Gym workout mistakes  (Do not do it)

- You shouldn’t start your gym exercise workout without a warm-up.

It’s better to perform a warm-up without a  workout session than on the contrary. You do a warm-up in order to prepare yourself both physically and emotionally for a hard training session. Besides it, an efficient warm-up by warming up your muscles will decrease injury possibility. It’s especially important when training in a cold room. So, put on a warm jersey and go ahead!

Fist you can warm up your muscles on a treadmill (5-15 minutes, average speed till you get sweaty). After this you should start stretching your muscles and joints that will be actively engaged in workout during this training session. For example, if today you are training your chest it’s not that important to warm up your back and legs in an active way. Just make rotatory and waving movements engaging those joints that are going to participate in the current training session (remember your physical training lessons at school). Five minutes is more than enough for doing this. When you start doing exercises, begin with 2-3 sets with a light weight and numerous reps. If your basic weight for Bench Presses is 100kg for 6-8 reps, do 2 sets of warm-up exercises: 50kg with 15-20 reps and 80kr with 10-15 reps. In case your muscles aren’t still warmed up, make an additional set. It’s especially important before the first workout exercises of target muscle group training. When comes to the next exercises, you can do only one warm up set.

-  In gym, you shouldn’t distract a person from performing workout exercise.

It doesn’t allow this person to concentrate and can lead to an injury. Distraction includes a lot of actions. Quite often beginners simply don’t understand bodybuilding behaviour rules: they can stay in front of a person performing an exercise screening his field of vision and making him nervous. A weightlifter, whom I now, is not able to do a set if somebody had stepped over his barbell before it. Well, my general advice is the following: treat other people the way you’d wanted them to treat you.

- You shouldn’t forget about hygiene.

Training in one and the same t-shirt soaked with your sweat is definitely not a good idea. Sure, it can assist decreasing the quantity of people around you but it will be also more difficult to find yourself a spotter. Change your clothes regularly and use a bench towel if you sweat a lot. No one will be happy to ‘swim’ in the puddle you left behind.

- You shouldn’t be rude with other people in gym.

If somebody is asking when you are going to leave the station you are training on, you should either give this person the particular number of sets you still need to perform or propose to do exercises in turn. Afterwards it’ll be easier for you to ask this person about anything including the situation when you need to train on the same station.

- You shouldn’t disassemble workout equipment without permission.

Usually when you see an assembled barbell lying on the floor of a high-culture gym it can mean only one thing – someone is still using it. If your gym is filled with unorganized people then you’d better ask loudly whether anybody is working with the barbell or dumbbells you need before starting using them. If you get no reasonable answer you can do it (saying bad words but only to yourself).

- In gym, you shouldn’t leave disorder behind.

Return the dumbbells you were using to their place; disassemble the barbell leaving no plates on the bar. Accurately put down all plates nearby and be careful when detaching them. If you detach all plates from one side of a bar the barbell can fall and traumatize you.

Written by: Dennis Borisoff
© June 2009 www.gymper.com. All rights reserved. Reprint article with link only.