The biggest mistake you can make is being inconsistent. It's normal to have days here and there where something comes up thats more important than the gym, or where you're sick and don't want to risk getting others sick. It is normal to have days where you don't meet your caloric and/or protein goals. It's normal to have fluctuations in your body weight and how much you can lift at the gym. But the key is minimizing these days by making good decisions as often as possible.
I have a question and I hope someone can help me I am basically a beginner, I havent’t been doing this for a month, I believe it has only been two weeks, but I ak now doing a 4 day split routine where i work out each muscle group twice a week, to be specific: Day 1: Chest, shoulder, back Day 2: Arms and legs Day 3: Rest Day 4: Chest, shoulder, back Day 5: Arms and legs Day 6 and 7 are rest I am confident to say that I can do this workout routine and be able to finish it without being too exhausted or fatigued, though it is true that I am only lifting weights that are one step above my comfort zone. My concern is, each day of workout takes about 3 hours before I finish, is this okay or I’m wasting my time and should stick to 1 hour a day, take note that this is not an issue of me being fatigued, I just wanna make sure that I am not wasting my time doing 3 hours of workout a day instead of what I see which is around 1 hour per day. Sorry if it’s too long, hope some can answer me. TYIA
@@fiend_666 You are probably overdoing this. 3 hours is generally too much. Try to stick with a plan that doesn't take longer than 60 -75 minutes per session and not more than 12- 18 sets per muscle group per week. You are probably doing a lot of "junk volume" (look that up). Most chest and back exercises involve a stimulus of the arms, too. You are thereby already training your arms during your chest, shoulder, back sessions. Being "one step above my comfort zone" (I read that as moderate) is ok to get used to the exercises. But one or two exercises done close to failure per muscle group per session should be more than enough to stimulate your muscle growth. Being "close to failure" is the key word. How do you know you're actually close to it? Well... train every now and then to complete failure. Then you get a feeling of how it feels like and from then on you might adapt your weights to get as close as possible to that complete failure feeling. I hope this helps.
@fiend_666 3 hours as a beginner is way more time in the gym than should be necessary. I would aim for your workouts to be at least 45 minutes but no longer than an hour and a half. Time spent in the gym can depend on a few things: - are you working out with friends? (The more people in your group the longer it will take to get through a workout. Usually having a partner is no issue but when you get to about 4 people it gets hectic and too much talking. -are you also doing cardio alongside your weight training? -how busy is your gym, do you regularly have to wait on machines or benches to open up? All that to say that there is no exact measure for how much time a person SHOULD be spending in the gym, but you can totally get an amazing workout in within an hour or hour and a half
1. Winging it at the gym/Poor exercise selection 2. Doing everything the "Right way" (ex: only doing barbell squats and never touching hack squats) 3. Dropping the eccentric phase during lifts 4. Ego lifting 5. Training on an empty stomach 6. Thinking muscle soreness means a good workout 7. Not training close to failure 8. Not enough sleep
I have a question and I hope someone can help me I am basically a beginner, I havent’t been doing this for a month, I believe it has only been two weeks, but I ak now doing a 4 day split routine where i work out each muscle group twice a week, to be specific: Day 1: Chest, shoulder, back Day 2: Arms and legs Day 3: Rest Day 4: Chest, shoulder, back Day 5: Arms and legs Day 6 and 7 are rest I am confident to say that I can do this workout routine and be able to finish it without being too exhausted or fatigued, though it is true that I am only lifting weights that are one step above my comfort zone. My concern is, each day of workout takes about 3 hours before I finish, is this okay or I’m wasting my time and should stick to 1 hour a day, take note that this is not an issue of me being fatigued, I just wanna make sure that I am not wasting my time doing 3 hours of workout a day instead of what I see which is around 1 hour per day. Sorry if it’s too long, hope some can answer me. TYIA
@@fiend_666if u do chest, shoulders AND back and u arent fatigued after the workoutz something isnt right. try doing chest&front delts, back&back delts, rest, legs, arms, rest, rest. they shouldnt be longer than 1.5h since ur a beginner, and they should be high intensity
Great tips on avoiding common mistakes! 🙌 The part about eccentric phases was a real eye-opener. It’s so easy to overlook that, but definitely crucial for muscle growth. Thanks for the insight
same here, my body is incredibly fat adapted, I do 16:8 almost every day, sometimes it accidentally turns into 18:6 or even more and i don't even get hungry, tbh the only thing that makes me stay closer to 16 is that I meet my personal trainer at noon almost every day so by 2 I kind of have to break the fast with my protein. I've encountered very few people who get it, including 2 personal trainers.
I like this one. I do find soreness good for showing me what I did (or didn't do) at the gym. If I'm not even a little sore, I just maintained and might do the same body part tomorrow...
Thank you, PictureFit! Your channel has kept me inspired all year and has educated me so much. Videos likes these make it so easy to learn and formulate my goals.
His older video "Fast reps vs slow reps" seems to contradict this a little bit. It states that slow reps reduce lift capability, and the lowered workout volume outweighs the benefit of eccentrics. I'm confused now. Maybe the ideal is somewhere in the middle? Like making sure you lower weights in a controlled manner, even if it was fast? And not just dropping them.
Controlling the eccentric is important and trying to slow them down to about 2 seconds is a good idea if your goal is muscle growth. Slowing down the eccentric will probably lead to less reps done but if you take the sets as close to failure as you would otherwise it won't make a difference. Slowing down the eccentric will also allow you to train safer, beacuse risk to injury is far less if you're slowing the eccentrics.
Yeah I think there is a bit of cherry picking here, he usually uses papers on the subject to justify the reasoning. It would be interesting to see why the papers he used to arrive at the conclusion in the "fast reps vs slow reps" is flawed (assuming that this video is the correct one)
I think it probably depends on the kind of training and the intensity and length of the training session. If I'm casually doing a bodybuilding style workout then I can get away with either not eating for hours before hand or eating right before. But if I'm doing something like crossfit I need to eat around an hour and a half before to carb up and get some fuel in me.
I'm guilty of winging it, but do target muscle groups each session and aim for hypertrophy training ( 6-12 reps max i think?) but don't follow any plan.
I'll add one not training glutes because it's "gay" or "feminine" to do so. I see where those people are coming from but imagine giving a damn about what is socially acceptable lmao also it fixed my shit
I invested a few thousand dollars into personal training in my early 20s - money well spent. After a long hiatus, I'm hitting the gym again in my mid 30s but I remember those lessons. I'm a fat guy doing low-moderate weights with good form.
Not only is the eccentric phase very good for building muscle, it helps prevent injury. Not talking super slow 5 second eccentrics, we're talking 2-max 3 seconds, as opposed to just dropping the weight against gravity. All my elbow pain stopped when I starting actually controlling the eccentric phase. Along with rotator cuff and serratus anterior strengthening. Be gone elbow pain!
Focusing on the eccentric means you also typically use less weight, too. If you focus on smooth eccentric, typically you'll find it more challenging with less weight. When I did physical therapy years ago, the therapist insisted on smoothness, and I found it surprisingly hard even with lower weight than I expected.
These vid’s are much easier to digest as he gets to the point even if in a light hearted manner. Much better than a shirtless wonder droning on and on between bullet points resulting in a vid that is unnecessarily long.
Autoregulation sounds interesting. I just try to do a few sets until I feel some burn or I get form failure, and don't worry about the performance per se.
I haven't seen anyone doing this, but i use the hack squat just to milk the ever living crap out of the eccentrics so all the slow twitch muscle fibers just get wrecked since the range of motion of the hack squat is nothing short of unreal.
I can’t find my comment from yesterday but here’s an update: I trained today after eating some tuna and drinking a protein shake and I could hit more reps today than I did yesterday on an empty stomach. I guess I’ll be eating before going to the gym from now on.
Hah. If i fail deadlift, i keep at it until im either pissed off, which leads to me lifting the weight. Or until im tired, which leads to me passing out the moment i get home
I'm curious about eccentrics. For me, most in most workouts the 'down' doesn't really feel like it challenges me at a weight that I can do the concentric in good form, but it does use up a lot of energy. Am I still getting a good benefit from them at this point?
If u getting close to faluire and u are controlling the ecentric more than the concentric towards peak stretch, and that "will Mess u up in the best way possible"
Most definitely! Muscles are stronger on the eccentric movement than the concentric. This is why the eccentric isn't as challenging and why your concentric strength reaches failure before your eccentric. Keep in mind controlled eccentrics will reduce the # of reps you can do at a given weight but the results are superior. Do this: Try 2-3 second eccentrics for about 4 weeks and see what results you get. For the first few workouts your DOMS might increase some but that will pass.
Training on an empty stomach is not a mistake. It's generally great to workout before breakfast. It's really only a drawback if you're already into your day and haven't eaten, so you might feel hungry and weak at that point. That's more to do with training in a rather large calorie deficit than just having an empty stomach.
@@Spartx1Very simple, after your last meal say dinner your carb stores will be filled and you have roughly 1600kcal of carb stored in your muscles. During sleep you mostly burn fat no carbs. So in the morning before breakfsst your stores are 90% filled and you are hard pressed to burn that in a weight session. For most situations its basically unfounded misinformation that you need to eat before training.
@@gerrysecure5874 the exception would be for people who are in bad metabolic health (aka have insulin resistance), they would be hard pressed to be able to access their fat stores to kick in when the glycogen stores are gone. Otherwise I honestly prefer fasted lifting, at most it makes me need a minute more of rest between sets.
@@jamessanders145 I think you misunderstand insuline resistance. Insuline resistance requires more insuline to store the carbs in your bloodstream. It has not much to do with the ability to use fat for energy (unless you just ate of course, and your insuline is high which indeed prevents fat burn). Quite to the contrary, avoiding eating carbs before exercise, exercise lightly (burns more fat than carb), can restore healthy insuline sensitivity over time. Of course what you broke over 20 years will not fix in 2 weeks. I can cycle for 3 hours at 180Watts having 16hrs fasted without depleting my carb stores. Weight training uses much less energy than people wish to believe because heavy weights do not allow for many repetitions.
Thank you for saying being sore is NOT a good indicator of a good workout. When I workout, I'll know if it was a good one by how I'm feeling mentally. Am I calmer? Am I more energized? Do I feel stronger? If the answer to one or all of these questions is yes, then I know I benefited from it
Autoregulation can be close to winging it. Changing/choosing excersizes according to your daily form. I think programs are great becuase they (in most cases) follow the general principles of training. If you can do the same without the program, I see no reason as to why programs are better than winging it.
Dropping in a deathlift is nicer with your low back. I only do it when finishing heavy sets. Of course is pointless for a set of 10 reps but to squeeze the last 2 or 3 lifts i would say is better to drop the bar.
@@bossmaster4001 he's contradicting himself very often, regurgitating the same videos 15 times. A lot of his advice is gimmick (this exercise is the reason why you aren't making muscle, do this instead of this). He's just pumping mindless content to keep riding the algorithm wave. He does have some very good videos but majority are bad information.
