Well, hey everybody, welcome to Stronger Weekly, brought to you
by Purest Nutrition. I'm your host, Jesse Caragett.
Thank you so much for being here.
We've got a great episode for you today.
And it's a solo episode, our first in a while, because I
simply wanted to talk about fitness mistakes.
I've made a ton of them over my 20 plus years of training for
various goals, things like muscle growth, strength,
cardiovascular fitness, fat loss, and I just wanted to
unpack the top 6 fitness mistakes that people make and
I've made every single one of them.
I'll be honest, I wanted this episode to be titled the top
five just because it sounded better.
It sounded cooler to me, but I could not knock it down to 5
because there are 6 that I absolutely wanted to share.
Most of them are going to have to do with the actual strength
training, the actual cardiovascular training, but
there's some nutrition stuff in here as well.
So I can't wait for you to hear those mistakes so that hopefully
you can avoid the mistakes that I have made and so many other
people have made as well. But first, as we always do,
let's jump into our top health and fitness news of the week
brought to you by my sponsor or health.
Let's dive in. All right, first up, folks,
AIAIAIAIAIAI. Everything these days seems to
be focused on AI, and this story is no different.
And if there's one story that could make you rethink the
future of medicine, this would be it.
So a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science
by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center found that an AI reasoning model
developed by Open AI I ready for this outperformed experience ER,
that's emergency room physicians at diagnosing patients working
from the same messy real world electronic health records
available to the doctors at the time.
So the AI was tested across 3 stages of care, from triage all
the way through hospital admission and beat not just the
human physicians but also earlier AI models, including
Chiachi PT4SO1 case that stood out, a patient presenting with
what looked like a pulmonary embolism.
The doctors were stumped. When symptoms worsened, the AI
itself flagged a history of lupus, which was a correct
diagnosis that had been missed by the human physician.
So Doctor Adam Rodman of Beth Israel, one of the study's
authors, said, quote, this is the big conclusion for me.
It works with the messy real world data of the emergency
department, and it works for making diagnosis in the real
world world. So the open, pun intended,
question now isn't whether the technology works, it's how to
get it safely into clinical practice without disrupting the
human judgement. That still matters enormously at
the bedside. So hang in there folks.
AI is getting embedded in everything.
Hopefully if leveraged safely and in conjunction with real
life human physicians, it can improve health outcomes.
We shall see. Next up we got some Trump stuff
for you. Sort of has to do with the
surgeon general position. So the position of AUS surgeon
general colloquially known as quote the nation's doctor
remains vacant still and this week it got a little more
complicated. So President Trump on Thursday
pulled the nomination of Doctor Casey Means his second surgeon
general pick after her path through the Senate stalled
following a confirmation hearing in which she refused to directly
encourage mothers to vaccinate their children and said, quote,
science is never settled on the question of vaccines and autism.
That position cost her the votes that she needed to be confirmed.
She is the second Trump surgeon general nominee to now be
withdrawn. The first doctor, Janet
Nashawyat, was pulled over questions about her academic
credentials. So not a good pattern here.
So Trump's new pick, Doctor Nicole Sapphire, hope I said
that correctly. A radiologist director of breast
imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering and until this week a
regular contributor on Fox News. She is notably more mainstream
then means she supports vaccines, has publicly
criticized RFK juniors messaging as quote, embarrassing and once
called for someone for the surgeon general role who had
quote, finished their residency and has an active medical
license. She will now need to clear the
same Senate committee she was quietly roasting from the
outside. So if you're not sure what a
surgeon general is, not many people are.
But it is an important position as far as the health of
Americans go. So hopefully one of these
nominees can eventually get confirmed.
So we shall see. All right, folks, we talked
about it a lot on this show. Protein is one of the most
important supplements. It's probably #1 on my Mount
Rush more, but as a busy dad and professional with big fitness
goals and big goals in general, it's really hard for me to hit
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Next up, GLP ones. I think we all know what those
are by now. And the list of things that semi
glutides the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wagovie appears
to do just keeps getting longer. So a new randomized controlled
trial published Thursday in The Lancet examined 108 adults in
Denmark who had both obesity and alcohol use disorder.
Half received weekly semi glutide injections for six
months. The other half got a placebo.
Both groups also participated in therapy.
The result? Semi Glutide reduced heavy
drinking days by about 41% compared to 26% for placebo
patients. Patients also reported lower
cravings for alcohol, They drank less overall, they lost weight,
and they showed improved blood sugar control.
All amazing results. So doctor Pasa Paluk, an
endocrinologist at NYU Langone Health, called the findings
significant, saying quote semi glutide is an effective
medication for alcohol use disorder.
For context, there are three other such medications approved
right now for alcohol use disorder.
The study was small and interestingly, mostly white
participants, so more research is needed.
But this is an early promising signal that GLP one drugs may
have a far broader role in addiction fiction medicine than
anyone originally anticipated, so we will keep everyone posted
on that. Next up, if you don't like
pushing yourself too hard at the gym, this could be good news for
you. So Professor Kazanora Nusaka of
Edith Cohen University published A comprehensive review in the
Journal of Sport and Health Science making the case that
eccentric exercise the lowering or lengthening phase of a
movement. Think the descent of a bicep
curl, walking down stairs, the downward phase of a squat.
All that stuff delivers more benefit with significantly less
effort than traditional concentric training.
And that's the more of like the explosive movement, it's the
moving the weights forward, right?
So eccentric contractions generate over 20% more force
than concentric ones, while requiring less metabolic energy,
lower oxygen consumption, and producing a lower heart rate at
the same workload. And here's the head line number
Just 5 minutes a day of eccentric movement, chair
squats, heel drops, wall push ups, things like that can
produce meaningful improvements in strength, cardiovascular
health, metabolic function, and even cognition with no gym
required, Professor Nasaka adds Quote So you get more benefit
for less effort. That makes eccentric exercise
appealing for a wide range of people.
Hang on. Later in the episode, we're
going to talk about eccentric movement, how to do it, how to
maximize it, and why it's more effective.
But this study seems to hint that we need to be very, very,
very intentional about not just the exercises that we choose,
but what parts of the movement within the exercise we're
focusing on to get maximal benefits.
So have at it, folks. And last up, we will close the
health and fitness news this week with a story that sounds
like it's straight out of a science fiction book.
And it has to do with depression.
So the FDA has approved a clinical trial for a blueberry
sized brain implant designed to treat treatment resistant
depression, which is a condition that affects roughly 3,000,000
American adults who do not respond to things like
medication, antidepressants and other standard forms of therapy.
So this is exciting stuff. If someone's struggle with
depression, they can't seem to get better.
This is great news. So the device called the dot,
that's dot is developed by Houston based startup Motif
Neurotech. It is placed in the outermost
membrane surrounding the brain in a 30 minute outpatient
procedure. That's all it takes.
No open brain surgery whatsoever.
And once implanted, it wirelessly received signals from
a custom baseball cap that patients wear for short
intervals throughout the day, delivering targeted electrical
stimulation to the brain's central executive network, the
part that is typically under active in people with major
depression. So Motif CEO Jacob Robinson
described the vision this way, saying quote, the goal for this
technology is that it would be the mental health equivalent of
a continuous glucose monitor for diabetes.
The trial will enroll about 10 patients to start and monitor
them over 12 months. The trial is just, it's
beginning and it's early, but for three million Americans for
whom nothing else has worked, that is a door worth opening.
So exciting stuff. I love hearing it when
technological innovations can actually really, truly help
people that need it most. And that is it.
This week for our health and fitness news, hang on.
And just on the other side, we're going to hit our top 6
fitness mistakes that most people make.
Let's dive into that. Hi folks.
Welcome to the the main segment, which is again, the top six most
common fitness mistakes. As I said in the intro, I, I
wanted it to be 5, but as I sat and really researched and wrote
down and reflected on my own training experience, I just
couldn't do it. These 6, I think everyone just
has to hear and we're going to go over them right now.
So let's start. And I, I ordered these
intentionally this way. Let's start with the number one
mistake that I have certainly made.
And this is like a fundamental that people don't really focus
on enough. And it's the skill, it's the
actual poor lifting skill. And this is the thing about
muscle building that people don't want to hear, but it's
your program. We all focus on our split,
right? Our split being like, is it
upper, lower? Is it full body, three times a
week, push, pull, legs, whatever.
That is not as important. It is important, but it's not as
important as actually mastering the lifts, the strength training
exercises themselves so that you get the intended benefit that
you're after, that you're investing time in this.
But I find that so many of us just want to power through and
move through and we don't focus on the stuff that's not as sexy.
Like choosing the right exercises is great.
Feeling the workout itself is great.
But you really have to take some time early on to learn the
skill. And I wish somebody sat me down,
ideally a trainer, and said, Jesse, you have to focus on the
fundamentals of the exercises themselves to get the maximum
benefits. So let's talk about those
fundamentals, right? They're so important.
So here's the first one. Muscle contraction matters.
So a 2024 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology
confirmed what good coaches have known forever, which is the
quality of the muscle. Contraction itself matters more
than the weight on the bar. You have to squeeze the muscle
that you're working in the exercise.
You should feel the contraction of the muscle to get the
intended benefit, which is that you're breaking down muscle
fibers and they regrow stronger. That is hypertrophy in a
nutshell. If you're just moving the weight
from point A to point B and you're not feeling it, you are
missing the entire point and you are wasting your time.
It's going to take so much longer to get what's called the
adaptation, the change that you are looking for.
You have to contract your muscles while you're working,
and you have to choose the right exercises too.
More on that in a moment. So muscle contraction is
fundamental #1 here's the next one.
Range of motion. And this is where it gets
interesting. So research from the National
Institute of Fitness and Sports found that training at longer
muscle lengths, that full stretched position, the maximal
range of motion is what drives the most significant
hypertrophic response. Again, hypertrophic hypertrophy,
growing muscles, right? Super important stuff.
So that means like, let's just say on a Romanian deadlift,
right, when you're leaning over with the bar dumbbells, you
should be going deep on like a dumbbell fly.
You should really be getting that stretch, lengthening those
muscles on your squats even harder to do.
But you want to get depth squatting all the way down or
using a machine like a hack squat that allows you to do
that. But this is the kicker.
Excessive range of motion can also be a problem and it gets
complicated. But when you squat so, so low
and you have a lot of load on the bar and you injure your
lower back, right? So there's a, there's a fine
balance. You got to choose the right
exercises, but you should be focusing on range of motion.
That's fundamental #2 The next one, we touched on this in the
Health and Fitness news. But eccentric control, that's
the lowering portion of the lift.
Look, the sexy part, the fun part is like firing out of the
squad or like, you know, blasting that bench press up.
But most of the hypertrophy gains happened in the lowering
portion of it, which you have to be patient.
It's harder. So multiple studies and just one
such 1 Frontiers and Physiology have shown that the eccentric
training portion, that lowering leads to faster muscle fiber
growth, which again, is what we're after.
And it's specifically because of the unique mechanical stress
that that creates. Translated, if you're just
dropping the weight, you're leaving gains on the table.
Think about every single Rep as your opportunity to maximize the
contraction, to maximize that muscle fiber damage.
And if you're just dropping the weight and pushing it up, you're
just leaving all of those gains, bro.
You're just leaving them on the table and again, you're not
getting the maximum ROI on your training.
So 2 to 4 seconds on that eccentric, on that lowering
portion seems to be the sweet spot.
It's not so much to ask, it's research back.
So just lower the weight with control, feel the muscle
working, and that's where the growth happens.
So in summary, again, the skills, the fundamentals, make
sure that when you're lifting, you feel the muscle contracting.
You got a full range of motion. You're not neglecting the
eccentric portion, which is where the magic happens.
And you can perhaps ask yourself these three questions and
revisit in your head as you're lifting #1 am I actively
contracting the muscle and trying to build number two?
Am I using a full range of motion for every single Rep?
And #3 am I patiently challenging myself by focusing
on the eccentric portion? And if your answer is no, you
may need to drop the weight, do a different exercise, whatever.
But mistake number one is neglecting the skills and the
fundamentals. Folks, listen up.
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You've got this so mistake #2 once again, guilty of it.
I'm going to call it poor exercise selection, choosing the
wrong exercises in your program. You can have the perfect split.
You can even focus on all these fundamentals I just mentioned.
But if you're not doing the right exercises, you're not
going to see the gains that you're looking for, right?
And I would even say eagle lifting sort of plays into this.
And you and you know, anyone that's lifted for knows what I'm
talking about. We're all pulled to the big sexy
movements. We're all pulled to what we see
on social media thinking that it's the best thing for us and
it's just not. We load up the bar with too much
weight, which again messes with those fundamentals.
But not choosing the right exercises is one of the most
common mistakes. So we want to choose exercises
that allow us to get the benefit of those fundamentals that I
just mentioned. Again, range of motion, right
contraction, eccentric lifting. Some of the biggest, sexiest,
most popular lifts just aren't good.
They're just not good for that. And I'll give you some examples,
some real your life examples. So Olympic lifts, right?
Think barbell back squat, conventional deadlift, think
bench press, some cleans and things like that.
I don't know why we focus on those lifts.
If if you were not training for an Olympic weightlifting event,
which is a specific sport, you do not need to clean and jerk,
you do not need to load a barbell over your spine and
squat incessantly if it's not activating your quads in such a
way where you really feel that contraction, right?
So with Olympic lifts, if if your goal is hypertrophy, there
are other options out there that will allow you to tear down
those muscle fibers more effectively.
But we get so caught up in the ego lifting and what's popular
out there. So I couldn't advise people more
to do some research and also trust your gut, trust your feel
as you're lifting, feeling those muscles if that's what's most
important. So perfect example, barbell back
squats. I already mentioned it, you
shouldn't be doing those if there are other safer, more
effective options out there. So if you go to a commercial
gym, you might find something like a hack squat, which is
great A Smith machine squad, especially as you get older like
me, I'm 41 years old. It's safer and it really allows
you to just drive that stimulus to work the muscles that you're
after and don't take my word for it.
Follow some of the smartest, most informed people out there
in the in the space, whether that's on YouTube or elsewhere,
and you'll see that they're using machines more than these
heavy. Heavy compound free weight
movements and that should be telling you something.
So instead of a barbell back squat, again you have hack
squats, goblet squats where the weight is underneath you taking
that pressure off your spine. Bulgarian split squats are
amazingly effective. They're also brutal.
Get your heart rate up. I absolutely love them.
You will build bigger stronger legs with way less risk.
Another example, barbell bench press man NFL combine right?
We wanted to test ourselves and see our one Rep Max.
Forget all that. If you're trying to grow muscle,
there are more effective moves for your chest.
You can look at something like, believe it or not, a cable fly
where you can go slow, get that stretch, squeeze in the middle,
feel your chest actually activating.
If you want to do bench presses, you can do an incline dumbbell
press in the dumbbell itself. Because the range of motion
isn't limited by the bar hitting your chest, because you're
inclined you have more range of motion, and because they're
dumbbells, you can come down further, get the benefit of that
full stretch the range of motion, push it up.
Even chest tips are known to have them.
When I say chest tips, just normal dips to have better range
of motion and activation of your chest itself.
You can use Smith machines, all those things, but you do not
need to do a heavy barbell bench press if your goal is
hypertrophy and especially as you age as you have more wear
and tear on your joints and otherwise.
And then just one last example. I'll preach about this.
Conventional deadlifts folks. Love them or hate them,
conventional deadlifts are incredibly taxing on your body
and your central nervous system and most importantly your lower
back leaning over. Essentially, even if you have
great form and you're dropping your lower body leaning over to
pick up a heavy ass weight like that with both of your palms
facing you, it's just mechanically speaking, it's not
a natural movement pattern. And I don't care who you are.
Find me someone that conventional conventionally
deadlifts that has not hurt their lower back and that's
telling you do something. What would I do instead?
Well, you might even do if you have to do a deadlift, it could
be like a Romanian deadlift. It's going to activate your your
glutes in your hands, which for a lot of guys are under kind of
under active anyway. But how about a trap bar?
You know when your hands are at your side, you can squat down
more and just have a safer lift. But again, break the mold.
Choose the right exercises. Do things that actually activate
the muscles that you're targeting and aren't going to
get you injured. Mistake #2 Hands down is
choosing the wrong exercises for the wrong reasons.
Mistake #3 Program hopping. No patients, no consistency.
Starting a program, changing it every month, even worse, like
every week not having a plan. And when you have a plan, not
sticking to it, right? What do they, what do they say?
Fail to plan, plan to fail, right?
Well, when you choose a plan, hopefully backed by research,
maybe even some stuff you've learned on this show or one like
it, stick with the plan. Because hopping from program to
program to program is not going to afford you one of the most
basic and fundamental and widely accepted scientifically backed
principles of progressive overload.
You have to be consistent with your exercises, assuming that
you choose good ones, and then be patient, stick with them,
track your progress, and increase the difficulty over
time. That is progressive overload.
Here's what the research says. A 2019 meta analysis found that
training frequency, which is essentially A proxy for
consistency, had a significant positive effect on muscle
hypertrophy when total weekly volume was equated.
In other words, showing up regularly and sticking to a
program beats constantly switching things up.
And those are facts. Now look, I get it, you can get
bored. I, I, I absolutely encourage
people, if you have like your, your core lifts, your core plan
and you stick to it and you want to add some extra stuff and do
some extra stuff at the end, you want to get your heart rate up
and add some fat loss finishers, have at it.
But stick to a core group of four to five exercises every
single workout and stick to them consistently for three to four
months, five months pull up. If you want to switch your
program up after, you know that length of time, great.
But you got to be consistent and be building towards something
because that's what training is all about.
Just a little bit more here. A study from Edith Cohen
University found that small amounts of daily activity were
more beneficial for building muscle strength and sporadic but
intense workouts. Just another example to
highlight that consistency is more important than even
intensity. So what's the fix again?
What should you do? Pick a smart program, right?
Whether that's upper, lower, rest, upper, lower, push, pull
legs, full body, three times a week.
Whatever it is, pick a program, stick to it for at least 12
weeks. Track your progress.
That could be in an app, pen and paper, whatever it is, and make
small adjustments based on the data and how your body is
feeling. And here's what tracking could
look like. Did the weight go up?
Can you do more weights next week, add more of it?
Did the reps go up? You can increase reps as
progressive overload. Did the time under tension
improve? Were you able to effectively
manage that eccentric portion of the lift better?
Well, maybe make it longer or add more weight or more reps,
But you want to track these for all of your exercises.
And that's what progressive overload is all about.
South building muscle. Again, it's all about
consistency. Choose a program and stick with
it. All right folks.
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Mistake #4 you have conflicting goals, right?
I've I've learned this, I've learned this the hard way.
I'll say it this way, unless you have incredible genetics and or
are using some pretty, I'll call it aggressive supplements, it is
extremely difficult to, for example, lose fat and get a lot
stronger at the same time. Those are two different goals.
Those are two different adaptations and they are opposed
to each other, right? If you're losing weight and
leaning out because you're doing tons of cardio, it will be near
impossible to simultaneously get stronger.
You are asking your body to do 2 diabolically opposed things.
Now again, if let's just say you're, you're, you're an
absolute beginner, you're starting from zero, you're
overweight, you've never strength trained.
Will you be able to lose some weight and get stronger at the
same time? Yes, because that's your body
responding in the early stages of training.
However, you will get to a point that I got to where it gets more
and more difficult to do both at the same time.
Why? There's something called the
quote interference effect, and it has been studied extensively
since at least the 1980s. So here's the science on that.
When you lift weights, you activate something called the M
Tor pathway, which drives muscle protein synthesis.
When you do high volume cardio, that's where you activate what's
called the AMPK pathway, which restores cellular energy
balance. Those two pathways compete with
each other. A 2022 meta analysis by Schumann
and colleagues reviewed 43 studies and found that while
concurrent aerobic and strength training didn't completely blunt
muscle growth or strength gains, it did reduce power output and
explosive strength translated. Trying to do both at a high
level makes you worse at both. Amen.
I've felt this myself. Now, does this mean you should
never do cardio if you're trying to build muscle?
Absolutely not. But it does mean you need to be
smart about it. Cardio is an incredibly powerful
tool for fat loss. More importantly, it's an
incredibly powerful tool for longevity and heart health,
which should be a lifelong goal that never ends.
That should be something we focus on all the time.
So here's how you don't make this mistake.
The fix is this. Choose one primary adaptation
that you're after in a particular season of the year,
right? And that could be muscle gain,
that could be fat loss, could be strength, raw strength gain.
It could be cardiovascular endurance and prioritize that
goal with everything else secondary.
If muscle gain is your primary goal, invest that time.
Lift 345 times per week, whatever time you have, and keep
cardio to two to three moderate sessions of zone 2 while eating.
And we haven't talked about nutrition on this episode in a
very slight caloric surplus, meaning you're eating more
calories, consuming more energy than you are burning.
That'll help you gain that muscle.
And the cardio should mitigate the fat loss somewhat.
Prioritize recovery because you're trying to grow muscle.
Conversely, if fat loss is your primary goal, maintain that
lifting 3 to 4 times per week to preserve the muscle.
Keep preserve, right? You're not trying to get crazy
gains and increase the cardio sessions.
Maybe it's three to four. You're bringing in HIT sessions
for you know, fat loss in the conditioning and eats and back
to the nutrition in a slight calorie deficit, always having
high protein. In this instance, you're burning
more calories and you're consuming, which is the science
backed sweet spot for fat loss. But your strength training in
that scenario is simply to maintain, if not eke out
incremental gains and strength and muscle loss.
But your focus there is fat loss.
Now lastly, if strength is your primary goal, raw strength,
focus on heavy low Rep training, minimize cardio.
Again, keep it there, keep it present for that heart health
and just so you don't put on too much fat, but absolutely eat in
a surplus in that that scenario. And there's one exception to
this idea that you have to constantly focus, and this is my
recommendation, focus on one primary goal or adaptation is
that there are things that you need to focus on year round and
if anything is for overall health and injury prevention.
And those things are flexibility, mobility,
elasticity. Those can be emphasized year
round. So it's doing proper warmups,
finding time, whether it's throughout the day or at like
isolated time. So like stretch, do proper
warmups and cooldowns, all those things.
Because being flexible and mobile and heaven elasticity is
going to make sure that you remain injury free so that you
can even focus on the primary goal that you have.
But for everything else, pick one, master it one goal at a
time. And if well-rounded, being like
a hybrid fitness athlete or just focusing on the well-rounded
thing, that's fine too. Just be mindful of over training
because if you focus on too many things at once, you can
absolutely over train. Which leads me to my next top
mistake that people make. So on overtraining mistake #5 if
there is a mistake that I've made, and for the longest time
it's overtraining for whatever reason, my mindset is always, if
I don't feel absolutely taxed and exhausted, I'm not working
hard enough. If I'm not, you know, investing
hours to, to really just crush my training, I'm a failure.
And for years I've just been overtraining and I didn't even
know it. And what's so amazing is right
now at 41 years old, I weigh right about 185 lbs most days,
which is 1015 lbs less than I weighed, say, 10 years ago when
I was in my early 30s. And I'm stronger.
I weigh less and I'm stronger. My VO2 Max is higher now, which
means I have, you know, stronger cardio output.
I I've that's linked to longevity.
It's just an indicator of overall cardiovascular health.
My VO2 Max is higher than it was 10 years ago.
I can go on and on. But basically I'm more fit now
at 41, which kind of defies logic.
And also I don't train as much every week and I don't leave
every single workout completely gassed and completely and just
redlined and exhausted. And I, I look forward to
training. I mean, I have certain training
sessions now, particularly like my, my lower body training.
It's still hard, it still sucks. I still do some high intensity
stuff but I have certain training days by design like an
upper push hypertrophy day which I literally enjoy and look
forward to because it's not so freaking crazy taxing on my
central nervous system. I'm not like exhausted and
guessed every time and it defies logic again, because I feel like
my training is easier now and I'm doing less overall, but I'm
stronger and more fit, which is crazy, which which really kind
of lends to this idea that overtraining is a problem and it
is a thing. So let's talk about overtraining
a little bit. Something that took me way, way
too much time to learn Overtraining syndrome.
It is a thing, it is real, it is a study phenomenon.
And it is defined as quote, excessive frequency, volume or
intensity of training without adequate recovery, resulting in
a reduction of performance. According to research published
in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, up to 10%
of training athletes and 10% of American, specifically elite
endurance athletes in college humans are affected by
overtraining syndrome at any given time.
So what are some symptoms, if you will, of this syndrome?
1 Persistent fatigue. 2 Declining performance despite
increased effort. 3 Chronic muscle soreness. 4 Sleep
disturbances, 5 mood changes and six weakened immune system.
Does any of that sound familiar? Some of them do for me and what
most people do not understand is your body does not grow in the
gym, it actually grows and recovers outside the gym.
Training is the stimulus and recovery is the adaptation.
And for years I neglected the recovery portion of it and which
is why I had some stagnant growth.
I had some plateaus that I hit and I didn't understand why I'm
working as hard as I can. Why don't I see the the the
adaptations, the changes that I want.
So a little deeper, why does this happen?
So another study on overtraining found that excessive training
volume to much creates what's called a pro inflammatory
environment that leads to decrease performance, impaired
recovery, and an overall decline in physical and mental health.
So I've made my point. So here's some practical steps
to avoid overtraining #1 track your volume.
This gets back to tracking what you're doing.
If you are doing more, and this is anecdotal, but if you are
doing more than 50 to 20 hard sets per muscle group per week,
unless you're enhanced by some of these sketchy supplements,
you are probably overtraining. And it will have a negative
impact on your muscle growth or any other goals that you have.
Another tip, consider deloading every 4567, even 8 weeks.
Whatever works for you. Cut your volume down for one
particular week. Maybe cut your total exercise
selection down. Just decrease intensity in some
way shape or form. Let your body recover both
mentally and physically. And just program that into your
your schedule again. You can do that.
I've done it every 4th week. That felt like too frequent for
me. But I find that typically and I
just know it like I'm, I'm marching in to do another set of
like hack squats or something in week 6 and for whatever reason
when I show up that day I'm just like man, normally I'm fired up.
Just not feeling it this week. That in itself, don't overlook
that that is your body and your mind giving you a signal that
maybe it's a back off week. And you'll be surprised,
surprised how impactful that is when you hit the gym the next
week. If you just take a week off.
Number three, you probably should have been number one guy
sleep into a whole episode of have done episodes on sleep.
But sleep, if you're not getting at least 7 hours, forget 8.
Throw it out the window if you're not getting 7 hours.
And then also just a double click on sleep.
And within that at least 7 hours, you're not getting high
quality sleep. And that's both your R.E.M. and
your deep sleep. You got to address that because
sleep is where the magic happens.
And not only does it does sleep impact your physical
performance, but man, your cognitive performance as well.
So sleep would be tip #3 in the topic of overtraining.
And then lastly, it's just a little crunchy and old stuff
here, but listen to your body. If you're consistently sore, if
you're consistently tired, if you start dreading your
workouts, guys, just listen to yourself.
Listen to your body. That is a sign that you're
overtraining. And at that point, you need to
like pull up and address your entire approach to training.
And you're probably going to have to scale back a little bit
because again, consistency is key.
And their goal in training is progressive overload over time.
And you cannot progress if your concept.
Let's be honest, most of us don't have a private gym, a full
time trainer, or hours every day to lift.
If you're like me, you don't even have time to commute to a
local gym. You're training early in the
morning or carving out 40 minutes between work, kids and
everything else competing for your time.
And when fitness matters that much to your well-being and your
health, you've got to have home fitness equipment that's as
strong and reliable as you are. That is exactly why I use Rep
Fitness. Rep is built for people who
train with purpose. People who need high quality,
reliable equipment engineered for real strength.
Designed right here in Colorado, USA, Rep Fitness provides racks,
benches, bars, and plates that offer commercial grade
durability without commercial gym prices, premium materials,
smart engineering, and fair pricing.
Whether you're outfitting your very first garage gym or
upgrading your current setup to match where you want to go with
your training, Rep makes gear that keeps up with your life and
your goals. Visit repfitness.com to see
their full line up racks, benches, bars, plates,
conditioning tools and everything you need to build a
home gym that works as hard as you do.
That's repfitness.com. And my final mistake number six,
we're all eating too much. And this specifically has to do
with fat loss. Guys, I, I can't tell you how
many times I've set out, we'll call it like a fat loss journey.
I'm like, all right, you know what I've got six weeks.
I want to lose some weight and I set out 1-2 weeks in I lose a
couple pounds and then it's just stagnant and I'm not tracking my
calories right. And when I finally start
tracking my calories, every single time I am eating more
calories than I subjectively think that I am.
And this is something that is widespread.
How widespread? Here's some research on this.
According to multiple NIH studies, the average person
under. Estimates their calories by 20
to 30%. And this next part's interesting
if you are already just objectively speaking, overweight
and struggling to lose weight. That number is actually 40 to
50%. One study took people who
claimed they were eating less than 1200 calories per day and
not losing weight. When researchers actually
measured their intake, their caloric intake, using doubly
labeled water and body composition changes, they found
that those people are underestimating their intake by
an average of 1000 calories per day.
In other words, these people were saying like, yeah, I'm
eating 1200 calories and they're eating like 2200 calories.
And why is that right? Why do we think we're eating
less? And for so many of us who have
fat loss goals, the most important thing is your caloric
intake. It's what you eat.
How much are you eating? And it's so funny because when
we're not losing weight, we don't want to look at the food,
right? We don't want to look at that
because we enjoy it and we want to pull all these other levers.
We'll wind up investing more time running, doing cardio,
training harder, taking supplements, all this stuff.
And we don't want to look at the one thing that's the most
important, which is the food. And there's some reasons for
that. Some of us take comfort in food,
some of us enjoy food. Some of us are addicted to food.
Some of us just like look forward to those every 3 or 4
hours. Like what am I going to eat?
Right? And it's literally an, an
addiction. And what sucks about fitness is
it it'd be great if I can get all of the benefits that I want
in like my one hour of training that day and then I can do
whatever I want for the rest of the day.
That'd be easy, right? But the hardest thing to do is
to control our appetite, control our habits and even our impulses
around the clock, because that's what eating is about.
It's it's all day long. That's the hard part.
And that's the stuff that people don't want to do.
And the bad news is that's that's what it's going to take
to actually lose body fat. So again, we think that we're
eating a certain amount. And statistically speaking,
you're eating so much more than that, right?
And this is by far a mistake that I've made, probably more
common mistake as I eat. The first thing you got to
address is your nutrition. And remember, it's not just the
main meals, right? I think This is why we get so
thrown off. We think like, oh, I had three
or four meals today. I was like, pretty disciplined
in those meals. But what about the handful of
nuts that you grabbed when you were like, you know, running out
to the pantry in between meetings if you work from home?
Or the coffee Creamer, the oils that you put into your recipes
when you're cooking, the sauces, the salad dressing, the weekend
beers and drinks that we have picking off like a seagull, kids
leftover French fries and shit off their plate.
I mean, that's the stuff that adds up.
And if you track that stuff, it adds up pretty Dang quick.
You can take on an extra 500 to 1000 calories in a day just by
those kind of random little things that you grab throughout
the day. But here's my here's my
suggestion, right? If you've never tracked
calories, and I know that sounds miserable to a lot of people
listening, but if you've never tracked calories, try it for two
weeks. There are free apps.
All of us have iPhones, let's face it, and if you don't have
power to you, but you can go on the App Store.
I don't know what they call it on the Android, but on the Apple
phones you can go on an App Store.
Find a free calorie tracker. These days you've got AI based
ones guys, you can just if you have a literally a plate of food
in front of you with no labels on it, you can take a picture on
some of these apps and AI will figure out not only what the
hell are you eating, but how much of it and give you a Dang
good estimate on the calories. So don't think that this is a
big ass. Don't think that it's time
consuming, but track your calories for just two weeks and
I guarantee you it'll be eye opening for you.
You will, you will guess I'm probably eating 2500 calories
and then you track it for two weeks and you're like, holy
crap, I'm eating 3000. But most importantly, that gives
you a baseline so you know your actual intake and then you can
make informed decisions. If you enjoy tracking, you can
track for ongoing, right? A month, two months, three
months. But I found that if you do it
for two weeks, it'll give you the data in your head so that
you can make smarter decisions throughout the day and have the
discipline to avoid all that extra stuff.
So do it for two weeks, see what you find and go from there.
And then just a practical tip here, if you are trying to lose
weight, you also need to know how many calories that you're
burning every day. And if you don't know that,
that's for a whole other time and episode.
But you can just start by setting a calorie goal and
tracking and see what happens over one to two weeks.
Watch the scale, watch the mirror, combine the two data
points and then make decisions. Should you stay where you're at
or eat less And then make small incremental adjustments,
lowering your daily calories. So that could like say, OK, you
know, I didn't lose weight for those two weeks.
I'm going to drop my calories, 500 calories per day, right?
Or seven, 3500 per week. And then go from there.
Always keep your protein at at least, especially if you're
training. And that's what we're talking
about. Keep it at least .7 to 1g per
pound of body weight. Translated, I weigh 185.
One gram of protein per pound of body weight means I'm meaning
185 grams of protein per day. That's a great starting point.
So that's key, especially if you want to gain some muscle or
maintain it while you lose fat. And prioritize, of course.
Not going to get into too many diet recommendations here, but
Whole Foods, meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, whole
grains, things like that. Guys, this isn't the sexy stuff.
Eat less. No one wants to hear it, but
100% one of the most common mistakes people make is they're
eating too much and they're frustrated because they're not
losing weight and they don't look the way they want to look.
And there you have it, folks. The top six most common fitness
mistakes that people make. All right, folks, I hope you
really enjoyed that episode. For those of you who have made
some of those mistakes, you might have been like, ah, me
too, right? Hopefully you don't make them
again. And for those that are kind of
just getting into exercising and fitness routines consistently,
hopefully this episode helped you to avoid some mistakes so
that you can just find the progress, find the enjoyment and
just see the benefits and hit your goals from a fitness
standpoint. So in summary, again, the top
six, you might say bottom 6 mistakes that people make.
One, poor lifting skills, 2, poor exercise size selection.
Three, lack of consistency, and even patients guilty of that.
Four, conflicting goals. There's the interference effect
that we talked about #5 overtraining.
More is not always better. And last but certainly not
least, you're just eating too much, especially if you're
trying to to lose fat. Track your calories, folks.
So those are the top five most common fit mistakes people
making. Again, I hope they were helpful,
right. So thank you so much for joining
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Be strong, folks.