The average fitness beginner quits after just six months. Why? The number one reason is no results. There are 8 reasons why you don’t see results in the gym. Are you making these fitness mistakes?
Not Taking it Seriously
If you have not quit already out of frustration J take a look around the gym and see how many people are really getting a quality workout. Seriously. I bet you’ll see many who are puttering around, chatting with their buddies, hanging out, sitting on the machines as if they were park benches, texting or leaning on the treadmill while watching TV. They look aimless, never break a sweat and after 30 minutes they go home. Am I right? That is certainly the story in my gym.
Here is a very simple and direct truth. If you want serious results, you need to do serious exercise. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it and have fun. It does mean you need to focus on the quality of every movement. You need to work out with purpose, pushing your limits, breaking through barriers and boundaries to increase your capacity, endurance and strength if you want to get results.
The Overestimation of Your Exercise Results
Because you don’t journal them, you are far too generous with estimates of your fitness intensity, time, weight lifted and the frequency of your workouts. By the time tomorrow dawns, those numbers have grown, you
forgot how much time it actually took and because you feel a bit sore you think you hit it harder than you really did! I say this all the time but you cannot know where you are going if you don’t authentically know where you’ve been. So get a journal, stop guessing, assuming and exaggerating and start tracking those workouts!
An Underestimation of What and How Much You are Eating
You eat all day and it gets hard to remember and accurately keep track of what and how much you have eaten. Plus, you may well be in denial about the quality of the food you are consuming. Either way, as with your workouts, you need to be honest with yourself about what you put into your mouth and how that is hindering the achievement of your goals. So again, at least until you retrain yourself for whole foods nutrition, making it a habit and a lifestyle, write it down. You’ll be shocked what you are eating, when and how much and it will likely motivate you to tighten up the belt so to speak! Remember, nutrition is 70% of the key to your success in the gym.
Choosing the Wrong Workout Plan
Did you get your workout from a magazine? Maybe a popular video program? Watching others at the gym? Online from free sites? The answer may well determine your results. There are no one-size-fits-all templates to fitness success. It takes practice, experience, skill, training and professional assistance to find what will truly work and lead you to your goals. Until you have a plan for you, your needs, your goals and the knowledge to execute it your results will suffer.
Doing the Same Thing Over and Over
They say practice makes perfect. But when it comes to weight loss and fitness, repetition is not always a good thing. Your body will adapt and in time you will hit a plateau and that means your progress will stop. But you can overcome this barrier by changing your workout routine every 4-6 weeks. You can change the movements, the weight, the hand grips, the leg stance, the foot positions, the order, the duration, the reps and the sets. Doing so will keep your body guessing, your muscles confused and challenged and most of all the results coming!
Poor Technique
Technique is essential to getting the results you seek. Incorrect technique is a set up for injuries, pain and soreness all of which could lead you to giving up. Again, this is where professional support is crucial to success.
Unreasonable Goals
If your goal is to lose 100 pounds, setting the timeline for achieving that to 3 months is unreasonable unless you are on the Biggest Loser- another topic for later. Instead, set a goal of 2-3 pounds a week which is proven, sustainable, healthy weight loss resulting from an authentic lifestyle change. Very simply, it is again about being honest, recognizing and accepting your condition, abilities, commitment, your lifestyle and the learning curve you face. Reasonable goals will set you up to succeed.
Using 1 Measure of Success
Most of you look to the scale as your measure of success. But the scale doesn’t reflect body composition. You can lose inches without losing a single pound. A scale won’t tell you that! You can increase in ability from a huffing and puffing 10 minutes on the treadmill to a full on marathon but the scale won’t tell you that either! What about your cholesterol numbers, your blood pressure, your energy levels? You can’t measure those on the scale. Point is, don’t use the scale as your sole measure of success. Look to other tools that will reflect the full extent of your achievements.
There you have it, the top reasons why you don’t see results in the gym now been unmasked. Go forth, armed and ready to DO THIS! And know that I am here to help you with coaching services, products, custom workout plans…whatever you need to succeed! Ok?
