10 Mistakes Women Make in the Gym

eric_sg61

Some will like this, some won't. It is what it is

http://www.t-nation.com/training/10-mistakes-women-make-in-the-gym

fitness_faeiry

Great article. No. 1 is the one I’m still trying to get over. I always fear this. Especially with a boyfriend who makes remarks like “Stop trying to be the hulk” Whereas every Male Personal Trainer I have spoken to recently has encouraged me to go into the free weights section and lift weights.

dt3312

Great article. Thanks. I notice at the 3 gyms I go to, most of the women spend the great majority if not all of their work out on the cardio machines.
I am a female senior citizen.

vegasslacker

Great article! It's spot on

ChasingMyBliss

Thanks for posting the article. I found it amusing and informative. I plan to poke around the TNation site and see if I can find some other helpful info.

12by311

Some will like this, some won't. It is what it is

http://www.t-nation.com/training/10-mistakes-women-make-in-the-gym

Love it. :drinker:

12by311

Great article. No. 1 is the one I’m still trying to get over. I always fear this. Especially with a boyfriend who makes remarks like “Stop trying to be the hulk” Whereas every Male Personal Trainer I have spoken to recently has encouraged me to go into the free weights section and lift weights.

Does your boyfriend work out? Does he know how hard it is to build muscle....especially for women?

k_nicole87

LOVE!

MissHolidayGolightly

The "absession" one is so true as is "tricep-session". It's like men and the "armsession" doing a million different versions of the bicep curl.

I also often see a lot of women doing these overly-complicated workouts when they do use freeweights instead of the more basic compound lifts. The article touched on this with the BOSU ball part. I saw one the other day get into position to do a lunge with the hind leg elevated but instead of doing a lunge, she twisted her arm to touch the outside of her foreward foot several times. I was on edge waiting for her to faceplant and/or pop her knee out of joint.

annie61702

Really interesting! Thanks for posting!

DymonNdaRgh40

Interesting read and a lot of truth!

slk_5555

At my last gym, one of the trainers there developed me a workout program with all sorts of weight & resistance exercises (all of which I was familiar with), but he wanted me to do them whilst balancing on a swiss ball. My balance is dreadful, so after 1 failed attempt, I assumed he was taking the p**s & ignored him. Its not easy feeling confident in the gym, whilst rolling around the place like a drunk woman:-)

He was also keen to have me perform exercises with my legs strapped behind me in some kind of harness. Why do some instructors feel the need to complicate women's exercises & make us look like complete morons. I felt like he was giving me the lead role in his freak show.

fitness_faeiry

Great article. No. 1 is the one I’m still trying to get over. I always fear this. Especially with a boyfriend who makes remarks like “Stop trying to be the hulk” Whereas every Male Personal Trainer I have spoken to recently has encouraged me to go into the free weights section and lift weights.

Does your boyfriend work out? Does he know how hard it is to build muscle....especially for women?

He does but not as much as me. Maybe I make him feel guilty.I think he does realise how hard it is, he's just being a d***

Mischievous_Rascal

Read that this morning.

auddii

Hm, the only one I'm not sure of is that you have to change up your routine every 4-6 weeks. Seems like a relatively short time to work with a program, especially if you're making good gains. I did strong lifts for a little over a year, and I was definitely mentally burned out on it at that point, but I did have some really great progress (as long as I pushed myself; when my brain got tired of the lifts, I found I easily stagnated).

MissHolidayGolightly

At my last gym, one of the trainers there developed me a workout program with all sorts of weight & resistance exercises (all of which I was familiar with), but he wanted me to do them whilst balancing on a swiss ball. My balance is dreadful, so after 1 failed attempt, I assumed he was taking the p**s & ignored him. Its not easy feeling confident in the gym, whilst rolling around the place like a drunk woman:-)

He was also keen to have me perform exercises with my legs strapped behind me in some kind of harness. Why do some instructors feel the need to complicate women's exercises & make us look like complete morons. I felt like he was giving me the lead role in his freak show.

Exactly what I'm talking about! I see no reason for doing these crazy movements that are so difficult and embarassing. Just lift normally.

Serah87

:drinker:

JoRocka

At my last gym, one of the trainers there developed me a workout program with all sorts of weight & resistance exercises (all of which I was familiar with), but he wanted me to do them whilst balancing on a swiss ball. My balance is dreadful, so after 1 failed attempt, I assumed he was taking the p**s & ignored him. Its not easy feeling confident in the gym, whilst rolling around the place like a drunk woman:-)

He was also keen to have me perform exercises with my legs strapped behind me in some kind of harness. Why do some instructors feel the need to complicate women's exercises & make us look like complete morons. I felt like he was giving me the lead role in his freak show.

TRX??

men do that as well- it's a great work out.

while I agree sometimes doing weird things just for the sake of doing a weird thing is over rated- but I can promise you- you won't keep paying someone to do a 5 x 5 lifting program- you will quickly figure out you can do it on your own- and he'll lose revenue.

Sometimes it isn't about you as much as you think.

And sometimes you need to do things that make you feel uncomfortable- I know I never trained anyone without having run the program myself... and let me tell you- if I wasn't willing to do it- I wasn't going to ask a client to do it. But I am willing to do the some weird things- it's okay- it's nice to do a different exercise to challenge your balance and your brain. That's good for you.

MireyGal76

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

spicegeek

The "absession" one is so true as is "tricep-session".

so true !

slk_5555

At my last gym, one of the trainers there developed me a workout program with all sorts of weight & resistance exercises (all of which I was familiar with), but he wanted me to do them whilst balancing on a swiss ball. My balance is dreadful, so after 1 failed attempt, I assumed he was taking the p**s & ignored him. Its not easy feeling confident in the gym, whilst rolling around the place like a drunk woman:-)

He was also keen to have me perform exercises with my legs strapped behind me in some kind of harness. Why do some instructors feel the need to complicate women's exercises & make us look like complete morons. I felt like he was giving me the lead role in his freak show.

TRX??

men do that as well- it's a great work out.

while I agree sometimes doing weird things just for the sake of doing a weird thing is over rated- but I can promise you- you won't keep paying someone to do a 5 x 5 lifting program- you will quickly figure out you can do it on your own- and he'll lose revenue.

Sometimes it isn't about you as much as you think.

And sometimes you need to do things that make you feel uncomfortable- I know I never trained anyone without having run the program myself... and let me tell you- if I wasn't willing to do it- I wasn't going to ask a client to do it. But I am willing to do the some weird things- it's okay- it's nice to do a different exercise to challenge your balance and your brain. That's good for you.

Yes, TRX...sorry I couldn't remember the name. It was over in the 'womens weight section' so I never saw any of the guys on it. I certainly wasn't paying the guy - it was part of the gym membership that they give you a health assessment & write you a program.

Previous to that I was doing resistance & free weights - increasing the weights as I gained strength. I generally found the simple exercises were most effective (squats, lunges, planks etc) - I really enjoyed it & kept pushing myself. It just felt like at this new gym, he was trying to use every piece of equipment he could think of. I am willing to give most things a try, but I just didn't feel any extra benefit from some of the combos he had me doing. I felt I was focusing so much on balance and less on the actual exercise.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. He wanted me to do press ups with my legs on a swiss ball - I couldn't even balance let alone do a single press up - its was comical. Also dumbbell flyes on a swiss ball - rather than a flat bench - I managed that ok, but not sure i gained anything with the modified version. Do you think these exercises should have done more for me?

whitebalance

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

Hmmm. When I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia as a kid, they told me to handle sugar crashes with something like a turkey sandwich and orange juice or lemonade. The sugary drink was to provide a quick sugar hit to the blood stream, while the turkey was to provide protein to stabilize it. So yeah, maybe.

JoRocka

Yes, TRX...sorry I couldn't remember the name. It was over in the 'womens weight section' so I never saw any of the guys on it. I certainly wasn't paying the guy - it was part of the gym membership that they give you a health assessment & write you a program.

Previous to that I was doing resistance & free weights - increasing the weights as I gained strength. I generally found the simple exercises were most effective (squats, lunges, planks etc) - I really enjoyed it & kept pushing myself. It just felt like at this new gym, he was trying to use every piece of equipment he could think of. I am willing to give most things a try, but I just didn't feel any extra benefit from some of the combos he had me doing. I felt I was focusing so much on balance and less on the actual exercise.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. He wanted me to do press ups with my legs on a swiss ball - I couldn't even balance let alone do a single press up - its was comical. Also dumbbell flyes on a swiss ball - rather than a flat bench - I managed that ok, but not sure i gained anything with the modified version. Do you think these exercises should have done more for me?

izokay.

TRX is a great tool. lots of really hard core people use them- they aren't a joke- I'm considering purchasing gymnastic rings to use as a TRX substitute. and it makes me cranky when they put *kitten* in a women's only section- there is nothing about any piece of equipment or exercise that requires a penis. or a vagina.

There is no such thing as women's workouts
Or men's workouts- so there for the equipment in the training area's should be the same.

And doing anything on the stability ball will challenge your core more- I do all sorts of push ups on there- it's a great core activator- if you can't hold a plank on the ball- then maybe you should practice. It's a great way to up the plank from the ground.

Any time you pull your feet up for push ups/planks or anything like that- you add to the difficulty and increase the challenge.
Elevate AND make it unstable- it's great for using stabilizer muscles and engaging the trunk.

And ultimately if you were doing your free session- half the point of that is to show that the trainer is can give you effective workouts and half of it is to say - hey maybe you need some help with this.. part of it's marketing- not denying that.

But just because you didn't like it and couldn't do it doesn't mean it is a bad exercise. Besides- balance is a skill- you don't practice it-you lose it- you do practice it- and you can get better. (and that's why 80 year old people fall a lot and break things and why it's good to keep training it)

ShibaEars

Bumping so I can read later - site is blocked :grumble:

skeo

I knew I wasn't crazy :embarassed: I thought the same about the oblique/side bend things. I see plenty of men and women doing them while holding on to 25,35,45lb plates and doing at least 15-20 reps each side. For guys, OK I see if they want a stalkier mid-section, but for women I'm sure the aim is for an hour glass waist. I skipped doing those after realizing, we dumbbell curl for bigger biceps, so why wouldn't the same apply for our midsections?

Now, I just do different variations of planks :bigsmile:

brower47

I thought #10 was kind of interesting...

10. Juicing
No, not juicing as in steroids. I'm talking about the plastic cups of pulverized, Osterized, barely palatable concoctions of kale, seaweed, wheat grass, and whatever other obscure vegetables or fruits the juicer is able to buy at a discount that so many women have permanently affixed to their hands when they walk into the gym.

I know it seems contrary, even heretical, to suggest you stop or limit your consumption of these drinks, but hear me out. Vegetables and fruits contain simple sugars and more complex, harder-to-digest carbs. No problem there. However, when you blend up fruits and vegetables, you're breaking down all those normally hard-to-digest carbs into infinitesimally small pieces. Drink that stuff down and you're virtually bypassing much of the digestive process. All those sugars are presented to your bloodstream like flowers to your momma on Mother's Day. They get absorbed super quick, and your pancreas releases a surge of insulin to counteract all that sugar. It's virtually the same effect you'd get from shot-gunning a 24-ounce 7-11 Slurpie.

Insulin shuttles off some of the sugar to muscle cells and the rest are stored (in the liver or as body fat), but then insulin levels dip below baseline and you get hungry again pretty fast. If you give in to that hunger, you're ingesting more calories than you might normally have and extra, unnecessary calories get stored as fat. What's more, if you do the juice thing often enough, you may actually develop some insulin resistance, which is the first step down the path to Type II diabetes.

There's one more thing to consider, too. You probably wouldn't be able to eat all the fruits and vegetables that are in a typical fruit or vegetable smoothie if they were sitting there on a plate. They'd take up too much room in your stomach and even all that Spandex in your Lululemon pants wouldn't be able to flatten out your belly. However, pulverize all those fruits and vegetables down into primordial ooze and they, and all the calories they contain, fit in your stomach just fine. Juicing allows you to eat more than you normally could, which is never really good if you're trying to keep tabs on your body fat levels.

I'm not suggesting that you give up all juices. Drink them in moderation, eat them in their un-pulverized, natural state, or simply employ one simple trick: just have the juice junction, jamboree, or whatever add a scoop of protein (whey or casein) to your drink. The protein will ameliorate the big insulin surge, not to mention giving your muscles some extra building blocks.

I wonder how accurate this is... it sounds accurate, and totally worth further investigation.


oh... and... seeing as I apparently lives in the Slurpee capital of the universe... it's spelled SLURPEE :laugh:

I wondered the same thing about #10. I would have to do more research before accepting it at face value. I liked the rest of it.

AsaThorsWoman

"Guys are probably the biggest tools in the gym because they're driven by ego instead of logic, but women make their own share of mistakes that are unique to their sex. Women are torn between what they read in Shape or on some insane aerobic queen's blog, their unqualified husband's or boyfriend's pontifications on diet and exercise, or society's conflicting and confounding expectations of what a woman should look like. It's no wonder women can't decide between lifting weights, becoming a Crossfit wind-up toy, doing aerobics until they're thin as a waif from Oliver Twist, or practicing so much yoga that their seven angry and overworked chakras pack up their things and go to Cabo for a weekend of volleyball, sun, and suds."

Bwa ha ha ha, I can so relate to that.

resistance_freak

Bump to come back later when I have more time to comment. But I will say that I almost shut down completely as soon as the article referenced "Skinny Fat". This idiotic phrase is one of my pet peeves! And I find it very difficult to take anyone seriously who uses it.

AsaThorsWoman

Thanks for sharing.

debbie14892

Awesome article...thanks for sharing!

Modern_Warrior

There are a number of items in there for both men and women. Thanks for helping to get the word out!

Edited for typos.