To be healthy, active and fit, you must combine fitness and nutrition. But do you know that you may be making training and nutrition mistakes unknowingly? In the following video, Jeff Cavaliere from Athlean-X YouTube channel, share the eight biggest workout and nutrition mistakes with you so that you can hopefully avoid making them yourself and can start seeing nothing but gains.
They say the biggest mistake is not making one, but not learning from it when you do. I want to be sure you learn from each of these so I break them down one by one. Some of these mistakes deal with my nutrition while others deal with training and even mental mindset.
1. Dietary fat intake was too low
I actually started to see detrimental health effects from making this mistake at a young age. My eyes were intolerant to light and my skin was drier than the Sahara Desert. My gains had slowed to a crawl and my hormones were likely way off balance. If you find that you are lacking energy the first place you might want to look is to adding more healthy fats to your diet.
2. Substituted hard work for supplementation
This is something that shows how naive I was when it comes to training. Now don’t get me wrong, adding high quality supplementation to a solid nutrition plan and smart, hard training is the holy grail of lifting. It provides the greatest results. One plus one plus one does not equal three in this case, it equals ten. That said, you cannot think that supplements are going to undo the wrongs you are making if you simply won’t train hard or eat right.
3. Muscle Magazines
Don’t get me wrong. Muscle magazines were my source of education and inspiration for starting down this career path and love of lifting in the first place. That said, the models I was inspired by were not necessarily following the same supplement regimen I was! Be careful who you turn to for guidance. You may be making the same mistake I made, except this time online rather than via the pages of a magazine.
4. A to B rather than enjoying the pain of A to Z
If you want to build muscle as quickly as possible you must stop focusing on the rep as the currency of your workouts. Instead, focus only on the quality of the rep and you will start seeing much faster gains. It doesn’t matter what your goal is in your training at the moment. The quality of that rep has to match up with what you are trying to achieve and only then will your results be attainable.
5. Ignoring the value of Plant based nutrition
This is something that was again engendered in me at a young age. My mentors stressed starchy carbs and protein (because I was skinny and needed to put on weight). By neglecting the importance of plant based fibrous carbohydrates I was neglecting one of the most valuable sources of micronutrients needed to compliment and fill in the gaps of a complete nutrition plan. I got over my aversion to these foods and the gains were almost instant.
6. On the wrong side of the Volume/Intensity spectrum
This is one that can be summed up in one quick statement. You can either workout hard or you can workout long but you cannot do both. Opt for intensity over half assed volume any day and you will see much faster gains.
7. Exerphobia
The exercises that cause the greatest amount of trepidation before doing them are almost always the most beneficial. Don’t steer away from an exercise just because you know that it is harder to execute than a single joint exercise that you can do on a machine much more comfortably!
8. Every exercise is not right for every body
Some biomechanical differences between individuals can make one exercise perfect for one and impossible for someone else to perform in good form. Get creative and take chances on coming up with new ways to hit your muscles without compromising your long term health.
