11 Deadly Workout Sins

Not seeing results with your workout? Maybe you're committing one of these workout sins

Sin #1: Too much, too soon

If women want their arms smaller, their abs smaller, or their thighs smaller, they typically will work those muscles every time they work out. However, you need 72 hours to go through one metabolic cycle, which promotes healing of the tissue that was torn during your workouts. If you’re training the same muscle group every day, your body won’t have a chance to recover, slowing progress and leaving yourself open to injury.

Sin #2: Going cold

Going into your workout cold is a big no-no. Warming up lubricates the joints by thinning the synovial fluid that buffers them, which will give you a better range of motion and put you at a lower risk of injury. Warming up with 5 to 10 minutes of a cardiovascular exercise at 50 to 60 percent of your maximal heart rate. If you’re weight training, you can warm up by doing two lighter sets of each exercise before piling on the weights.

Sin #3: Not getting enough Z’s

When you sleep your body releases growth hormones and repairs the trauma done to the muscles during the day. If you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t go into the repair and renew cycle that your body hits at its third to fourth hour of slumber. Everyone’s a little different, but you should log in a minimum of six hours of snooze time per night. Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day.

Sin #4: Eating like a bird

Many women starve themselves and over exercise. But if you don’t eat enough during the day, your body goes into starvation mode and slows down its metabolism, making it even harder to lose weight.

When you exercise intensely, your metabolism revs up —and this is when the greatest fat-burning effect takes place. But if you don’t get enough calories for fuel, you can’t exercise intensely enough to make this happen.

Sin #5: Skipping the stretch

As we get older our muscles lose some of their elasticity, and as a result we lose flexibility. That can cause postural problems and cause us to be more prone to straining a muscle. Stretching following your workout, while the muscles are warm, you’ll improve your flexibility. For best results, hold each stretch for at least 10-20 seconds.

Sin #6: Ignoring the negative

If you focus on lifting a weight—the concentric or positive component—and then just let it fall back into place, your sin is in neglecting the negative. The process of letting the weight back down is called the eccentric component, and it’s at least as important as the concentric component for stimulating muscular development. Ignore it and you’ll only get half the results. In addition, there’s a much greater probability of injury when you let gravity pull the weight down—this places the joints at a high potential for pulls and tears. I recommend lowering the weight twice as slowly as you lift it.

Sin #7: Having an "all or nothing" mentality

Your New Year’s resolution is to start an exercise program, and you begin with a bang, working out like a demon every day. But then life happens—you catch a cold, or things get crazy at work, or you go on a vacation—and you miss a few days or weeks at the gym.

That’s not the sin. The sin is having the attitude that because you let your exercise regimen slide, you may as well give it up for good. After all, exercise is only good if you keep at it, and if you skip it you’ve lost everything you’ve worked for, right?

That’s really not the case. Something is better than nothing, and even if you only exercise once a week for a month because you’re on vacation, that’s still four days of exercising. Keep in mind that this is a long term goal.

Sin #8: Getting stuck in a rut

When it comes to exercise, variety is the spice of life. When you do you’re training many of the fibers of the shoulder muscles, but not all of them. To work out all of the fibers in a muscle, you need to use different movements—using different angles or even just changing your grip on the weights.

This goes for cardio as well as weight training. When you use the same exercise over and over, it’s a repetitive motion task, just like typing at your keyboard, which can produce carpal tunnel syndrome. So falling into a cardio rut ups your chances for injury.

Mixing up your workout also combats boredom! I like to change my routine from session to session. But I suggests giving your routine an overhaul at least once every six weeks.

Sin #9: Swinging weights

The ABCs of lifting weights are "Always Be in Control." When you use momentum to swing the weights around, you’re not targeting the muscle that the exercise is meant for. Worse, you’re increasing your chances of injury. To squash this sin, make sure your lower back/glutes and abs (core) are tight and the only thing that’s moving is the joint (or joints) related to the exercise you’re doing.

Sin #10: Being too lightweight

You may think that if you lift too much weight, you’ll bulk up to Schwarzeneggerian proportions. But it just isn’t so. Women don’t have anywhere near enough testosterone to produce significant muscle growth. If you want to get a good workout, you need to tax your muscles. You should not be at the end of a set able to do five more reps. If you’re using the right amount of weight, you should be able to perform at least eight reps, but not more than 15, before your muscles are fatigued. Don’t stay with the same dumbbells year after year – challenge yourself!

Sin #11: Nixing the H2O

When you exercise, you increase your metabolism and create heat. If you don’t consume sufficient amounts of fluids to maintain your hydration status, your body will conserve fluids, so you won’t sweat as soon or as much. As a result, you won’t dissipate adequate amounts of that heat.

You want to drink water before, during or after exercise. Down 16 ounces before working out, 4 to 6 ounces every 15 to 20 minutes during your workout, and then top it off with even more water after you’re done exercising