Personal Trainer Reveals 5 Bad Exercise Habits You Need To Break

Train alone and you train under the illusion you’re training right.

And maybe you are; maybe you’ve had some excellent guidance to get your technique and general training regime spot on.

Or maybe you haven’t.

If you train alone without ongoing professional input, you’re probably training wrong; or at least a bit wrong. And a bit wrong is more wrong than any workout should be. It can undermine your fitness goals far more than a bit and, worse, greatly increase your chances of injury.

Personal trainers have seen it all, the good and the bad of clients. Here we present five of the worst training habits they’ve encountered.

Bad Habit One: Over-exercising

Try telling someone they’re training too hard and they’ll tell you exactly where to get off their case. Hard trainers are, by nature, enthusiastic trainers and, unfortunately, emotionally defensive trainers.

And therein lays the problem. Training is their life, their true passion, maybe their only passion. Now you’re telling them to train less?

“Well yes,” say personal trainers unanimously. “We are!”

It’s one thing to train hard, quite another to train too much. And if you’re working yourself into a high intensity lather more than twice a week, chances are you’re doing more harm than good.

Overtrain and you’ll generally turn into a grumpy, sore insomniac wondering why you’re not getting as toned as you should. Two high intensity and one low intensity workout per week is optimum for most training goals. It’s about finding the balance in fitness regimes. You can learn more about creating the perfect balance through fitness courses.

Bad Habit Two: Setting the bar too high

Sure, goals motivate, but they can also obliterate if they’re unrealistic. Lofty long terms goals might seem like a good idea, but an ambitious goal is a bit like walking across Paris towards the Eiffel Tower; it never seems to get any closer.

Personal trainers recommend taking that large goal and cutting it into manageable chunks you can eat up much sooner; meaningful milestones that give regular, reactivating tastes of success.

Bad Habit Three: Putting your workout on repeat

Boredom, muscle imbalance and injury; that’s the net result of doing the same exercises. Yes, you might enjoy the bike or treadmill because you can watch the gym TV. But you’re only working a few muscles that will soon stop responding while the rest of you twiddles its thumbs.

Mixing exercises up with an evolving routine that works more muscles from head to toe will help you tone or build muscle more consistently, not to mention increase endurance.

Bad Habit Four: Letting workouts become a nasty task

If you’re doing exercises you don’t enjoy, how long are you going to last? Seriously, there are now hundreds of ways to milk a muscle, so make sure you find one that’s fun.

Bad Habit Five: Taking nutrition shortcuts

Like the one through the drive-thru. No one will ever begrudge you the odd burger blow out, it’s a nice reward once in a while. But once in a while isn’t every Monday.

Without a dietary sidekick, exercise is Tarzan without Jane, the Lone Ranger without Tonto, AFL without Eddie McGuire. Well, no one can argue with the first two.

If you’re not sure what to eat to maximise your exercise results, talk to the experts at your gym or, even better, enlist the services of a personal trainer. Not only will they iron out all your bad habits quick smart, they’ll get you eating and exercising to a precise plan matching your goals.

Even better, if you’d like to become the Personal Trainer with all the exercise solutions, check out our Complete Personal Trainer^ program or call us on 1300 616 180 to get started.