As a trainer, I have seen the ups and downs of weight loss. Everyone has plateaus, even I go through them. When we do not see the results that we want, it is easy to just give up. I tell people all the time, “If it was easy, then it wouldn’t be as satisfying”. Understand what problems you are having with your program improves programming, maximizing efficiency.
1. Not Committed
You have to be 100% committed. Building muscle is hard work and it will take consistency to build quality muscle mass or lose fat mass. You have to show up to your workout and follow your program in order to experience the benefits from weight training. Doing a couple of workouts here and there won’t get the job done. Making improvements is a slow process and could take months to see results. Be on top of your game and your efforts will eventually pay off.
2. Nutrition
You have to feed your body the right amount of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat in order for it to grow (Jolly 2014). All of these nutrients must be included in your diet if you ever want to build muscle. Poor nutritional habits can be a huge problem for training programs. A successful weight training program consists of: showing up to the gym improving with each workout, followed by a healthy, common sense diet. It is not easy to give up bad eating habits. I can tell you from personal experience, if you cut out the junk food it will help you in the long run. The goal here is finding a nutritional program that will kick start your efforts. Once you find this nutritional key, good things can happen.
3. Poor Technique
If you don’t work the muscle, the muscle will not grow. If you over train the muscle your muscle won’t grow. The goal is to place enough stress on the muscle that gives it a reason to grow. Proper weight training is the catalyst to muscle growth (Jolly 2014). Do it right, and you’ll build muscle, do it wrong and you’ll be flirting with poor results and injuries. If your goal is to build muscle, you need to use exercises that stimulate the most muscle fibers as possible. Your main goal when lifting weights is perfect form.
4. Rest, Rest, Rest
No matter how hard you train or how well you eat, if you don’t get the proper rest, your workouts are going to suffer. When you sleep, that’s when most growth and repair occurs. Without adequate sleep the body can become weakened. It is very important that you get the correct amount of sleep and rest because muscle growth happens while you are resting, not while you are training. An optimal recovery cycle is just as important as your weight training program. You need to create a program that gives your body the best rest and recovery time. What’s the use of a weight training program if you train the same muscle group every single day? For you a beef cakes out there, how productive is it to build muscle if you do the bench press 5 days a week? If you want results, you need to rest, and get plenty of sleep.
Weight training tears your body down and leaves it in a weakened state. By tearing your body down on a consistent basis with no rest, you will ultimately start to break apart. This will lead you down the path to injuries and poor results.
5.Failure to Challenge Yourself
When I work with athletes or everyday people, I always ask them “how can you make yourself better today”. Building muscle is all about making small improvements, day after day, week after week, month after month. Being successful with your weight training program depends on how well you improve for one workout to the next. If you truly want to reach your goals, it is crucial to make constant improvements in your workouts. No improvement equals no results. By improving you will ensure success with your weight training program. If you don’t make improvements or stop making improvements something maybe wrong with your program, rest or nutrition.
COR provides everyone with a different training program every month to help with different goals. If you’re trying to lose weight, gain muscle and build endurance COR can help.
Reference:
1. Jolly K, Chambers R. Improving outcomes for patients with obesity.Practitioner. 2014 Jul-Aug;258(1773):29-31
Written by Chris Barber, CPT