One common mistake I did before I got my Personal Trainer Qualification is believing that the system used by famous fitness girls on social media or Powerlifters on Youtube will work for me too!
The way that these people train is often TO INTENSE for somebody new to resistance training.
They have usually been training for many years which means they have a genetic potential for gaining muscle and strength and that allows them to tolerate a very intense programme.
Photo credit to: https://www.playbuzz.com
Another mistake I made years ago was thinking that we exercise to burn calories!
OUR I AM SHOULD BE TO IMPROVE HEALTH, FITNESS , power and strength. It’s not about the calories.
Many personal trainers recommend a “whole body approach” when it comes to plan training session for beginners, ensuring a balance in training.
Balance in training means for example planning the right exercise selection with correct exercise sequence ,appropriate timings, intensity, reps, range of motion and speed of movement. I will try to explain this in more detail in next few posts 😉
Exercise Selection- There are 100s of exercises but they all fall in to 2 categories:
Compound or multi-joint exercises involve the use of multiple joints and muscle groups for example:
SQUAT involves movement from the knees and hips with the quadriceps, glutes and hamstrings all working.
Another example is deadlift shown on the picture below.
Phot credit to: https://m.dailyhunt.in
Isolation or single joint Exercises have only one joint action and one muscle group being trained at the time of training, for example bicep curl involves movement only from the elbow.
For new exercises we recommend starting workout with compound exercises as usually they are easier to learn and perform than isolation exercises. They train many muscles at ones and allow the resistance to be spread over two or more joints.
Compound exercises allow you to move the most weight possible for your current strength levels! This type of exercise will definitely help you gain muscle get stronger and leaner 🙂
You will probably ask, why do we need isolation exercises?
I personally use it to target my weak muscles for example:
My biceps are hard to grow and i never "feel" them working during compound movement so to "fill" that gap i will use Bicep curls as my isolation exercise.
The same thing happens during squats. My Quads are stronger than my glutes so I need to really focus on my form and include some isolation exercises to help my butt grow😬
I hope it makes sense😉 Did you go gym today? How was your workout?
More coming soon😀