- Rush the process.
- Patience is a virtue. It takes months of foundation building and years of training to achieve most people’s goals. Don’t be sold on quick fixes or the idea that you can change your life or physique in a few months. Build a quality foundation and layer on gradual intensity to achieve your dream.
- All roads lead back here. Without a program that includes consistency as the foundational element, it will fail.
- Work too hard (yes, I do mean this)
- Keep the intensity reasonable.
- You don’t have to be dripping sweat or feeling a crazy burn to be effective, and likely shouldn’t for the first month or two.
- Too many people start too aggressive and end up burning out or too sore/tired to keep it up.
- Too much frequency
- Yes I know that it sounds crazy that doing too much is a problem, but burnout really is the biggest risk to achieving success.
- You aren’t ready to workout every day – start with 2-3 days per week, increase to 3-5 after a few weeks or a month depending on how you feel.
- Time management is one of the biggest obstacles to success, make it more achievable.
- Too much volume
- You don’t have to be in the gym for an hour to be effective.
- Start simple and keep it to the most important exercises – keep your workouts under 30 minutes.
- Once again, trying to do too much is one of the biggest mistakes.
- Too much emphasis on abs
- You cannot spot reduce fat, which means no amount of abdominal training is going to give you a beach body – you’ll just get stronger abs beneath the surface.
- Spend time on compound exercises like squats, lunges, deadlifts, presses – you will gain far more value out of these than a ton of abdominal exercises.
Notice that the majority of this list involves doing “too much”. We have to take a step back if you are a beginner. Hard work is noble and necessary for results. But not in the beginning. We have to lay the groundwork for success and cannot emulate what a seasoned bodybuilder or powerlifter workout looks like if we’ve never done it before. Make your goals 6 months to a year out. You will not gain any meaningful results by trying to cram a lot of exercise or movement into a short amount of time. Good habits are the building blocks for long term success and reaching your goals.