3 Ways You Hold Yourself Back
If you care about your progress in the gym, it is likely that you have been analytical of your training plan at times. Become too analytical in your approach, and you’ll trip over your own two feet. These are 3 common ways I see people hold themselves back in the gym.
Trying to be perfect
The worst training session you’ve ever had has done more for you than all of the training sessions you’ve skipped combined. I used to fall into the trap of waiting for everything to be “perfect” in order for me to train. This included waiting for my nutrition, sleep, and mental attitude towards my session to align before I would do anything of value in the gym. Needless to say, I wasn’t making a lot of progress at the time. As most of you know, sometimes the best training sessions happen during less-than-ideal circumstances. Waiting for perfect conditions to act is a path destined to fail because there will always be factors outside of your control. Whether it’s training, nutrition, or an entirely different area of your life, if you want to create change it’s best to just get started.
2. Looking for fun
A comparison I like here is between our gym time as adults and our study time as students. Even though studying is not as fun as going out with our friends, studying has a higher payoff when seeking admission to a competitive school or career field. We might not enjoy studying, but the short-term sacrifice versus the long-term benefit is a vital part of our success as a student. The gym is similar in that we can choose between short-term enjoyment or long-term benefit. If we stop seeking “fun” ways to work out and instead focus on challenging ourselves with a training program that is dense with efficient exercises we will move towards our goals a lot faster.
3. Over-Complicating your plan
Compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench press, pullups, rows, and lunges should make up the majority of your training plan whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced lifter. These are going to offer the most benefit per unit time spent in the gym. Straying too far from these exercises, adding in complex periodization schemes, and focusing on how hard you can activate your left gluteus medius during your squat are all great ways to miss the forest for the trees. As long as your program is full of compound exercises, you’re consistent in your training, and your effort levels are high, you’ll get where you want to be 99.9% of the time. Overcomplicating your training is far more likely to derail your efforts than it is to provide you with that last .1% of results.
Sometimes we care so much about our progress that we self-impose barriers to our goals. It is difficult, but if you step out of your own way you’ll end up where you want to be a lot faster.