Having trained for over 12 years, with many ups and many downs, I wanted to collect my thoughts and compile some tips that I think every new lifter (and more experienced ones, if they haven’t already) should consider implementing.
These are both lessons I mainly learnt the hard way, and a few that, luckily, I learnt the easy way (through my friendship with talented, strong people).
Before I get started, I want to make it crystal clear that I am absolutely still learning to improve, and that my fitness journey is far from complete- and I will make a future post about this topic by itself.
Still, it seems potentially valuable to make note of this list of useful tips- albeit far from perfect, they could be of use to someone starting off or wishing to improve on their current style and attitude to training; certainly I would have found it useful when I began training.
Let’s get started.
Top 5 Tips For New (And Old) Lifters:
1- Take the time to perfect your form on an exercise before even thinking about progressive overload.
It might feel frustrating to stay on the same minimal weight for weeks on end, but in reality, this is an investment that will yield many weeks, months and years of injury-free training. The alternative could (and for with a long term view, inevitably would) cause injuries, which themselves will halt training for much much longer than the initial delay ever did.
Luckily for me, I learnt this tip (and many others) at 17 years old from my great friend Daniel Mervis, to whom I remain indebted forever. He had me squatting with only the bar for at least three weeks, working with a box to sit onto, until I finally had the required balance and mobility to comfortably reach parallel depth.
2- Routinely re-evaluate your form: if it has worsened, once again strip off the weight until you are satisfied with your form (ask friends, gym trainers and film yourself).
This lesson I learnt the hard way, though certainly not so hard compared to many people.
The problem is that for many reasons, training frequency may vary hugely throughout years of living. School work, new jobs, travelling or simply not feeling like it, may take you out of a regular training regime for several weeks and months at a time. Naturally, this means your form can regress, and upon returning to the squat rack you might find that your form has become suboptimal, at best.
It’s very important at that point to not simply sweep it under the rug. I certainly did this on several lifts (and occasionally I still do), but it’s important to realise that this is simply a slower deterioration into injury than in tip 1. It’s much easier to slip into this mistake, because you think “my form is is not that bad, it’s fine, I’m still hitting parallel depth, …”. In reality, even though it may not put you out of the gym for months or years in the short term, you will very quickly start to feel some strange aches and possible muscle imbalances.
In the long term you, may have to work hard at undoing some of the poor-form- training you’ve been endorsing. I’ve had to do this relearning process on the squat more than once, and also on the bench press.
3- Become curious about fitness: educate yourself about exercise mechanics, exercise selection, forms of muscle growth, injury prevention and more.
Of course I am not implying that everyone who wants to be athletic should do a sports science degree- nor am I suggesting that this should be some sort of “forced self learning” process- this should be fun and driven by curiosity.
There are a tonne of resources which are both entertaining and educational, and small exposure accumulates over many years to a decent depth pool of knowledge. Some of my favourite resources are YouTube channels.
As I said, this need not be a ‘task’. For example, if you have a few minutes during lunch and nothing good to watch, why not scroll through the (OG) Athlean X channel and have a look at “ bicep exercises ranked from best to worse”, or any other video which grabs your attention. Your girlfriend might not love it- but if she loves you, she will pretend to enjoy the video as well .
To finish this point off, let me give a few of channels on YouTube that I often go to for content, that relate to fitness (in no particular order, though the first 2 are more primarily educational for me, whereas the last 3 are a combination of educational and entertaining):
- Athlean X (OG)
- Jeff Nippard (Science gymbro)
- Joe Delaney (chillest brit on youtube)
- Will Tennyson (PG-18)
- Pigmie (but you gotta focus)
I’d also like to include two channels that I haven’t yet explored in depth but I have a strong feeling (and this seems evident also from the comment section) that there’s a lot of wisdom there
- Kneesovertoesguy
- MovementByDavid
These channels are more directed towards mobility and flexibility, which brings me to my next point.
4- Incorporate flexibility & mobility training and knowledge early on in your training journey.
It took me years to realise how crucial this one is. The trick is that the time at which the importance of this point becomes apparent varies hugely depending on the individual.
For example, my girlfriend who has done gymnastics as a kid never needs to stretch and remains completely flexible and mobile. But if I neglect my flexibility training for just two days, I immediately feel the consequences.
But even for ‘normal’ (which gymnasts are not) people, not everyone feels the downsides of not stretching daily. Needless to say it becomes more and more important as you get older, but even with less responsible goals in mind, flexibility and mobility are crucial aspects of getting stronger and more athletic, also in the short term. If you have bad mobility, you cannot squat properly. If you do not stretch your back after heavy deadlifts and heavy squats, eventually it will get knotted up and bother you all the time. It’s much easier to incorporate these routines early on then to only begin them once you’re all stiff and knotted, at which point you may even need to see a physiotherapist just to undo the damage you’ve done.
5- On rough days, which will occur, remember that gym progress is like the climate, and a gym session is like the weather- don’t let those off days cause drastic changes such as quitting a workout program, losing consistency or overtraining and causing injuries.
Let’s unpack the analogy.
The climate is a sort of average of the weather over long periods of time: changes are slow, and trends become apparent over long periods of time. The weather, however, can be chaotic from day to day, or even vary greatly in a single day.
The important thing to note is that weather fluctuations do not directly indicate climate change.
Similarly, how a given workout session goes does not indicate how your long term gym progress is going. There will certainly be days, or even weeks, where you’ll think you’ve gotten weaker, and it might actually be that you’re weaker during that time, but it might be that you’re doing everything right! Sometimes it can just be stress, lack of protein or enough rest that are causing those off days.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes lack of progress (or even regression) contains valuable information: are you sleeping enough? Do you have enough protein in your diet, and calories in general? Are you under too much stress and perhaps should reduce training days? I’m not implying that one should ignore these signs, but we need to distinguish between hindered progress due to parameters within our control, and hindered progress due to the erratic nature of our athletic performance on a given day.
If you create the right conditions, and remain consistent, you will see progress in the long run, regardless of how singular sessions go from time to time.
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