#36: 8 Common Mistakes in Weight Training | Part 2 (get results from your training!)

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Flipstick for taking video in weight room >
• Start weight training with my self-study courses >
• Connect with me on Instagram >

✨ If you're going to spend the time in the weight room lifting weights, you want to see results. 

Of course, results do take time, but they also take doing things right. 

In this episode, I go over 4 common mistakes that people make with their weight training, and I provide tips on how to do things correctly. This episode is PART 2 of a 2-part series going over 8 common mistakes. 

In this episode, I cover the following weight-training mistakes:

1. Poor form (aka technique) and how to correct that
2. Doing too many exercises, and what the optimal number is
3. Not allowing for recovery between sets
4. Unstable exercises

Enjoy the show!

x Lynn

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

Transcript

#36: 8 Common Mistakes in Weight Training | Part 2 (get results from your training!)

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40 plus fitness for women. I'm Lynn, your host, and I am a 40 plus fitness coach helping women in perimenopause and menopause with their fitness issues. And today we are picking up where we left off last week, which is looking at eight. reasons why you're not seeing results with your weight training.

So last week we looked at reasons one through four, and this week we're looking at reasons five through eight. So if you didn't listen to last week's episode yet, then go ahead and listen to that one first, because they kind of do build on one another and it'll just make more sense when you listen to them in that order.

And it has been an amazing 24 hours for me. I was supposed to go boating yesterday and, well, it was really a stormy day. Winds really, really gusting. [00:01:00] So, nope, we were not going to head out on the sea. So we decided to go to my friend's cottage instead, which is on the sea. Watch the storm from the safety of a warm, you know, house in front of the fireplace.

And we did that and we were heading home in the evening because this place is fairly close to where I live and we're not driven more than about 200 meters when we came across a tree across the road. So back, we went to the cabin and spent the night there. And I have to say. There's just something magical about sleeping, you know, out in the middle of nowhere, you know, cause this is on the seashore and the wind was kind of howling and the air is just so fresh and no city noises, no cars, anything like that.

I feel so invigorated. [00:02:00] Anyway, sleep is definitely a very, very key factor. In midlife. So hopefully you are sometimes getting some great sleep too, like I did last night, but now onto the subject at hand, which is the reasons why you may not be seeing results with your weight training fifth thing. is your technique.

This is something I see so much, especially in men, but I have seen it in women as well, is that their technique is not very good. They maybe have heard that, yeah, you need to be lifting And so, and progressively overloading. So they're trying to increase their weights over time. And I think for boys also, it's like this kind of status symbol, like, Oh, I can bench this much or I can curl this much.

And [00:03:00] then their technique really suffers as they try to lift something that is actually too heavy for their muscles. So they end up cheating. They're like swinging their bodies around or. or not doing a full rep. They're doing partial movements, that kind of thing. You're not doing yourself any favors by doing that because a, your risk of injury is higher and B, you're not working your muscle properly.

So just lower the weight and make sure that your technique is good. And how do you know if your technique is good? It is actually It's very hard to tell just by trying to think, Oh, where is my body moving and am I in the right place? It is far more effective for you to take video. And I know in the States has become maybe even a little bit of a problem with all these people with their tripods in the weight room, but, but not here where I live.

I think I'm the only one who takes [00:04:00] video, but take video of yourself doing. Your, your reps and then look at the video. So I'll, if I'm starting like a new movement or something I haven't done in a while, or I'm at a point where I've increased the weight and I'm a little concerned that, Hey, is my technique now breaking down?

I'll video myself, I video my first set. Then when I'm taking the rest between sets, I'll watch the video and I'll notice that Oh, yeah. Hey, my elbow is moving a little bit too much there, or yeah, my, my neck is in the wrong position or whatever. And then I make adjustments for the next time around. So get in the habit of videoing yourself.

And if you want an easy way of videoing yourself, that isn't so conspicuous as setting up a tripod in your weight room, I've been using something called a flip stick. And it's like a thing that you stick on the back of your phone and it's a sticker that you flip down and it gives a [00:05:00] sticky surface and you can stick it on to anything.

So I usually stick it on to another piece of equipment or the wall or something like that. And then I'm able to video myself, but, you know. Propping your phone up against your water bottle works in a lot of situations as well. It will give you enough of a view that you can see major errors in your form.

And if you want that flip stick, I have a link to it. Also in the show notes, lots of helpful stuff. Check out those show notes sometimes. All right, number six kind of relates back to number one, which was your programming, but you're doing too many exercises or your workout is too long. Now when you go into the weight room, you're always a little bit.

Uh, battling with this getting tired over time. So the first exercise that you do, your body is nice and [00:06:00] fresh. You have the best muscle recruitment. You can get the most results out of what you're doing. And so as your session progresses, it actually becomes less and less gains from that last exercises.

And. Thank you. I mean, that's a useful thing to know, because if you have certain exercise that you really would like to progress in more than others, or you have a muscle that you need to work on a little bit more than stick those towards the beginning of your workout rather than towards the end, right?

And for example, if you've had an upper body day and you're doing biceps triceps at the very end, and you're not noticing much bicep tricep development, try sticking. Your bicep tricep on a different day when they're then the only things you do and you're fresh and happy. So number seven is not recovering between sets.

So let's be clear. This [00:07:00] break that you're taking between sets is not the time to be doing burpees. I'm not kidding. People are doing burpees and if you're one of them, don't do it. You don't do any kind of cardio between your sets. That's when you rest. You see all those people that are just sitting on equipment, looking at their mobile phones.

That's what they're doing. They are allowing their bodies to recover between sets. You should ideally be able to do as well in your next set and the set after or close to because you have recovered. So some Some exercises are ones where you kind of get out of breath, um, like doing a reverse lunge. If you're doing a long ish set of those like 10 to 12 reps and you're doing reasonably heavy, you're actually going to be out of breath when you've done that.

So maybe you need three minutes to actually start breathing properly and to feel like you can bring it again at the [00:08:00] same level of intensity. So make sure that you are doing those rests and there are some ways to speed up, um, how quickly you get through your session by allowing like one muscle group to rest while you work another muscle group.

But I'm not going to go into that right now, but for now, just remember that. Um, when you've done one set, take a break before doing the next set. Now it's been shown with women, we recover more quickly than men do in the weight room. And then after weight training, that can of course change a little bit with age, but I would recommend the minute and a half as being kind of the minimum.

Recovery between sets on upper body and about two minutes on the lower body and adjust that to how your body is feeling. And you can see how you perform on the next set. Oh, so much nuance here, but [00:09:00] anyway, and then the a thing, and this is a little bit tongue in cheek, but I mean, people actually do this.

Don't be standing on a Bosu ball while you're doing your workout. Okay. Yes. Training your balance is important, but if you're standing on a Bosu ball, let me tell you what happens. Your body, you know, we are still cavemen actually, our physiology is not terribly different. We haven't like evolved over time.

So your body, what it wants to do is to keep you safe. And when it feels like you are off balance for whatever reason, that is its primary It is going to be focusing on stopping you from falling. You want a BOSU ball. It is focusing on stopping you from falling. And that is a great thing to practice. I don't have any issue with you having a session where you're standing on a BOSU [00:10:00] ball or on a balance board or whatever, like that kind of thing.

Great. But if you're standing on the BOSU ball and doing bicep curls at the same time, then guess what? Your body is primarily, its major focus is Don't fall off this BOSU ball, which means that it's muscle recruitment of your biceps. When you're trying to do that, bicep curl is going to be pretty much crap, right?

So far better idea. Do stand on that BOSU ball, like practice your balance and then do the bicep curls separately, right? Split those two things up. Now, there are, of course, going to be some cases where standing on a BOSU ball, doing some kind of exercise is going to make sense. For example, some athletes.

So where I train, we have soccer players and hockey players and gymnasts, um, and ice skaters. They're also training in that same gym and [00:11:00] their fitness coaches do give them. exercises that, that I would not recommend for my own clients, but it is specific to their sport. And it makes a lot of sense. And of course, if you have a particular injury, then you may have some very unusual exercises that your physical therapist gives you.

So if you're looking around the gym and you see people doing odd things, then there may be a really, really good reason why they're doing that thing. So they're not always wrong. But if you are looking to build muscle in midlife, then don't do it standing on a Bosu ball. Do your balance exercises separately.

I have two do it yourself programs, one for at the home, the other for at the gym. Both have options to train two, three, or four days a week. You'll learn all the things that you need to know to get started. Go check it out [00:12:00] www. befitafter40. com slash DIY. So like do it yourself. Get started. So that was them.

And just to recap, because I know I had a little bit of a explanation with each of them. So the first thing is. Exercise selection. So make sure to get your hands on a good program that's working all of your muscles. Don't just grab something off the net or try to piece something together from some booty influencers training programs.

Okay. Really spend a little money, invest some money to get a good program. Then number two is stop swapping out exercises too frequently. Once you get that program from number one, follow it for 12 weeks. Don't keep swapping it up. [00:13:00] Number three was applying progressive overload. So you've got that program.

You're going to continue to use that for 10 to 12 weeks, applying progressive overload that whole time. And number four is you're going to make sure the intensity level is high. So see these all linked together really, really nicely. And even with the high intensity and the progressive overload, you want to do number five, which is keep an eye on your form.

Your form is important so that you're actually stimulating your muscles correctly, and you're not putting yourself at risk of injury. Number six is let's not make these workouts too long about an hour, hour and 15 minutes, including your warmup should be plenty of time to get a good strength training workout done.

And of course, yeah, I always have to [00:14:00] throw in caveats. So, and of course, If you don't have an hour, hour and 15 minutes, then don't let that stop you from getting started, please, because the hour, hour and 15 minutes is what it takes to do five or six exercises, three sets of each. If you don't have an hour, hour and 15 minutes, then choose five or six exercises and do two sets of each of them, right?

That is still gonna be so, so, so much better than nothing, okay? Don't let that be the obstacle to getting started. And by the way, I mean, I had one client who had 15 minutes a day, five days a week. That's the amount of time they wanted to spend and we had a program designed for them that they're able to do.

So it really is possible. And if you want help with that, then please reach out to me. I can help 7. Make sure you're [00:15:00] recovering between sets, so it's not running like quick, do one set of, you know, bicep curls, put them down for two seconds, do a second set of bicep curls. No, you've got to let your biceps recover.

And your body recover for about a minute and a half, three minutes. Some people, five minutes, you know, that also depends on how tired you are. So Friday I went to the weight room and I mean, I was so tired. Like this was one of those times when there was no motivation to go there at all, but I had put it in my calendar.

And so gosh, darn it. I went and I was tired and I still went, but I needed to take much longer breaks between my exercises. And number eight is don't be standing on a Bosu ball. Do your balance exercises separate from Your weight training exercises, and I'm actually going to do [00:16:00] an episode on balance. I have that in my little plan there, so be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss that because I have some great tips on how to improve your balance without having to like add another huge thing to your week, right?

We can just fit it in as a new habit. So that was today's list of eight things. So check those out. If you have any questions, please hit me up in my DMs, uh, on Instagram, follow me on Instagram, by the way, because I do, I do talk about other stuff there as well, the podcast stuff, but then other stuff as well.

So may have some more additional tips for you there. And with that, I will leave you wishing you a. Wonderful rest of the week and happy training.