#35: 8 Common Mistakes in Weight Training | Part 1 (tips for lifting weights effectively)

Resources mentioned in the episode: 

• My self-study courses: Learn to Lift at Home and Learn to Lift at the Gym >
• More info on Progressive overload – listen to episode #18
• My free weight training tracker >
• Connect with me on Instagram >

About this episode:

Seeing results in the weight room does not happen overnight. It takes time – especially if you’re in perimenopause or menopause. So, it’s important for you to be doing the right things, and doing them right. 

In episode #35 of 40+ Fitness for Women, I look at four key reasons why you might not be seeing results in the weight room. I explain why these are important and how you can fix them. 

They are: 

1. Exercise selection
2. Swapping exercises too frequently
3. Not applying progressive overload
4. Too low intensity in your training

Enjoy the show!
x Lynn

#weighttraining #fitafter40 #liftingafter40 #progressiveoverload #trainingtofailure #liftheavyshit #onlinefitnesscoach #menopausefitenss #gymmistakes #weighttrainingtips #fitafter50 #menopause #fitnessforwomen

Transcript

#35: 8 Common Mistakes in Weight Training | Part 1 (tips for lifting weights effectively)

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host. I'm a 40 plus fitness coach for women in perimenopause and menopause. And today, what we're going to discuss is eight top things that I see that women are not getting right. And which may be stopping you from getting the results that you are looking for.

In your weight training. And actually this list of eight is so long that I've split this into two podcast episodes. So this week we'll take a look at the first four reasons. And next week we will look through five through eight. So if you want to be sure to not miss the rest of the list, then be sure to hit that subscribe button.

So I'm here looking out my window at my trees that are like leaning pretty far to the left and then pretty far to the right. It is a stormy day here and I am kind of sad [00:01:00] because I was supposed to go boating today. I fell in love with boating with my Now ex, uh, boyfriend and yeah, and when we broke up, I was thinking, man, that is probably the one thing that I will miss the most is the boat trips that we went on.

And you know what? Then I woke up to the fact that, Hey, he's not the only man in the world. With a boat or who wants to vote and so I actually joined a Facebook group of single boaters and ended up meeting a man there. He was going to take me boating today, but though it's been beautiful weather for the past 3 days.

Total blue sky, no wind, nothing. Today we have a storm, so I think our boating trip is going to be postponed. And by the way, here, it's already the time of year where people are taking their boats out of the water, but he told me he's usually [00:02:00] the one who takes his boat out of the water when the ice starts forming on the sea, so I guess we still have a few weeks to try to make this happen.

Anyway, onto our topic. So the eight reasons why you may not be seeing results from your weight training. And these are things that I see people doing wrong all the time in the weight room and among my friends. So people that I talked to among women in various fitness Facebook groups and even among my clients.

So these are really, really common mistakes. So the first one is. Exercise selection. So are you actually following quality program? It takes a little bit of thought to come up with a program that actually works. If you think about it, when you go to the weight room, you don't have a ton of time to work out.

You can't [00:03:00] choose like a hundred different exercises, or let's say. You shouldn't be choosing a hundred different exercises. That's not going to be very effective. So choosing five or six exercises per session and doing those three sets of each of those is a good way to get started and actually will carry you really, really far.

But then how do you pick those exercises when you have so few of them? So you really need to have some idea of exercise selection. A good way to pick exercises is not to follow some fitness influencer on Instagram who has a really huge butt or whatever that body part is that you want to emphasize in your own physique and then watch them do some crazy exercise and think that, Oh, That's what I need to do.

Or because they're doing those six exercises, I'm going to do those six exercises. [00:04:00] It kind of doesn't work that way. What you have to understand is that in social media, I mean, because you know, I I'm in social media too. It is really hard to come up with content all the time to get people's attention, right?

Where people will like it, want to share it, want to watch it till the end. And so there is a huge temptation. To do sensationalist content. And I really try to stay away from that, but the ones who are getting like a million views. And you can see why, because they're accentuating their butt and doing something weird, whatever.

That's maybe not the most reliable source for a good exercise program or even for good exercise tips. So be discriminating with that. And by the way, if you want. A good starter program and actually will work also on people who [00:05:00] have been weight training for a while. I do have my self study programs available.

Uh, check the link in the show notes. Second thing I see is swapping exercises too quickly. So this happens for a couple different reasons. Um, I think a lot of people have this feeling like. Exercises, entertainment, or they should, yeah, it should be like fun, your workout. Okay, I don't want to say that your workout should suck and you should hate it.

Obviously, you can choose exercises, there's a huge library of exercises to choose from and probably there you're going to find something that you like, but it's not really an entertainment. When somebody says to me, Oh yeah, weight training, but it's so boring. Yeah, you go into the weight room and you do the same thing.

You know, week after [00:06:00] week, month after month. But actually, if you stick with it, I think most people do find it exciting at the point where they are actually getting stronger. So in the beginning, it's a little bit boring because you're kind of finding your way there. Then when you start to see results, and then especially when you start to Feel the results.

So things like, you know, just feeling younger in your skin, you notice that, Hey, I can open a jar lid. I don't need that stupid little contraption to help me with that. I can actually grab first of all, the lid in a whole different way and I can get it twisted or I'm having an easier time carrying groceries in.

I don't dread anymore that, Oh my God, I, I just bought. Three gallons of milk and now I got to carry that in plus all the other stuff at the same time. So that's when you start to feel better about it. And it, and it may take a little while to get to that point, but don't be swapping out all the [00:07:00] time. And, and here I go back.

Again, to these Instagram feeds, you know, there are these women who have like, let's do an upper body workout. And then they have some small dumbbells and they're waving them around and doing this and that and the other. And when you look through their feed, I mean. Think about the pressure on these women.

They have to come up with a different combination for every day to keep those people who think that exercise should be entertaining happy, but that's not results. So if you are following one of those programs and doing something a little different every day, then that's probably a reason why you're not seeing results.

And then if you have gotten your hands on a good program where it's working your whole body every week, then do that for a long time. It's not like do that for a week and then [00:08:00] download a different one and do that. That's not how it works. And following points will explain why. But. You need to be following that same program, I would say three months, right?

12 weeks of the same stuff, at least 10 weeks, because you are going to continue to develop in those exercises, even beyond the 12 weeks, to be honest, like you would get one program created for you and continue to use that for a long time. And especially if you're somebody who has to skip sessions. Don't be swapping out your exercises frequently.

So the third thing is that you're not applying progressive overload, and this ties very much into what I was talking about in number two. So progressive overload is when you are challenging your muscles a little bit more and a little bit more over time. And the reason you need to be [00:09:00] challenging your muscles a little bit more and a little bit more is that as you get stronger.

If you just do the same thing, your muscles are not going to be challenged and therefore they're not going to make adaptations. They're not going to grow. They're not going to get stronger. You need to be challenging them more. I mean, you put your kids in school, right? And when they've learned first grade math.

You don't keep giving them first grade math for the rest of their lives. No, you give them second grade math. That way they can improve in math. And the second grade math, when that starts being easy, right at the end of second grade, when they've learned that stuff, you give them third grade math. Same thing with your muscles.

You need to keep increasing the load that you're putting on them over time. You need to keep increasing the load that you're putting on them over time. In order to keep challenging them in order to keep seeing results. And the easiest way to make sure that you're applying progressive overload is to use a [00:10:00] tracker and actually track what you're doing.

Because the way that you make it a little bit harder for your muscles is that you ask your muscles to do another rep in your sets, or you increase the weights. And I have a whole podcast episode on progressive overload, so I won't go into that in huge depth right now. So check the show notes. I'll link through to that.

So you need the progressive overload. And the thing is that those kinds of swapping exercises all the time and, and too frequently doesn't really allow you to get into that kind of progressive overload thing. And by the way, I have a free tracker as well. And I will link that in the show notes. As well. I had one, um, podcast listener who downloaded the tracker, reach out to me.

And she said, Oh my God, this tracker is great. Cause she's been going to the weight room and she's been feeling like she's not making progress. But once she started [00:11:00] tracking and she could see. You know, the development that, yeah, actually she is able to do more reps over time and increase her weights over time.

Then she started to feel a lot more motivated also about her weight training because she could see that she was making progress. Fourth thing, your intensity is too low. So. Weight training should be hard. And I don't mean hard, like challenging difficult moves. Okay. That, that is part of it. You need to learn the choreography, especially if you're doing more complicated things like a Romanian deadlift or any kind of deadlift.

As a matter of fact, to those, you need to really be focusing on your technique, squats, those kinds of things. Yes, those are going to be technically challenging and you need to learn how to do them. But intensity, what I'm talking about is that you are [00:12:00] actually pushing your muscles close to failure or to failure.

Now, what does that failure look like? So failure looks like, or what it is, is that you are not able to do another rep with good form or you can even fail in the middle of doing a rep. Now I definitely. Recommend that you pick exercises carefully, uh, which ones you would even try going all the way to failure in.

Definitely not a squat, for example, definitely not a deadlift because there the risk of injury is quite high, but you can test that. For example, on a leg extension machine or a leg curl machine, you know, do reps until you notice that, ah, I cannot do it. Like you get halfway up and you're like, no matter how hard I try, I can't do it.

And that is failure and it doesn't hurt. [00:13:00] Okay. Maybe if you're doing very low weights and you've had to do 50 reps to get to failure, then it will hurt because you'll have a lot of burning sensation in your muscles by that point. But going to failure, it shouldn't be painful. It should just feel hard. And by the way, one sign that you're getting close to failure is an involuntary slowing down of the pace of doing that exercise.

So if you're doing bicep curls, for example, you may notice that in the beginning you're able to do them. And fairly nice clip. And then all of a sudden it starts to slow down. And as you approach failure, it'll slow down even more and even more, maybe getting to the point where there's like a sticky spot in the curling.

And you notice you really have to push to get past that sticky spot that is indicating that you're getting close to failure. If your reps are not slowing down ever, then you're [00:14:00] probably not working with enough intensity. Your muscles actually have two types of muscle fibers. I talked about this in the last podcast.

You have type one and type two muscle fibers and the type one muscle fibers are. The ones that get into action first, but they're not the ones that really give you power and strength. It's the type two muscle fibers. And it's only when you've exhausted these type one muscle fibers that the type two muscle fibers kick in.

And the type ones can handle a lot of lighter weight. Higher reps, type twos are like, let my little brothers handle that. So you need to have enough intensity to recruit those type two muscle fibers to actually get off their butts and get to work. So those were the first four reasons why you may not be seeing results from your weight training.

And remember that next week we will continue this list and look at reasons five through eight. [00:15:00] So be sure to hit that subscribe button so you do not miss. The rest of these reasons, they are really going to make a difference in your training. Looking forward to speaking again next week. And in the meanwhile, happy training.