Getting started is the hardest thing to do.  Wasn’t there a song by that title?  Anyway, maybe it could be a little easier if you know a few of the common beginner mistakes and how to avoid them.  Who better to learn from than someone that’s made most of these mistakes himself!

When you are beginning, you will most likely see progress quickly.  Because of this, it may be hard to know if you are creating any bad habits that will hamper further development after the beginner gains have subsided.    This is a serious hurdle for a lot of people.  When you see such great progress when you start and then you level off a bit, it gets difficult.  It is easy to feel as though your efforts are in vain.  Hopefully some of these common pitfalls will make it a little easier to power through it.

1. Trying to do too much

You may be like me when I started.  I hadn’t worked out in ten years.  If that is the case, the best advice I can possibly give you is to start slow.  I had a couple of friends of mine try to do a “bootcamp” the week after they started working out.  I do believe that if they had access to a wheelchair the next day, they would’ve used it.  They hurt so much from the bootcamp, they missed the next three days in the gym.  You didn’t get in the shape you’re in overnight, you won’t look like a Men’s Health cover model overnight either.   

The other night while I was in the kitchen, my son (5) and my daughter (16) were playing Monopoly at the table in the Dining room.  My son had accumulated quite a few $1 bills and my daughter, being the banker, needed some for the bank.  She offered to give him a $10 bill for ten $1 bills.  My son adamantly refused.  She fell back on option number two: she gives him a $10 bill and he gives her nine $1 bills.  Again he refused.  His counter-offer?  He’d give her one $1 bill for one $10 bill.

He didn’t understand that one $10 bill was the same as ten $1 bills.  He thought that since he had MORE bills, he had MORE money than she was going to give him and was losing out on the deal.  I always find the logic of a 5 year-old interesting.  In fact, so much so that it inspired this post.

The same theory he was using in monopoly is the same theory I see people using in the gym.  In fact, I was guilty of exactly the same thing when I first started.  That theory being that more means better. 

We’ve all heard, and most of us have used, a lot of excuses to not start a fitness program to drop the extra weight.  Of all of the excuses I’ve heard, I can’t think of a single one that is valid.   My wife tells me regularly that I am harder on others that are overweight since I lost weight.  I tell her it is because I KNOW they can do it, too, once the excuses stop.

Granted, there are some valid reasons why a person cannot start a fitness program such as medical reasons but we all know the invalid excuses when we hear them.  I do believe that in many cases, the person making the excuse actually believes they absolutely can’t workout or lose weight.  There are many reasons why people make excuses but, in my opinion, much of it is due to the abundance of misinformation about fitness and nutrition as well as a society full of enablers.

Here are some of the common excuses I’ve heard, some of I’ve even used, and why I feel they are not valid.

“I just don’t have the time!”

This is probably the most common excuse found in the wild.  If I had to guess, my guess is this would be the most common excuse.  It all started back with the invention of the clock.  It is a little known fact that the first sighting of this excuse was within five minutes of Galileo finishing his first time piece by Galileo himself.  Actually, that’s not really true…at least I don’t think so.

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“I’ve been doing a 5×5 routine with an upper/lower split but I think I’m going to incorporate some heavy negatives and some supersets.  The routing uses linear periodization but I think I’m going to switch to alternating periodization to try to stimulate more muscle growth.  On my off days,  I’ve been doing some HIIT on the bike.  On lifting days I just do some boring steady state cardio.”

Huh?

Getting started in the gym can, as you can see, be very confusing.  If you haven’t figured it out yet, it can be almost like another language.  Hopefully, after reading this, you’ll be able to understand some of it.  For some readers, this may be very, very basic but it is intended to be!  Maybe there will be one or two terms that are new to you and you’ll be able to take away some knowledge.

Ok, so let’s get started!