If You’re feeling sore after your gym session, yet not progressing as much as expected, it’s easy enough to become frustrated in the process. For many, the gains are so gradual that they often simply stop exercising outright.
Spending most of your time in the gym on bicep exercises is not the most efficient way.
1.You’re focusing on the wrong exercise?
Most often with the beginner looking to bulk (or men using their bodies as vanity projects), if you’re making a start for bicep-curls as your first exercise, you’re committing a cardinal sin. Isolation exercises, those working just one part of your body, are best done at the end of a session to force the muscle into hypertrophy, a state of exhaustion which encourages it to grow.
Starting with compound lifts like squats and back-rows. The body needs to recruit lots of muscles for these exercises, you’ll shift more weight if you’re fresh: you can then work back from squats to bent-over rows then later to smaller muscles. This will still exhaust your arms, but also build total-body strength.
The science checks out, with the National Strength and Conditioning Association finding bench press performance decreases by a massive 75% if you start with flies. It’s the difference between building true strength and beach muscle.
2.You’re Rushing Your Reps
Most gym-goers can empathise: you’ve got 8 or 12 reps written down, and you just want to finish them. The form goes, the speed increases and you’re pausing during every rep, but all that matters to you is swinging that weight up there.
While the commitment is admirable, the speed in which you fire those muscle fibres should all depend on your goals. If you want the muscle to grow, you want around 45-60 seconds of time under tension each set. This allows the muscle to contract enough, pumping them more efficiently than quick-fast reps.
Related: I’m exercising but still not losing weight
3.You’re stuck to your phone
We only spend between two and five hours a week in the gym, so grab and ditch the device and leave it in the lockers, twiddling thumbs only aggravates other lifters and distracts you from your workout. Texting too much during a gym session reduces your heart rate, as rest periods tend to end up being longer than intended. Try keep your phone habit out of it.
4.You’re not eating right before your workout
Good nutrition is about so much more than post-workout chicken and salad. While many people train before breakfast to maximise their bodies’ fat-burning potential, it turns out exercise ‘fasted’ is just another myth.
Research by the journal Sports Medicine, working out while fasted and topping up after leads to greater fat storage during the rest of the day, making the arduous task of fasted cardio worthless.
A whole-grain breakfast like porridge oats an hour or two before a session is full of slow-release, low-GI carbs to fuel that workout instead of your waistline. You can’t run a car on fumes. Why treat your body differently? If you’re not a breakfast person and you can only train in the mornings then look at a banana as a pre-workout option.
5.You’re not tracking your progress
Walking into the gym and ‘winging’ it, without any aim and structure creates chaos with your exercise plan. Starting a with a goal and plan creates a foundation which needs to be built before you start on the house itself.
When you go into the gym with a plan and the intention to be stronger than you were at your last visit or each week, you can be sure that your efforts will be rewarded with progression over-time, even in the short-term. Most plans will last between four and twelve weeks; our 4 Week KickStart For Busy Men for example, is a complete 4-week plan to overhaul your body.
Even just stepping on a scale or taking photos of your physique in the mirror is essential. Just by managing your progress visually and on the scales can manage and measure your progress, making it easier to be consistent and ultimately reap better results for longer.