Three Newbie Weightlifting Mistakes You Can Avoid

There are so many different ways to lift weights that it’s all a learning experience at first. You will do too much or too little and find yourself hating certain exercises. But these are good mistakes to learn from. Below are another kind of mistakes: beginner mistakes that you will be happy to avoid completely.

Skip workouts due to pain

Let’s get the simple one out of the way first: You can exercise even if you still feel pain from the previous workout. This is what is called delayed muscle soreness, or DOMS, and is a natural part of your body’s response to new exercises. It’s not bad or good, it just happens sometimes.

If you’re new to DOMS, you might be wrong in assuming two things: first, it would be bad to train when you’re in pain, and second, that you’d be even worse off lifting weights than staying on the couch.

Both are wrong. DOMS feels better the more you move. Go for a walk and you will feel much less sore and stiff. Head to the gym and start doing lighter exercise options to see how they feel. Chances are you’ll feel good enough to happily add weight and train as intended.

It’s important to note that you need to keep exercising if you want to keep pain at bay. That first time you get DOMS will be the worst; getting sick once actually protects you from recurring pain for a while – at least for a few days. If you take a week off every time you have a week’s sickness, you just reset the clock every time. Once you get used to constant training, the soreness will probably never be this bad again.

Finding the “best” exercises or routines

There is a lot of confusion in the fitness space, with disagreements between experts and pseudo-experts (hello, influencers with zero coaching qualifications) on just about everything. But it’s actually a sign that many things are working .

For example: one bro tells you to train to failure on every set because you give your muscles a lot of stimulus to grow. Another advises you to always go for 2-5 reps to failure because that way you keep fatigue in check so you can do more sets and train more often. Both of them are right. One of these approaches may suit you better than the other, depending on your goals and your training history. Just choose one, try it and see what happens.

I recommend that you use the entire program as a unit of experiment rather than trying to mix and match different approaches. They often have parts designed to balance each other out, so making your own hodgepodge of two different programs won’t work as well as trying to use one first and then the other.

Focusing on appearance as your primary goal

Many people go into fitness because they want to get leaner, bigger, fitter, or fitter. But it becomes a problem when your appearance is all you think about.

You can’t really get rid of your body hatred because body image problems are ultimately mental, not physical. (Or to put it another way: if you achieve your goals, you’ll just find something else in yourself to hate .)

But even beyond that, the problem is that physical changes take time . You may notice the first signs of weight or muscle loss in the first few weeks at the gym, but often the process of getting the body you’ve been looking for in the gym can take years. And this process may include prioritizing long-term changes over short-term ones. For example, the stage where you put on weight to build muscle mass can be the key to ultimately looking lean and fit.

So how do you keep your attention during this long journey? Finding other ways to have fun and measure progress. Many people turn to chasing numbers that relate to performance . Can you do more pushups or deadlifts with more weight? And with that in mind, can you set any goals along the way, like writing down a certain number of workouts per week, or completing a six-week training program? These goals are what keep you busy and happy during long hours at the gym, no matter what happens to your appearance in the process.