The 7 Gym Mistakes Keeping You Small (Fix These Today)

Are you making these 6 mistakes in the gym? Well, stop, because they are killing your gains. Starting with the first mistake: not training with a consistent tempo. If I didn't have a consistent tempo, let's just say what most gym bros will do is they'll just, you know, no time under tension, and they're gonna swing. And, you know, I can do 10 reps, I can bang out 10 reps really, really fast and have no tension, right? So I can do 10 reps in 20 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever it is. That's not effective. And also, that's not measurable, because as I add more weight to the bar, it the reps end up just getting faster and faster. Instead, I want to focus on the time created under tension, because that is something I can absolutely control and then objectively measure the weights. So here's what it will look like with a cadence of me lowering the weight at 4 seconds. So I come up, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now you can see one rep takes me approximately 5 seconds to complete. So if I'm doing a set of 10, it's going to take me around 50 seconds. 4, 3, 2, 1. What this does is 2 things. One, well, 3 things really. It creates a really safe place to lift from. It creates consistency in the movement. It standardizes and allows me to compare week after week. Am I actually improving? Because I'm not changing the variables, and we want to be a bit like scientists when training. We don't want to change all the variables all at once. We want to make sure we have the same variables so we can measure our improvement. This relates to another mistake commonly made, and that's lack of planning and programming. You want to think of your programming as a compass. We pick northeast, southwest. You can't go north and south at the same time. You're going to be spinning around in circles. So a lot of guys, girls, they come into the gym and they want to lose weight and build muscle, or they want to build muscle and get stronger, or they want to build muscle while getting better at an Olympic lift. These, you wanna think of it with the end in mind. They are different directions on the compass. So some of these things complement, say for example, building muscle and strength. Kind of think of it as northeast. You can build muscle and build strength at the same time. But building muscle and getting, say, more coordinated or sport-specific movement don't always correlate to the same thing. So think about that number one outcome that you want, and then plan all your training to be happy achieving that number one outcome. What might that look like? If your goal is building muscle, then look at your calories as in either a calorie surplus or calorie maintenance. Look at your training as creating maximal fatigue in the muscle and making sure you go proximity to failure, getting to those last reps. Yes, you can build strength, but if your goal is strength, you're gonna be focusing more on the compound movements like a powerlifter would, or being very specific about the movements that you wanna get stronger in. Which is why at the end of this video, I'm gonna be giving you a free copy of my fitness user manual. It's packed loaded, gonna help you, guide you through your lifestyle goals, nutrition plan, shopping list, macros, everything you need to get you on track. It also has a supplement protocol section so you can learn to supplement correctly, which brings me to the next mistake. Thinking that you need to be 100% every time you go to the gym. Look, the truth is there's been many periods of my life where the gym has taken a backseat, but I've been consistent. So a lot of people in gym land, they want to adopt the all or none mentality. And the truth is about all or none is it seldomly gives you all. And usually gives you none. What you need to accept that 100% of showing up is better than not showing up at all and waiting for you to be 100%. So you need to accept that with training, you're not always gonna be able to week after week improve lift after lift. Think of your training lifts almost like the stock market. The stock market isn't forever going up, otherwise everyone who ever went into the stock market would be billionaires by now. It has ebbs and flows, eases and troughs, and things go down and things go up with the trajectory of over time it's improving. And it's gonna be the same in your training. There's going to be nights and periods of bad sleep, more stress, lifestyle. What you want to do is you want to aim at consistency, getting into the gym week after week with the consistency of improving movements. Find many ways to win. If you improve the movements, show up, that is a win. Likewise, going to the gym and just being focused on the action of going to the gym and being consistent is going to pay you far more than any amount of weight you can lift on the bar in the long run. Which brings me to the next mistake: not understanding the difference between neural neural gain and muscular gain. Now to demonstrate this, I've got a deadlift and I've got a tricep pushdown. The deadlift is a high neural exercise because let's face it, most people aren't going to be doing Olympic lifts in their general training. Olympic lifting does have the technical side to it, and because of that, it eliminates a lot of people from doing it. But a lot of people do, do deadlifts. So I want to demonstrate deadlifts. I don't believe you should be taking deadlifts to failure, right? And if you did take it to failure, it's going to be once every 12 weeks because this is neurally demanding. Now when I do a deadlift, my whole body is involved. And again, your heart rate or your heart rate variability is an insight into your nervous system. So having good heart rate variability and having the recovery and having a healthy heart rate variability is going to show a healthy nervous system activity. Reaching down the bar and again, my whole body is involved and it really is a whole body exercise. Now, as I get up in weight, more of my nervous system is activated. So as this is a high neural exercise, and high skill exercise, generally 5 reps is a high number on, on a deadlift. So I'm going to be working from 1 to 5 reps because there's high skill, there's high technique, and there's high levels of fatigue. Now on a deadlift, I might— may or may not pull up sore the next day despite the fact that I could be using quite a heavy weight compared to a tricep pushdown. Again, this is neural fatigue that's going to be happening when I'm deadlifting. Now if we compare this On a tricep pushdown, I have one joint moving. On the deadlift, there's multiple joints moving. My whole body is involved in the deadlift. Here, I can take this to failure, right? This is very low skill. You can see the difference here, right? All it is, is I'm an elbow right now and my elbow is moving, is extended. Now I can take this to 15 reps, 20 reps. I can take this to failure and beyond. I can even cheat a little bit, right? I can put this bad boy up and get drop sets happening. So, Now I'm really working, right? And I can take this to failure and do a drop set, take it past. Now, the next day my triceps might be sore, but I'm not gonna be neurally fatigued as I would on a deadlift. So this is understanding that there are movements that are low skill that are very, very safe to take to failure. The movements that are high skill, you don't wanna be taking to failure because of risk of injury and you're just gonna burn out your nervous system. So understand, are you training for strength and adapting the nervous system Or are you training to build muscle? And when you're building muscle, proximity to failure is king. You may have seen on YouTube Atoli, the cleaner. He's about 74 kilos or thereabouts. The guy is freaky strong, but he's a relatively small guy and he obviously outlifts everyone he goes to the gym with despite these guys being much, much bigger in body size. Now, this is the exact example that I'm talking about. Someone who is neurally superior, neurally able to grab a a lot of weight for a very small body, for body weight, and lift a hell of a lot of weight. So he's very adapted to his nervous system. This is, when we're talking about the spectrum, he's very neurally efficient. The other guys are just big. Which one do you want to be? It's not wrong or right. Obviously, uh, Nattoli, he could put on a lot of muscle mass changing his diet, changing his training, but he's a world-class powerlifter, and his name of the game for him is being strong pound for pound. So what do you want? What's your training goals? Let me know in the comments below. This next mistake is by far one of the most common, and that is not training a full range of motion. Now, to demonstrate this, I'm going to use the bench press. And this is also actually fundamentally why there's a lot of guys who talk about above our bench press not being a great exercise for building muscle, and that's because it doesn't take the pec through a full range. So, and then combining with that, a lot of people will say do a bench press And they do these kind of like half press, no tempo kind of presses, which is just terrible both for building strength and for building muscle. So when we do a bench press, as you can see, right, this is the end of the bench. So this is a full range bench press. Now a bench press, it's not a bad exercise for building muscle, but certainly what I want to do when I'm focusing on primarily on the muscle, right? So look after your joints, your joints move muscles. If you want to keep your muscles healthy, look after your joints. Now you can see if I was to grab a dumbbell and I'll show you, most people who do dumbbells when they bench, they kind of mimic the same movement, movement rather, as a barbell. Now this is a mistake, 'cause it's just giving you more of the same and you want to take things through full range. Now multiple reasons for that. There are a number of studies that have shown that most hypertrophy or maximal hypertrophy happens at end range. So you see where I am now, this is end range of my pec. Right? So this is where I want to take this under controlled conditions. Again, taking my pec here enables me safety, enables me to build strength at an end range, enables hypertrophy, which otherwise I wouldn't get. Here, all I'm really doing is loading up the front delt. Right here, I'm stretching through, getting that full range, and also above all, keeping my joints healthy. Now, when I keep my joints healthy, a couple of things happen. Longevity, longevity of my body, I control weight, I control tempo, I control time under tension, and more importantly, I'm developing strength at that end range, and that's crucial for preventing future injuries. So don't do half reps, make sure you take things through full reps and take it under conditions of control. And our last mistake, it's choosing novelty over intensity. Here you can see we have a lot of different handles, a lot of different grips, over 30 different bars, but all of that, honestly, it doesn't matter because the key in all of it is train harder, work harder, get proximity to failure. All the devices in the world, they're not going to help you at all unless you get proximity to failure and unless you really work hard. Let me give you an example, right? Like, I can train at any gym in the world. I don't need a box full of different handles. I can— I don't have a training gym. I can, I can train at a playground. I've got a chin-up bar, you know, and I can pull myself up and away I go. You don't need a whole bunch of things or equipment to have a great workout. You can have a great workout simply by just working hard, right? So right now, I don't know how many reps I'm doing, but let's get a bunch of reps in and get some intensity going. Let's give it 3 more. 1, 2, 3. Ah, right, I've got a good pump on now. Just did some pronated chin-ups there. If I wanted to bring some novelty in, I've got the MagGrip, slightly different. My grip was fatiguing here, now I can bring in some novelty, and this just allows me to get a few extra reps. So it's not to say you can never do things that are novel, they don't have their place, but it is certainly to say that the most important factor is that you work hard. You train hard, you give it 100% in the gym. Stop worrying about which angle or how to set up the bench, or is it better to do a single arm 45-degree— whatever it is, work harder and you'll get your gains. There's a bunch of guys online that debate the correct angle of lat stimulus, and you've got to retract and not retract and use a mag grip or use a cable or be at 45 degrees or use the bench. You've got to be supported, not supported. All that stuff is just, in my opinion, a waste of time because the fundamental is that are you getting proximity to failure? Are you working hard? Yes, you do need to have the fundamental right mechanics. You need to press the scap, you need to pull it in. Those things do need to be true, but whether you're supported, not supported, the key, the overall— if this was a Venn diagram The key, the difference that makes a difference is how hard are you working. I mean, if we go back to the '80s, we look at those clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger doing lat pulldown, doing chin-ups, you saw how hard those guys worked in the '80s and you saw their physiques and they all built back backs without doing any single arm rows and rotating in or doing any of the fancy stuff. When I even say fancy stuff, the redundant stuff, because you can take so much and you can get away with so much. So long as you have that consistency and so long as you work hard and take things to failure, basically. And obviously you want to take it safely, so this is where technique always comes in. But don't be a precious pansy in the gym where everything has to be aligned, your sleep has to be perfect, your water bottle has to be spot on, and you've got to go to the Antarctic to get the salt that you've got to use. No, no, no, because we are humans. This gym is meant to be our playground, it's meant to be our jungle. It's meant to be messy, it's meant to be fun, and you're meant to work hard. This is the dojo, this is the place to develop yourself, develop your character, develop your, your being, so to speak. So make sure you use this place as a place to work hard. Avoid these 6 gym mistakes to get your gains. And as promised, my free fitness user manual, link on screen, download it, it's packed full of tips to get you on the fast track in your fitness journey. Till next time, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.