Best Of

I read the thread "your mistakes made" from the Health and Weight Loss forum, and became inspired to draft up a similar thread focused upon mistakes I've made while weightlifting, with the hope others will learn from my mistakes made over 16 years of pumping iron and not fall victim to the same.

Note: I am not a certified trainer, I have no degrees in exercise science. I'm just a guy who fell in love with weightlifting sixteen years ago, and dove headlong in, rookie mistakes and all.

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Not learning proper technique

In lifting weights, technique is EVERYTHING. It ensures you are working the desired muscles in the desired way, while minimizing the chance of injury. When I first started I watched other lifters from afar and tried to emulate what I saw.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Research! Hire a personal trainer, ask an experienced lifter to teach me and monitor my form. In today's internet era, there are several excellent video producers online who demonstrate how to safely perform every exercise.

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Sacrificing technique for sake of weight

Several times early in my lifting career, I let my ego get the better of me, and allowed my technique to slip in order to lift a heavier weight. Maybe it meant moving through a smaller range of motion, or letting my elbows drift too far from my ribcage (and thus putting my shoulder into a bad angle). Sometimes I got away with it, but all too often my body would be in pain for days (or weeks) after. In the most extreme example, I rounded my back during a deadlift picking up an immense weight from the floor, only to strain a back muscle and have to endure immense pain radiating along my spine for weeks after, affecting all areas of my life…walking, sitting in a chair, sleeping. No lifting for me for almost two months!

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Maintain absolute strict adherence to technique. If I can't lift it the proper way, I am not ready to lift it at all.

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Ego lifting

Lifting too heavy can occur even when your form remains perfect. My legs have always been my strongest feature, even before lifting, and their strength rapidly increased in the weight room. So rapidly that I allowed my ego to get the better of me, and I kept increasing the weight more, and more, and more. This came to a head on the leg press one day, after I loaded up a ridiculous amount of weight, lowered the weight…and got stuck. No amount of grunting, straining or swearing was raising it back to the starting point. Fortunately for me, the leg press had a bottommost position the sled could not drop below, so I was forced to lower the sled to this stopping point, crawl out, and sheepishly remove enough weight until I could return the sled to the start.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: To paraphrase the movie Top Gun, "don't let my ego draft lifting checks my body can't cash!" Read more in this thread: Are you an ego lifter?

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Not using a spotter

Not every exercise has a built-in safety bar to catch the weight when our bodies cannot complete the lift. One time doing bench presses, I was doing heavy sets of five reps. I completed four sets of five, got in position for a fifth set, lowered the weight to my chest…and nothing. No movement, no budging, just me stuck with a weight across my chest making it hard to breathe…and no spotter to help. Fortunately for me, a couple guys at a nearby station quickly noticed my plight and came to my rescue.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Ever since that day, I have been paranoid about ensuring I had safety in place, whether bars to catch the weight or a designated spotter watching over me when the weight became heavy enough. I also have become far more honest with myself in determining if I was ready for the weight or not, including being willing to stop a set early before I got all my desired reps if there was any question whether I could still lift the weight.

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Increasing weight too quickly for joints to adapt

Sometimes you can be doing everything perfectly…good technique, spotter in place, attempting a weight you are sure you can handle…and it's still not a good idea. This happened to me early in my lifting days, as my bench press improved incredibly quickly in a mere blink of an eye…almost tripling the weight in under two months! I had heard about the noob effect, where beginning lifters can experience rapid improvement, and was milking it for all it was worth. What I did not realize was that the tendons in our joints improve over time with lifting, but at a much slower rate than the muscles. I learned this fact the hard way when I set an aggressive PR on the bench press but felt sharp pains in both shoulders, pain which only increased over the next few days. Finally went to the doctor for x-rays, which showed partial tears in the tendons of both shoulders. Narrowly avoided the need for surgery, but had to live with months of pain, therapy instead of lifting, and a phobia of lifting heavy which took years to overcome.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Lifting heavy is fine to do, if done intelligently. Slowly increase the weights used over long periods of time, give the body enough time to fully adapt to the new reality. I eventually did set a lifetime bench press PR a good twenty pounds heavier than that fateful day, injury free, but it took a long time to get there.

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"Gym peer pressure"

Many lifters (more guys than girls) take a look around the gym and feel the need to match what is being lifted by the people around them, to avoid looking like the weakest lifter there. It may be a conscious decision or not, but it often causes a lifter to go heavier than they should, or doing a lift on a day they are not scheduled, increasing the risk of injury over pride. I have fallen prey to this mistake a handful of times over the years, the most prominent case being where I had worked chest on Monday and allowed myself to get sucked into an impromptu bench press competition on Tuesday, depriving my body of the desired recovery time.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: This is a tricky one, because it can be good to challenge yourself in new ways. But before accepting any such challenge, a smart lifter should always ask themselves if participating in this activity will jeopardize their overall fitness plan.

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Using magazine workouts

When I began lifting, I purchased dozens of magazines as part of my "research", which included dozens of workouts being advertised. In my mind, if it was good enough for these guys, it must be good enough for me! These days magazines have been replaced by social media influencers or "train like this movie superhero" type of articles. But in almost all cases, the workouts being provided are not appropriate for the average lifter, whether because they are too advanced, or require medicinal help (read: steroids), or are specially designed to cater to the strengths/needs of a specific individual who has a certified trainer present to monitor and, if necessary, adjust along the way.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: I should have dug deeper to locate workouts designed for lifters of my experience level, until I had enough experience to design my own. Fortunately, new lifters here in MFP have multiple resources to help them find a suitable plan, whether a prebuilt one (Which lifting program is the best for you?) or designing their own (How to set up a weightlifting routine).

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Completely blowing up routine too frequently

Tied in with trying to use those magazine workouts was the fact that every couple weeks I would find a new workout which appealed to me. I would promptly drop the routine I was following in favor of this new one, which would "surely give me the results the first routine failed to deliver".

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Even the most perfect routine takes time to produce results. I should have committed to a routine for a minimum of 6-8 weeks before deciding whether it was working for me or not, and subsequently making changes.

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Not giving body parts rest days

Like many new lifters, I became enamored with the "bro split", dedicating a separate workout for each body part: chest one day, legs another, etc. While this can be a viable strategy, the mistake I made was in my scheduling: chest-shoulders-back-arms-legs. Using this schedule, my shoulders never got a break to recover, since virtually all chest and back exercises involve moving the arms at the shoulder joint, with a full shoulder workout sandwiched between. After a couple months, my shoulders began aching non-stop.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Muscles worked during lifting experience micro-tears in the muscles which require time to heal, but my split required the shoulder muscles to work again (and again) before they had recovered. A good rule of thumb is to give a body part 48 hours after a workout before hitting it again. This can still be accomplished using a bro split, if I had reordered the days to something like chest-legs-shoulders-arms-back.

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Not letting injury heal adequately before resuming

This is probably my most frequent mistake made over the past sixteen years: a joint or muscle is sore after a workout, and I continue to exercise without regard for how it felt. Or even worse, I get injured (whether in the weight room or at home), take some time off from lifting until I start to feel better, then go right back to lifting, only to aggravate the injury and have to start the recovery process all over.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Listen to my body. If I am in pain, there is probably a reason for it. Some degree of soreness is normal when lifting, but pain is not; if the pain limits your range of motion, or does not go away during periods of sitting/lying idle, you need to allow the body to heal before tearing it down further with still more lifting. For soreness this may mean skipping a workout, or taking a de-load week where you lift but with lighter weights or fewer reps. (My degree of lifting soreness virtually disappeared when I implemented a mandatory weights-free week every three months.) In the case of injury which denies lifting, a good rule of thumb is when you feel good enough to resume normal activity, wait one more week, then ease back into lifting gradually by using lighter weights.

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Assuming reps/weight are the only two variables to change

When I began lifting, all the magazine workouts I read implied if I wanted to make my workouts harder, all I had to do was increase the weight used, the number of reps, or both. But there's a hard limit to how many times you can increase these before the human body cannot do any more.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: There are dozens of changes an intelligent lifter can make to their lifting routine to stave off boredom or increase intensity to keep their bodies improving. Between my never-ending reading, experimentation and talking to other lifters, I eventually learned these secrets. I compiled them into a single thread here on MFP: 30+ Tips to Increase Strength Training Intensity.

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Improper warmup

When you're young, you can jump straight from sitting still to running a 5k or lying down on a bench press station. This was me: I would wake up in the morning, lace up my shoes, and within 5 minutes I was pumping iron.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: As the weights used get heavier, or as the body gets older, the need for a proper warmup increases. This includes some light cardio movement to get the blood flowing (can be as simple as walking), along with using warmup sets of the first exercise of the day at a lighter weight to get the body primed for the upcoming work. Not only does a proper warmup lessen the chance of injury and reduce soreness after, but a body which is properly warmed up can actually perform better, running faster or lifting heavier.

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Not treating warmup sets with respect

When I learned about the need and usefulness of warmup sets, I started to include them in my day…technically. I say technically because I viewed them as necessary evil obstacles standing between me and lifting heavy. As a result, I tried to blast through them as quickly as possible, akin to swallowing your veggies without chewing to get them over and done and move on to the promised ice cream. My arms or legs often veered out of proper technique alignment, I allowed zero time between warmup sets but immediately grabbed/loaded the next weight in sequence.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: The purpose of a warmup set is to prepare you for the more intense work to follow. Part of this is physical, ensuring proper blood flow in the muscles to be used, but part of this is also mental, refreshing the mind-muscle connection. Proper warmup sets need to be treated with all the respect given to a maximum effort set, using strict technique, letting your mind focus on the feel of the motion, how the body and weight work together. This point was driven home to me when I saw a very strong man, capable of benching three times his bodyweight, get injured during a warmup set with half that much loaded, all because he was talking and not paying attention, allowed his arm to get out of position, then tried to wrench the weight back in line at the last second. I don't want to be that guy.

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Lack of awareness of nearby lifters

Unless you are lifting in your own home, odds are you are not the only person lifting weights at the same time. When multiple lifters are in close proximity, it becomes critical to be aware of the people around you. I lost count of the number of close calls I have had, dodging a moving weight somebody else was lifting as I tried to move past them, or having to adjust my own movement when somebody else got too close. And as stated before, I will forever remain thankful for those two souls who were aware I needed help when I got pinned under the bench press bar.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: Common courtesy in the weight room can prevent so many problems and dangers. If I see somebody lifting I will maintain a minimum five-feet distance from them, and if necessary will stand still and wait until they put the weight down and the path is safe again. Before I begin my own lifts, I will look around to ensure the coast is clear, if needed waiting to start my lift.

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Workouts lasted too long

As my knowledge of lifting grew, I wanted to include every new lift as part of my routine. Before I knew it, my average lifting session was pushing two hours long! Beyond the impact on my daily schedule, a workout this long greatly increases fatigue and risk of injury, without necessarily improving the effectiveness of the workout.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE: I should have done what I do today: limit a lifting day to one hour long. I'm not a professional athlete, I'm not getting paid to exercise nor am I preparing for a competition or movie role, there's no reason for me to take longer. If I want to include more lifts, to hit a muscle from a different angle or just because I enjoy it, I now schedule it in a different workout. (Hitting a muscle group twice per week allows me to use different exercises each day, rather than trying to cram them all into one day.)

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The following mistakes were made not by me, but by a friend or relative with whom I've worked out:

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Not recording weight used one workout to the next

When my son got old enough to be allowed in the weights area of my gym, I became his coach, trying to pass on what I'd learned. One lesson which never occurred to me to share was the need to record not only exercise selection and sets/reps, but also what weights were used. I'm a numbers geek, so recording is natural to me; my son is not, so he never thought to record them. Consequently, a large chunk of each workout was spent trying to remember how heavy he lifted last time. Not only does this waste time, but it impedes progress if you end up lifting the same (or lighter) instead of moving up as appropriate.

WHAT HE SHOULD HAVE DONE: Keep a journal. Modern cell phones have a variety of apps available with access to even more websites, but I prefer a simple spiral notebook and pencil. Not only does this prepare me for my next workout, but it serves as a historical record of past workouts. On days I have a workout where I feel weak, like I wasted my time, I can look back to see how far I have come.

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Psyching yourself out of trying

A gym buddy I used to work out with (he's since moved) was a very strong man who did not believe he was a strong man. I saw for myself how much he lifted for sets of ten reps, and figured he surely could lift heavier for a single rep. But he was absolutely convinced he could not bench press 225 even once. Together we tried several times, and each time he failed. Yet I knew he could do it, and online calculators agreed he should be able to based upon his lighter lifts. So I hatched a plan, where the next time we tried I would load the bar, not with a pair of 45# plates per side as usual, but a series of 5# and 10# plates (and a single 25# for variety) in a random order. He got lost trying to add it all up, but trusted my word that it was still below his max, so he shrugged, lay down and banged out three solid reps…at 245#.

WHAT HE SHOULD HAVE DONE: You don't have to test yourself against your absolute max limits. But deciding you can't before you even try is a self-defeating method to prove yourself right. Be honest with yourself about your own abilities. This applies to not trying to bite off more than you can chew, but also applies to not limiting yourself just because somebody else said you can't, or because you couldn't before. If you work hard enough with an intelligent plan, you will improve, often to the surprise of others, sometimes surprising even yourself. Never stop trying.