6 CRUCIAL Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Training (Beginner Workout Mistakes)

What's up guys? Today I'm going to be sharing with you the six most important things I wish I knew when I first started lifting. I've been training for about five years now, but I'd say in my last year of training I've made more progress than I did in my first three to four years of training. And this is just because when I first started lifting, I basically took advice from the wrong people and this is what caused me to really slow down my progress. And it got to the point where I didn't really know who to go for for advice and who to trust. But since then I've lear so much through my education, personal research, and basically five years of trial and error that now I've gone to the point where I know what works and what doesn't. So for those of you watching, I highly recommend that you learn from my mistakes and implement the tips that I'm going to mention throughout the video, as this will prevent you from wasting a lot of years of training like I did and it'll enable you to progress much faster than most beginner lifters out there. The first and probably the most costly mistake I made when I first started lifting was I did not establish a solid mind to muscle connection with my muscles. I was more concerned with how much weight I could lift than actually focusing on using the right muscles for each movement. For example, when I first started lifting, I had the most difficult time building up my chest and it just would not grow. And I assumed it wouldn't grow because I simply wasn't lifting heavy enough. But even when I got to the point where I could lift a decent amount of weight, for example, I was doing a two plate bench for reps, my chest was pretty much the same size as it was a few years back when I first started lifting. And although my shoulders and my triceps had actually grown quite a bit, my chest was pretty much the same. And this was 100% due to the fact that I did not establish a solid mind to muscle connection with my chest and I was working out the secondary muscles whenever I would do chest exercises. So to fix this, what I did is I first lowered all my weights, which is hard to do, trust me, and it takes a big hit on your ego, but it's something that you have to do. And I picked a few exercises that really activated my chest and I also used various cues and chest activation exercises to really just establish that strong mind to muscle connection so I could feel my chest when I was doing the movements and only After I did all that, did I start to slowly increase the weight and only then did I start to see my chest actually growing. And by then I had already wasted about two to three years of chest training. And this applies to all muscles that you train. You need to first focus on establishing a solid mind to muscle connection with all the muscles that you train, or else you're not going to be training the right muscles and it's just going to be your secondary muscles that are going to grow. Another big mistake during my first few years of lifting is I kind of neglected my compound lifts. And the main compound lifts I'm talking about are pull ups, deadlifts, squat, and the overhead press. I put more time and effort into isolation movements than with compound lifts because I, I didn't think they mattered that much yet. Compound movements are some of the best exercises that you can do to put on mass. And once I started to get really strong with my pull ups and deadlifts and squat and overhead press, I started to put on a lot more muscle than I did previously when I didn't do compound lifts. And this brings me to my next mistake, which is I was not focusing on the concept of progressive overload and basically getting stronger every single week. Instead, what I was doing is I was constantly switching up my exercise routine almost every week. And I wasn't tracking my progress with these exercises, which made it really hard for me to get strong in the exercises that I needed to get strong in, which meant I was basically wasting years of training when it comes to building muscle. Instead, what I do now is I choose a few key lifts and I focus on getting strong as hell with them. So I'll stick with pretty much the same exercise routine for a few months until I plateau. And I also track my progress so I can make sure that I'm either increasing in weight or reps or total volume every single week with these key exercises. This is a mistake I've made for several years now, and it's something that I've only recently fixed. And it's cost me a lot of years of wasted training. As a beginner, I'd see bodybuilders get really fat during their bulking phases. Yeah, when they started cutting. And they'd lose all their fat and get super ripped, they'd be bigger than they were the previous year. So I thought that this was the best way to gain muscle. And I tried to copy this. I tried to gain as much weight as I could during my bulking phase. And I remember at one point I kid you not. I was drinking a whole gallon of chocolate milk in addition to all my regular meals every single day. So although I put on a lot of size during this bulk, I went up to around 17 to 18% body fat, which meant I put on a lot of fat as well, which became really hard for me to get rid of. And little did I know the bodybuilders I was following and taking advice from. They take performance enhancing drugs that allows them to get super ripped, lose a lot of fat, while maintaining pretty much all the muscle mass that they gain during their bulk, which is something that's pretty much impossible for natural lifters like myself. So when I started cutting after I got to a really high percentage body fat, it took me a long time to lose all that fat. And throughout the process, I lost a lot of muscle with it. And this pretty much brought me back to the starting point I was before I even started bulking, which means I wasted all this time doing a big bulk and cutting when I could have been doing it differently instead. A much better way to do this and something I do now is I do short periods of lean bulking combined with short cutting phases, as this allows you to stay relatively lean as you gain muscle. And you don't need to waste a lot of time burning off fat, which also burns off your muscle in the process. Although you can still make progress while not counting your calories. If you've never counted your calories before, then you're pretty much gonna be shooting in the dark and you're not gonna really know how much you're eating every day. For example, during my first two to three years of training, I never really counted my calories as I thought I knew I had a ballpark idea as to how much I was eating. But once I first started counting my calories, I realized that I was actually 400 to 500 calories off from what I thought I was eating, which is huge. And it could be the difference between gaining weight or losing weight. So I suggest using a simple app like MyFitnessPal and tracking your food every single day, at least for a few weeks, until you get an idea as to how much food you're actually eating on a daily basis and how much food you have to eat in order to hit your goal, whether it's for gaining muscle or losing fat. Not only will it hold you accountable for what you eat every day, but you're gonna progress much faster than you would if, if you were to just eat blindly every day. Alright guys, last mistake and probably one of the more important ones is that when I first started lifting as a beginner, I did no stability or mobility work for my joints and I did very little stretching, if any at all. And I did this because I didn't realize the importance of including these things into my training regimen and nobody really told me that these things were necessary to do. And as a result, during my first few years of training, I got tons of injuries, especially, especially in my rotator cuff, which meant that I couldn't train for months at a time due to my injuries. And the fact that I was sitting pretty much all day as a university student with bad posture just made matters worse. So now what I do is I regularly include a lot of self myofascial release, stability and mobility work, rotator cuff strengthening exercises, and a lot of exercises to strengthen my lower traps and my rhomboids to help improve my posture and reduce my risk of injury in the future. And ever since I started doing this consistently a few years back, I have not had a serious injury since. That's it for the video guys. I hope you guys found it useful. And I guarantee that if you implement the tips I previously go through and you learn from my mistakes, that you're going to save a lot of years that would be wasted training, and you're going to progress a lot faster than you would otherwise. And as always, please don't forget to support me by hitting that like button and hitting that subscribe button. It'll really help me out. And you can also check out some of my other videos, which I think you guys will find useful. So have a great day and I'll see you next time.