As a family medicine doctor I see patients for fitness-related care all the time. I decided to put together a list of some of the most ...

worst-fitness-mistakes-my-patients-make

Worst Fitness Mistakes My Patients Make

- As a board certified
family medicine doctor with a special interest
in sports medicine, I've seen and treated countless
musculoskeletal injuries. I've talked and guided patients through beginning workout regimens, and I've created a list of Top 10 Beginner Mistakes
in Fitness Routines But for the people who
are trying to lose weight, they often fall into the
trap of thinking that exercise is the end all
and be all of weight loss. Unfortunately, it's not. 70 to 80% of the weight loss that occurs happens as a result of the
foods that you take in. It's ideal to think about your weight loss
journey in a holistic view, meaning that you should be thinking about recovery, sleep,
nutrition, and exercise. You can't just focus on one pillar and expect the pyramid to grow. The biggest fitness myth of
all time is spot reduction. It doesn't exist. It's been
tested over and over again. You have to think about your nutrition, your exercise as a whole in order to decrease your
whole body fat content in order to see more muscular definition. This actually has been tested
in some really unique ways. Looking at tennis players,
their dominant forearm muscles in comparison to their
non-dominant hand, guess what? A lot more muscle in their dominant hand, a lot less muscle in
their less dominant hand, fat content, exactly the same. It's incredible what I see
when I walk into a gym, the exercises that some people are doing and expecting to get results from. The simpler your workouts are, the more likely you are
to see long-term success. I'm talking about mixing in some cardio with some good old fashioned compound weightlifting movements. That's all you really need. And just cause I'm saying keep it simple, it doesn't mean that you can't have variety to your workouts. I love variety in my workouts. I'll rock climb, box, play
basketball, soccer, weightlift. There's so many ways to get
your physical activity in. As long as you're doing that, your routine really doesn't matter for beginner and just to
stay healthy, of course. You do not need to go on a shopping spree in the supplement store. You need to become consistent
first with your work workouts. You need to make sure
that you're following the right protocols, that
you're eating a healthy diet, that you're recovering correctly. There's such a small percentage
of change that occurs as a result of adding
supplements to your workouts. And it's probably not worth even thinking about it so early on. And a very specific warning
I'd like to throw out there is when it comes to pre-workouts. These are usually loaded with caffeine and too many people take
them close to bedtime which destroys your sleep,
destroys your recovery. So your pre-workout is destroying
your post-workout gains. And if you do need a caffeine boost for a workout in the morning, just have a cup of coffee or an espresso. You don't have to go for a pre-workout. This one, I see happen so often in gyms. When you're walking on a treadmill, running on a treadmill,
using an elliptical, do not hold the static grips. Because essentially, what you're doing is decreasing the
intensity of the workout, meaning lower calories burn. You're decreasing the strain on your core making your core weaker,
hurting your posture. And if you're creating an
incline for your treadmill, by holding on, you're actually
decreasing that incline. So many benefits to letting your grip loosen up on those machines. When it comes to exercise,
goals are important and tracking can be interesting and fun but obsessing over these numbers
is truly counterproductive. 10,000 steps a day. 3,500 calories to be
burned to lose a pound. These numbers are really useful for statistic research purposes. They're not really meant for you to follow as a super strict set of guidelines. If you show up consistently,
that's gonna mean so much more than the intensity of
how hard you work out, how much weight you're actually lifting, how many calories you're burning. So forget about the numbers,
especially while starting off. Focus on showing up, having a good time, Too many times, I've
had patients and friends come up to me and tell me that they had an amazing first workout with a personal trainer because they went all out and
actually ended up getting sick that they worked out so hard. To me, this is a failure
on the trainers part. Never for your first workout
should you go all out. That creates increased risk for injury. You're less likely to feel
motivated going back to the gym. And even for me, when I've done this, I've gotten so sore
that I wasn't even able to go to the gym that same week. The whole idea of building
muscle, getting in shape is about creating some inflammation, creating that acute
stress on your muscles, on your joints, on your ligaments and allowing them to heal. You don't want to fall into this bucket where you start glorifying pain or competing so hard that
you're lifting too much weight and you're sacrificing proper form and increasing risk of injury. I see this all the time with bench press. I see guys go into the gym,
they take the bench press and they start bouncing
it off their chest. They're lifting one side
way more than the other. I've literally seen pecs get
torn, rotator cuffs get torn in front of me in these exact situations. How many times has someone told you that you should be stretching? Your mom, your dad, grandma, the PE teacher, your physical therapist. Too often, I see people
doing ballistic stretching. What's essentially happening
is you're triggering the stretch reflex within the muscle that while you're
lengthening it and bouncing, it's trying to contract and
shorten and protect itself, therefore creating a muscle spasm. I tell everyone that they
need to do a good warmup before doing any kind of workout but it's not mandatory that you stretch. You need to get your blood moving, the circulation moving,
your heart rate up. That's absolutely true, but stretching can and should be reserved for the end of your workout. Or even used as a workout in general. I can not begin to tell you
what you're missing out on if you do not strength train. You actually improve your metabolic rate, meaning that you're burning
more calories throughout the day 'cause you have more
muscle mass to support. You're actually burning
more calories as well because you're repairing the damage that you've caused to your
muscles while working out. Remember, this is acute short-term damage that is actually beneficial
for your muscles. At the same time, you're
strengthening your bones, you're improving your hormonal profiles. It's just like win, win, win, win, win. By only focusing on cardio,
you're just really missing out on all of these benefits
for no real reason. In fact, newer research suggests that ultra performing running athletes get a significant benefit
from weightlifting, not only in terms of performance
but also injury reduction. There is a caveat here, however. You should be very careful
of mixing these two workouts on the same day or even back to back. For example, if you were to
do squats one day very heavy and the next day you want
to play pickup basketball like I do that quite often. If I'm really sore, I actually have a much
higher rate of injury because the way that your body reacts if it falls on an uneven ankle or it takes a weird step is by
firing antagonistic muscles, opposite muscle groups in
order to protect itself. And if your muscles are sore, fatigued after a heavy lift session, it's more likely that you
could injure yourself. One of the most overlooked aspects of people's exercise routines is recovery. I'm talking adequate rest,
protein intake, sleep, hydration. All of this is crucial to
allow your muscles to recover, to grow, to decrease injury and even giving your brain some time off. It's actually been proven that when you're over-training
and under sleeping, your stress hormones can peak
and stay chronically high, which ends up hampering your progress and increasing risk of injury. Click here for my Five
Healthy Meal Prep video ideas. I made all of them myself. They're not special
but they are delicious. Huge thank you to DeltaTrainer
for sponsoring this video. I'm truly, truly a fan. Gonna continue using their service and I recommend you do as well. Link and offer are down below. As always, stay happy and healthy.

Dr.

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