1. Pushing through injury pain:

If you have an injury, in most case you are still able to train with variation. Under no circumstances should you aggravate your injury and push through pain. It will only make the injury worse and your recovery longer. Often it can also increase the risk of permanent injury.

Work with a rehab specialist or  even a Coach like ours that is certified in Movement Reconstruction so that you can learn how to work with and around your injury to improve it rather than just pushing through pain.

2. Compromising technique for weights:
You must earn the weights. Don’t just increase weights for the sake of ‘lifting heavier’ if you are compromising your technique. It will only serve to increase the risk of injury.

Focus on your technique and perfect it. Add weight. As you improve the technique and movement patterns you can then progressively increase your weights. Until then leave the lead alone.

Focus on developing your functional movement patterns in body weight movement, and you will build strength for heavier weights in no time, without compromising your safety.

3. Holding your breath:
This is very dangerous. Holding your breath through training can cause dizziness, black outs and can increase your risk of a heart attack, because it increase your blood pressure, sometimes to dangerous levels.

Instead use your breath through the exercise. Inhale during the easy part, the eccentric phase of the movement. This is the part where you are working with gravity, in the lowering part of the exercise for example. Then exhale during the harder part, the concentric phase of the movement. This is the lifting, pushing or pulling part of the exercise.

A few examples include:

·        Push Up – Inhale as you lower your body to the ground in a push up and exhale as you push up.

·        Crunches – Inhale as you lower your body to the floor and exhale as you raise into the crunch.

·        Barbell Squats – Inhale as you lower yourself into the squat and exhale as you stand back up.

4. Not eating enough:
If you are not consuming enough calories for your level of training you will be depleted. This reduces the quality of your performance; you won’t be able to lift as heavy, run as fast, jump as high etc.

It also cause fat storage and depletion of muscle mass. It is harder for the body to break down fat for energy than it is to break down muscle tissue. It needs lots of energy to be able to break down fat. As such, if you are not eating enough calories throughout your days, your body will store as much of those calories you do consume, as fat. This will be used as back up fuel for your body, for the days you are not feeding it enough. It will then break down muscle tissue for energy.

This causes fatigue, increase risk of getting sick with common colds and flus, and can cause dizziness.

Restrictive diets that overly restrict calories such as 1000 calorie diets are not productive and can be dangerous long term. As is skipping meals.

So fuel your body adequately for optimal results. If you need help with this, reach out to one of our Coaches.

5. Not drinking enough water:
If you are not drinking enough water your body is unable to metabolize fat out of the fat cell. So if your goal is fat loss, you are sabotaging your results by not hydrating.

When you exercise your perspire. That means you need to replenish that water loss. Failing to do so can increase all sorts of health issues such as high blood pressure, migraines, dizziness, to name a few.

Sufficient hydration also helps prevent your body from breaking down muscle tissue, which means if you drink adequate levels of water you will build more muscle, which will break down more fat. You will improve your body composition, improve your overall training performance, increase strength and feel more capable and empowered. So drink up!

– Coach Terri