The Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training (Part 3 of 30): Key Mistakes

I wish I could say strength training was easy and mistake-free.

Sadly, it’s not. (And even more sadly is that I’ve probably made most of these mistakes — alas, youth is wasted on the young.) The world of strength training has a lot of weird myths and surprisingly common mistakes. Here are a few:

Not Training Your Legs

This is more of “guy thing” — skipping your legs because they… well… suck.

Ignoring your legs, however, limits your potential: you won’t reach your goals as fast. Your legs – quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, etc – are the largest muscle group in your body. By strengthening them, you’ll stimulate a much-greater hormonal response to change your body.

Increasing your leg strength also has indirect benefits in your upper-body strength: we’ve all seen Captain Upper Body with huge shoulders and skinny legs; but have you ever seen someone with huge legs and a weak upper body?

It’s a lot more rare.

If you can squat heavy weight (and, therefore, have strong legs), your upper body will be strong enough to support and steady that weight. If you can deadlift heavy weight, your upper body and grip will be strong enough to hold and pull that weight, too.

Having strong legs gives you a firm base to push from. Through “irradiation,” having strong legs also improves your tightness all over your body, which is important in strong lifts.

If you ignore your legs, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.

(And no one wants to be the dude with “chicken legs.”)

Not Training What You Can’t See

When you look in a mirror, you can only see the front of your body — your chest, abs, quads, arms, and shoulders. Because of this, it’s often the only thing that gets trained. Yet, it’s the muscles you can’t see that are more important and generates real strength — your glutes, hamstrings, and back.

Why? The big moves in sports, training, and life are powered by your back half. Your glutes extend your hips and your hamstrings flex your knees — these muscles are vital in power movements like sprinting and the vertical jump.

Spend more time exercising the posterior parts of your body. How much more? I prefer at least a 1:1 (back-to-front) ratio — Todd Durkin recommends a 2:1 ratio.

Doing Someone Else’s Program

Doing a workout out of a magazine, for example. Or borrowing a workout from a friend who has a good physique.

Yes, “success leads clues” — but in fitness, those clues are usually hard work, a healthy diet, and consistency. Not “abs before legs,” “arms everyday,” “chicken and broccoli,” or whatever else mantra some unqualified person tells you.

Instead, you should use a program that’s made for your body type, your goals, your fitness levels, and with your injury history in mind. Otherwise, the program will never be optimal.

Ultimately, that’s the failing of bootcamps and other “cookie-cutter” classes — they’re fun and burn some calories, but they can’t always alter the program if you have knee pain, a bulging disc, have poor posture, or have poor mobility. That requires specification.

Not Writing Anything Down

I’ve worked out in commercial and university gyms in several different countries and can count on one hand how many people used a workout journal. (One was a world-record holder in the deadlift.)

Bring a workout journal and write down what you do: how many sets, reps, what weight you used, tempo, etc. It helps spark consistency, accountability, and planning — crucial elements in creating a solid strength training routine.

All great strength coaches have a plan. They know exactly what they need to do for that workout, what they’ve done before (going back years before), and what they want to do in the future.

Training To Failure

Training to failure – or muscular exhaustion – often is easy way to stifle progress and growth. The body just cannot handle that type of demand for long.

The trick to strength training is to give the body enough stimulus for consistent growth, minimal plateaus, and desired adaptations. Yes, constantly increasing the weight by small increments is good — but blasting the muscle workout-after-workout wrecks your consistency, makes it hard to recover between training sessions, and fatigues your central nervous system (CNS).

At Results Fitness, the coaches would say, “Put some strength in the bank.” What that meant was, if you did all your sets and reps for that workout and still felt like you had more strength, save it. Deposit that strength in your “bank” and use it next time with a heavier weight.

Not Seeking Qualified Help

The hardest person to train is yourself.

The first time I got a tailor-made workout was at Results Fitness. I wrote down my goals (Mike actually gave them back to me and told me to write more), did my Functional Movement Screen, and – presto – I got my program.

It blew me away.

There was so much detail — everything was accounted for: warm-ups, activations, power development, strength work, and conditioning. It addressed my weaknesses, postural problems, and aimed everything toward my goal of getting stronger and more-defined. It also made me realize how much of a disservice I was doing by “sticking to my guns” and doing the same thing ad nauseum. Everything changed after that.

I even have friends who’ve traveled to other gyms just to workout for a day or two and learn. It’s the investments we make in ourselves that pay the most dividends.

Note: When Seeking Help, Looks Can Be Deceiving

Fitness is an aesthetic-driven industry — don’t let looks fool you.

I once met this smaller, older fella who taught boxing; long story short, he was Gene Tunney’s nephew. He told me, as his class full of active NFL players filed in:

“They’re stronger, but I hit harder.”

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Stay posted for my next installment where I’ll talk about “conditioning” — what exactly is it, why traditional means suck, and how to create the right changes and adaptations. Too often, it becomes a hodgepodge of long runs, jogs, or bike rides; learn how to optimize your conditioning for your aesthetic goals and your sport.

Throughout this seres, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions, so be sure to ask using the comment section of this post. Feel free to reach out to me via Facebook and Twitter to get your question answered. See you soon!