want to get those, just click the link in the description of this video. I'll be happy to send them right over to your email. And now let's get back to the last 3 mistakes. Onto mistake number 3, which we briefly just touched on, but doing too much volume. And when I say volume, I mean the amount of sets per muscle group per workout or throughout the course of the week. So you just heard me talk about you don't need to be doing as many exercises in your workouts. Again, there was a study that showed after about that 8 to 12 set range, sets per muscle group per workout mark, there was a decrease in something called muscle protein synthesis. Think of muscle protein synthesis as just like the process that needs to happen in order for your body to actually build and grow new muscle. After somebody did too much in a workout, that process— it was almost like a bell curve. You're doing work, doing work, doing work, but After a certain point, there becomes a point of diminishing returns. That's what that study showed, that if you're doing too much in a workout, you're actually going to get negative results, not more. Again, going back to more isn't better, better is better. Quality over quantity. Let's quickly, quickly peek at that. If let's say you're trying to do 8 sets for your glutes, which by the way would be a shit ton of sets for one workout. You would, let's say, do Bulgarian split squat for 3 sets, a Romanian deadlift for 3 sets, and then a hip thrust for 2 sets. Again, 3 sets, 3 sets, 2 sets— that's 8 sets. All of those sets are very close to failure. You're pushing yourself very hard in those 8 sets. And if you do that, that's 3 exercises for your glutes. And which, by the way, this would be a higher volume glute workout for that day. But if you do that right there, not only is that going to be enough, but I want you to also kind of think back to the previous mistake we just talked about. When you start getting past something like this right here, 8 working sets for your workouts, your intensity, how hard you can push yourself, how close to failure you are going, your performance how much weight you can lift, again, how hard you can push yourself. Both of these things start to decline and you get something called junk volume. Junk volume is basically just you're doing your workouts, you're doing your reps, you're doing your sets, but you're not actually having them be intense enough. You're not actually lifting heavy enough, pushing yourself close to failure for any results to actually come from it. It's almost like if you were building a house and 1 month in you're like, hey, can I get an update on the house? And they're like, yeah, we're working 12 hours a day, things are going great, but there's like not even the foundation set up. 3 months goes by, hey, can I get an update on the house? Yeah, we're working really hard every single day, still no foundation set up, no nothing. It's almost like you're just doing work without getting any of the positive benefits from it. You're getting nothing accomplished because again, if you're doing 8 hard sets of a muscle group in your workout, there's no way you're going to be able to keep going after that. You are going to be exhausted. So that's your cue to know. If, if you look at this, you're like, oh, that's nothing, you're not training anywhere near with enough intensity in your workouts. And a little bonus for you, if you want to know how many exercises you should be doing per workout, I'm going to give you exactly what I do inside of my clubhouse when I program workouts For the members inside, I break them up into lower body, upper body, and potentially a full body day. When you're doing a lower body workout, you should be getting anywhere from 4 to maybe 6 exercises max for a lower body workout day. And again, if you actually train with intensity, that will be more than enough. For an upper body workout, maybe somewhere in that 6 to 10 exercise rep range. There are a little bit more muscles in your upper body, so your exercises might be a little bit more. And then last but not least, for full body, usually anywhere between 6 to 12 exercises for a full body day, again depending on what the goal is, what the workout structure is like, so on and so forth. And for these workouts, like when I program workouts for the clubhouse, they are usually anywhere from 45 to 75 minutes max. Some people go up to an hour and a half, but that's because they have the extra time. They like being in the gym, so on and so forth. But you can get this accomplished and you can get your workouts done in 45 to 75 minutes. I promise you. Now, mistake number 4, and you probably knew this was coming at some point, not eating enough protein. And a really quick calculation on how many grams of protein you should be eating per day. If one of your main goals is to also lose weight as you're trying to get stronger and build muscle, You want to take your goal body weight. This is in pounds. So for people outside the US, you need to convert to pounds, but take your goal body weight in pounds and multiply that between 0.7 and 1. So let's just say, for example, you want to weigh 150 pounds. If you took 150 times 0.8, for example, that would give you roughly about 120 grams of protein. If your goal is to not lose weight and is more so build, You want to take your current body weight and multiply it between 1 and 1.2, anywhere in between that range. And again, this is in pounds. And not just your daily grams of protein per day is important, but what is also important is eating protein every 2 to 5 hours. And here's why. We talked earlier about the muscle protein synthesis. Again, this is the process that helps you build muscle, recover from your workouts, all those great things. When you eat muscle pro— when you eat protein every 2 to 5 hours, your muscle protein synthesis works the best. So if you want the most optimal results, if you want to be able to build as much muscle, recover from your workouts, all these great things, you want to make sure you're not only hitting your protein goal, but you're eating the protein every 2 to 5 hours. And the last mistake, number 5, kind of, because I have a little bit of a bonus for you at the end, changing your workouts up too often, but also not changing your workouts enough. And here's what I mean. You do not want to change up your workouts up too much because you're not going to have something called progressive overload. You've probably heard that term before. That just means you're not going to be able to, you know, get better over time. You're not going to be able to get stronger, lift more weight, do more reps. You won't do that because if you do a squat one week and then a Bulgarian split squat the next week, and then you do a lunge the next week and you do a step-up the next week, you have no like continuity with your workouts. And so you can't get better over time. Whereas let's say if you did a squat one week and a squat the next week, the first week you did 100 pounds for 5 reps, the next week you did 105 pounds for 5 reps. Well, guess what? That's you getting better over time. And what do you think your body is going to do? Your body's going to say, okay, they're lifting heavier weight, they're doing more reps, they're pushing themselves. I have to adapt. I have to adapt and I have to build stronger, more defined muscles because this person is putting a stress that is great enough that I have to respond to. If you're changing your workouts all the time, you can't do that. But on the flip side of that, you don't want to change your workouts But on the flip side of that, you don't want to keep your workouts the same for too long for a couple of reasons. Number one, you're going to probably start to develop some overuse injuries. If you're always doing a flat barbell bench press, good luck with your shoulders. If you're always doing a deadlift from the floor, good luck with your lower back. So you want to be able to change them up enough to avoid the overuse injuries, but also you can hit your muscles from different angles, from different ranges of motion. Like if let's say for example, you're going from a flat bench press to an incline bench press, or you're going from a, uh, a barbell RDL to a single leg dumbbell RDL, or you're going from like a tricep extension to an overhead tricep extension, you're able to change up the angles, the resistance profiles, the ranges of motion to build a more complete More overall well-rounded, strong, and defined muscle. All right, so what's the sweet spot? I have done in the clubhouse and with all of my clients in the past is going to be switching up your workouts every 4 to 8 weeks. This allows you to have enough time to be able to progressively overload, but it also allows you to switch up your workouts frequently enough for you to be able to have the benefits of what we just talked about. And one last benefit I didn't even say, but I want to say it here, When you're like, it's like, for example, in the clubhouse, we have a new workout program every single month. When, when the members get that new workout program, it's almost like a kid on Christmas. They're like, all right, what's in the new month's workout? Let's go. I want to try this exercise. This looks new. It's like, it allows you to be more tuned into it. If you're more tuned into it, you're more excited to work out. What do you think is going to happen to your intensity? What do you think is going to happen to your want to train? You're going to push harder. You're going to train harder. You're going to go closer to failure. That's going to allow you to see much better results as well. So every 4 to 8 weeks, that's when I recommend changing up your workouts. And when I say changing up your workouts, I mean like you're changing the exercises, you're changing the rep ranges, you're changing up the structure of the one workout, but also the week's worth of workouts. And one last little bonus tip. Please remember building muscle takes a long time. You're not going to see drastic changes in a month or 3 months. These are a few of my Clubhouse members right here. These transformations both took longer than 6 months. But I promise you, if you stick with it, if you have a proper program and you push yourself, you're going to be able to see the progress you want to see. Hope you enjoyed the video. And if you want some help with your fitness journey, with your muscle building, with your workouts, you can head to erfclubhouse.com. Again, it is my training program. We have exact workouts to do, exact exercises, exact reps. You get access to my team of coaches to help with form feedback and asking questions, concerns. Just head to the link and check it out. Hope it helped, and we'll chat soon.