What NOT to do at the gym

1) Taking 6 minute+ breaks. The guy occupies the only incline-bench in the gym--has turned it FLAT while there are empty flat benches available--and is taking a 7 minute zone-out looking into the ceiling. You're wasting your time.

Most optimum break-time for muscle hypertrophy, would be anywhere from 60 seconds to 5 minutes for between each set. Some researchers say that 2 minute+ breaks for hypertrophy and strength, while only 1 minute or less for endurance. The shorter breaks, the more it becomes similar to cardiovascular exercises. I tend to take around 1 minute breaks, but I think I will be more careful about going a bit over 1 minute.

2) Doing too many reps. More work = more muscle right? Yes in weight sizes, not in amount of reps. Doing more than 15 reps on any exercise is actually endurance training. You're better off just doing a 4th or 5th set.

3) Doing the same work out for over a year or simply not sweating. Sometimes you need to change your routine so that your body doesn't get use to the same cardio or same weights/sets. The importance of failing in doing your exercises/weights is significant. You have to fail to see gains.

Don't come to the gym, and do exercises, and leave without even breaking a sweat. If you're not sweating even in a cold gym---YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

4) Doing light cardio, or low intensity cardio for a long time coupled with high expectations of huge losses of fat Cardio is always useful, but if you're only working out slow-twitch muscles (walking for 40 minutes), or only fast-twitch muscles (running for 20 minutes), you will not burn as much calories as someone doing HIIT (15 minutes of sprinting and walking/slow-jogging). HIIT is known to burn way more fat and burn more calories post-workout than LI training.

5) Doing 100-300 crunches per day and expecting rock hard 8-pack. My friend use to do this all the time, 300 crunches every work out, and said "hey look, I can barely see a border for my abs today--awesome!" after like 4-6 months of doing it.

First, one type of crunches doesn't work out all 8 packs. Secondly, abs are made in the kitchen--with really low body fat %. (This same friend didn't quit drinking scotch every night while working hard [in fact, today, he still drinks scotch]).

Abs are not the thickest muscle, they will show if you go low enough and do regular 3-4 sets of ab crunches. If you were to integrate some twisting incline ab crunches or work outs for the obliques, you will definitely start seeing an 8 pack, eventually, unless you have the worst genetics. But you gotta be below 10% body fat. I do crunches regularly, but you will never see my abs until I get down to 10% body fat (even if they are particularly strong and worked out currently).

6) Being too perfectly neat. We've all seen the guy or girl who goes and grabs tissues or wipes down all equipment before and after use. They give glaring stares if you happen to forgot to wipe down one equipment.

First of all, if your gym is maintained at all, there are people hired to specifically clean all equipment every week (otherwise, that's just a bad gym). Secondly, unless you just did cardio and you're all sweaty, you probably won't get the equipment that dirty. Third, if you're a clean person, you should have washed your hands and taken a shower anyway [as well as afterward], so stop wasting your time being the cleaning lady. Instead do more sets.

How about the guy who tries to lower the dumbbells to the floor after a bench. Ah yes, thanks for not dropping the dumbbells and not making some minor noises--you've saved us all. In the meantime, you could risk injury to your shoulders or other muscles. I sure hope you have a dependable health insurance. Face it, if you're lifting over 40 pounds of dumbbells, you have to drop the weights after your sets-----for those neurotic OCD people in the gym that don't like that, grow up, stop assuming you can control everyone and stop getting annoyed by every little thing or you'll live an unhappy life.

7) Doing only cardio with no weight training, expecting huge fat loss. I know a really really fat guy in the gym, and every day he does 40 minutes of elliptical, 30 minutes of bicycle, and 15 minutes of walking. He's burning calories, sure. However, it's not the most efficient way to lose the 300+ pound weight he has. Weight training is a necessity.

8) Chatting, giving advice, talking nonsense. It's perfectly fine to chat with a couple people to get to know them. It's perfectly fine to ask advice from someone about a certain exercise when they are done with their sets. --- What's not fine is when you're going out of your way to give advice to someone else. Unless you're Schwarzenegger himself, or a professional body builder or trainer, you have no reason to give advice unless what the person is doing can lead to injury (then go ahead give advice).

Also don't be annoyed when people give you advice, I take their advice and give my appreciation even when I find it annoying. It's good to chat and make friends with people who work out often, but don't get in the way of their work-out and don't waste their time.

9) Form. I cannot stress how important the correct form is. Using your whole body to curl 80lb DBs for 2 reps just because you want to look big is only going to result in an injury. It also doesn't work your muscles as much! Just drop the weight to where you can effectively keep form!


Brian94 @ bodybuilding.com