As a personal trainer and coach in Liverpool Street, I pride myself on a high success rate with my clients. I have high number of positive testimonials, and my clients regularly reach their goals. But as any trainer will tell you, we still make fitness mistakes when it comes to our own training.
Personal trainers are only human, and we’re still prone to the pitfalls that plague many of our clients. Hopefully, sharing these mistakes will remind you to avoid them.
Fitness Mistake #1: Magpie Syndrome
If you are easily distracted by shiny objects, you may have magpie syndrome. I certainly do. As a personal trainer, I am constantly inspired by the training programmes and exercises that I see other coaches doing. I’m even inspired by the workouts I write for my own clients!
This inspiration often makes me want to change my training, incorporating something I’ve seen in the gym or online. This is compounded by the fact that I usually don’t have a clear goal. Since 2017, I have been motivated by the idea of competing in kickboxing again, but I have only fought twice in that time. The rest of the time, I do a mixture of very general strength and conditioning work. It’s easy to get distracted by new exercises, formats or entirely different blocks of training.
As fitness mistakes go, this isn’t terrible. I train very consistently, and I know that I am far stronger, fitter, and more mobile than I would have been if I hadn’t trained. However, I have been inconsistent with the exercises I select. This means my strength on individual lifts hasn’t progressed as quickly as I might have liked.
For example, I achieved my best squat, bench press, and deadlift when I pursued powerlifting-style training for a year. However, these days I cycle between powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, plyometrics, and hypertrophy-style training. I still stick to 8-12 week programmes, but I change too much between programmes and spend too much time “getting back” to where I used to be.
In fairness, I do still make progress. I keep getting better with chinups, and I got a new front squat PB after lockdown, which in turn led to PB’s in the hang clean, power clean, and jerk. My deadlift is currently moving in the right direction, and I’m tempted to test that before the end of the year. But as a lifter in my 30s, I think it’s time for me to stick with exercises for longer so I can put some bigger numbers on the board.
The Solution
Luckily, I already know how to solve this problem: I just need to train myself how I train my clients! When designing programmes for my clients, we always have a clear goal in mind. I choose exercises in advance that are going to stay in the programme for many blocks, so that my client can keep improving on them as time goes on.
Fitness Mistake #2: Accessory Exercises
In the gym, it’s easy to neglect poor assistance exercise. Many people love big exercises that yield the greatest benefits. Unsurprisingly, most of my clients prefer the compound lifts such as bench press, deadlift, squat, and pullups.
If you agree with this sentiment, then maybe you’re like me. We sometimes enjoy the big lifts so much that we neglect our accessory exercises. This is one of those classic fitness mistakes. Accessory exercises do a lot of work “behind the scenes” by strengthening lagging muscle groups or key joint positions. This is the work we have to do if we want to keep moving closer to our goals.
Unfortunately, I still neglect my accessory exercises from time to time. If only I had a penny for each time I skipped out (pun intended) on my calf raises! Despite knowing these exercises would help with kickboxing and support my plyometrics, I still find reasons to neglect them.
The Solution
I could just say “I’ll try harder in future,” but I personally find that to be an unsatisfying answer. I need to be smart in my programme design and find ways to compensate for my lack of enthusiasm. Now I’m back in a gym with resistance machines, I often programme calf raises on a machine as my preferred calf exercise. This is a good choice in theory, but it takes dedicated time to set up and it’s hard to superset in a busy gym.
Instead, I should focus on something portable like a single-leg calf raise on a step. I can set this up anywhere, meaning I can superset with any other exercise so long as they don’t compete. This is the kind of planning I take the time to do with my clients; I need to put the same thought into my own programmes.
Conclusion
We all make fitness mistakes. What are yours? And how badly do you want to fix them? I’ve helped many a passionate gym-goer streamline their training and avoid the classic gym errors. Get in touch below to see how I can help.