My 5 Biggest Mistakes in The Gym

I started going to the gym about 15 years ago.

My progress wasn't steady — life got in the way on several occasions, and I made my fair share of mistakes.

If I could do it over with the knowledge I have now, I'd be head and shoulders above where I am now. But that's a stupid thought.

This is how life works: hindsight is 20/20.

Wishing I'd done things differently doesn't accomplish anything. The best I can do is pass on what I've learned in the hope that it can be helpful to someone out there.

Maintenance Mode Is A Thing

I took two long hiatuses from the gym.

Both times were when something important and time-consuming came up in my life. The first case was in my early twenties when I became obsessed with music and majored in Jazz guitar at college.

The second case was when I, fed up with the life of a pro guitarist, decided to learn how to code and become a software developer.

Life is usually hectic, and then sometimes it gets really hectic.

You'll quit your fitness regime during these periods when you're dealing with multiple curveballs being thrown at your head simultaneously.

But instead of quitting, you can go into maintenance mode.

There is a drastic difference between the number of sets required to build muscle versus maintaining the muscle you have.

It only takes four sets per week per muscle group to maintain muscle!

What does this mean?

When you're life gets crazy, you can work out one day per week.

A hard full-body workout once a week can prevent you from losing muscle and setting yourself back. Few people on the planet are too busy to work out one time per week. If you're reading this, you're not one of them.

While I was focused on other things, I wish I'd worked out one or two days per week when I went to college and the Coding Bootcamp.

Takeaway:

Don't let your fitness slide when life gets crazy. You might not make progress, but you can maintain. Your future self will thank you for it.

Warm-up and always listen to your body

I've been lucky; I've never had a devastating injury.

But I've had plenty of little pulls and aches that have impeded my progress.

These little annoyances may not keep you out of the gym for months, but they certainly slow down your growth. It adds up to a big difference over a few years of training.

The ripple effect of even a week or two of not training hard can have a lasting impact on your progress.

When I reflect on all the times I tweaked something and couldn't train hard for a bit, it was always the result of something dumb.

Maybe I skipped my warm-up or was rushing and didn't focus on technique.

Sometimes I ignored a signal from my body that it didn't want to train hard that day and suffered the consequences.

Takeaway:

Don't underestimate the damage of minor tweaks.

Always do a short warm-up of light cardio or dynamic stretching. Start with light weights and focus on proper technique. And if your body is telling you it's not feeling it today, listen to it!

Abs are made in the kitchen.

I resisted learning about food for years.

I honestly don't know why. I think I imagined tracking food to be some horrible sentence that would obliterate my love of eating and turn me into a soulless machine.

I was wrong.

Turns out that once you get in a groove, tracking nutrition ain't so bad. And it's also the only way that you can change your body.

Want to build muscle?

You'll need to consume more energy than you burn and get plenty of protein.

Want to lose fat?

You'll need to consume less energy than you burn and eat even more protein!

You can eat the 90 minutes you spent on the treadmill in fewer than 90 seconds. Cardio is not the way to approach fat loss; it's all through nutrition.

I was only able to get a physique I was happy with when I learned about food and started paying close attention to what I was eating.

Going into full details about how to eat to build muscle and lose fat is beyond this post's scope, but I have some resources here and here if you're interested.

Takeaway:

You change your body through what you eat — you cannot out-train a bad diet.

Following a program makes a big difference.

I spent far too long waltzing into the gym with no plan.

I'd do what I felt like and only loosely keep track of progress.

Following a good program will make a massive difference in your results if you're not doing it.

A good program should have a system for building in progressive overload: the ability to do more work over time.

For example, you don't do four sets of 10 for a specific muscle each week.

You do four sets of 10 at a given weight, and when you've completed the sets with good form at an RPE (rate of perceived exertion) of less than 9/10, you increase the weight by 5 pounds.

Or you could increase the sets each week for an exercise for three weeks and increase the weight once you've completed the highest number of sets.

Takeaway:

The point is that the details matter. If you want to make progress, track what you do in the gym and ensure that you have a structured program.

Never Half-Ass a Diet

The main reason I'm not as strong as I should be is that I spent too much time in a perma-diet.

What's a perma-diet?

Spending too long in a calorie deficit because you keep sabotaging your progress with cheat days and bad choices.

This kills your gains.

You should be eating enough to fuel your training for the best results. Training with fewer calories than you burn is critical for fat loss but not ideal for your training progress. You should do most of your training with at least enough energy to fuel you.

Takeaway: Pick a timeframe for your diet and stick to it.

Do not keep extending it; if you screw it up because you were undisciplined, give yourself a break and learn from the experience. If you care about your progress, you should not spend too much time in a calorie deficit.

You Might Not Get Your Dream Body

And that's okay.

Your job isn't to be as big, strong, or lean as anybody else. You're winning if you're doing better than you were a year ago.

It's way too easy to have a distorted view of what's achievable these days.

Virtually all fitness influencers are on PEDs, and when you hear Hollywood celebrities credit "chicken, broccoli, and rice" for their progress, what it means is that they were knee-deep in steroids.

You can't lift as a natural and end up looking like Chris Hemsworth or Dwayne Johnson.

Your "dream body" is also not just about your looks.

Remember, your body does more than exist in photos. It's the vehicle that you experience the human ride in. If it stresses you out and makes you miserable, it's not your dream body. I don't care how many abs are showing.

You may not get the physique you imagined you might when you started in fitness, and that's cool.

It's platitudinal as hell, but your job is to be the best version of yourself that you can be, not to look like anyone else.

Fitness should be fun and enrich your life, not stress you out because you're not -5% body fat like what's his nuts on TikTok.

To sum it up:

When I first got into fitness, I wish I'd known I could go into maintenance mode and train one day a week when life got crazy.

I wish I'd known how important it is warm up, use good technique, and listen to your body.

I wish I'd learned about food and followed a structured program earlier. I wish I hadn't spent so much time in a calorie deficit over the last few years and focused more on training.

And I wish that I had never compared myself to other people with different genetics.