Top 4 Training Mistakes that Make You Flabby

Dr. Nick Galante, M.D. - Certified Medical Doctor (M.D.) Harvard Medical School

1. Too Much Cardio. This is the number one training mistake. In every gym you seen people grinding away on treadmills, exercise bikes, elliptical machines, and all other sorts of cardio machines hoping to shed calories. They look like zombies. While cardiovascular exercise is excellent for your heart and blood vessels, it’s nearly always overdone. Cardio should be part of a balanced training routine. It should not take center stage, or be performed for hours and hours on end. If you do this, your stress hormones will go through the roof and your body will start to hold onto fat and actually store fat. Additionally, you will injure yourself as your body suffers constant wear and tear. You will eat away at what little muscle you have. You will crave carbs to fuel your excessively draining workouts, and will inevitably overeat those carbs and get pudgy, or “skinny fat”. Just look at majority of marathoners. Skinny, yes. Lean, not really. And most importantly, you will have no energy left to actually lift weights.

2. Not Lifting Weights. “I don’t want to get too big.” “I’m just trying to get toned.” Yeah, yeah, well you know what? I do want to get “too big”. The only problem is I’ve been trying very hard for almost a decade to do that. And it hasn’t worked. It is impossible to get “too big”. I wish I could wake up one day, look in the mirror and say, “oh no, I finally did it. I got too big”. Enough ranting though. Lifting weights burns calories, a hell of a lot more than people realize. Lifting weight builds muscle, which makes you look better and helps significantly boost your metabolism. And, lifting weight helps build bone mass, warding off osteoporosis. Lift weights. Lift heavy weights. You won’t get too big. You’ll get lean and muscular.

3. Poor Form. As a piggy back to “lift weights”, do it properly. Check you ego at the door and work the weight, don’t let the weight work you. If your form is off, you aren’t working your muscles properly, or worse, not working them at all. You’re wasting your time in the gym, and our time is all very costly. More importantly, at some point you will injure yourself. That extra ten pounds on your bench press that’s causing you to arch your back… Or that extra 5 pounds on those curls that causes you to swing like a branch in a hurricane… That doesn’t impress anyone. The person next to you doesn’t care if you’re curling 20lbs or 40lbs. But your muscles and nervous system do care. They will only respond if stimulated adequately and through a full and dynamic range of motion. Work your muscles, not your ego.

4. Doing 1000 + Reps of Abs. There is no muscle group more misunderstood and more improperly trained than the abdominals. First of all, they are a muscle just like any other and respond to training like any other muscle group. You’re not doing 1000 biceps curls, are you? Your biceps respond just fine to 3-4 sets of 10 reps. Your abs will do the same. The problem is we get frustrated because we often don’t see our abs and think we aren’t working them hard enough. It’s not because they aren’t big enough. It’s because we’re carrying around too much abdominal fat.
The bigger your abs the more you’ll see them at a given level of body fat. Train them like any other muscles group and they will hypertrophy. Another point is understanding the anatomy of the abdominal muscles, which is complex, and thoroughly working all parts of your abdominal. Crunches are the tip of the iceberg.

Click here to learn more about Other Common Training Mistakes.