The Gym Rules You Need To Break To Take Your Gains To The Next Level
As cliché as it might sound, the rules are meant to be broken. The gym isn’t one of the safest places to be in so you need to be careful about the rules you’re going to be challenging.
If your goal is to live the fit lifestyle, you need to design your training keeping longevity in mind. We have compiled a list of so-called rules you should break to maximize your results in the gym while minimizing the risk of an injury.
Never Train To Failure
It’s no secret people love to throw around fancy words to look smart. Gym bros emphasis the fact you shouldn’t work out to failure as you might risk overtraining your muscles. Overtraining is easier said than done.
Overtraining is the state when your body can’t keep up with your workouts, and your immune system and central nervous system take a hit. Only around 2-5% of the people who workout train hard enough to hit the state of overtraining. So, don’t limit yourself and go as hard as you can in your workouts.
Avoid Cardio While Bulking
Most people make the mistake of cutting out cardio from their routines when they’re in their off-season and want to bulk up. Some of these people mistake bulking up with fattening up.
Cardio is important no matter if you’re trying to shed the extra kilos or trying to put on some size. The cardio helps in burning off the extra calories and makes sure you’re putting on quality muscle and not fat.
Perform High Number of Reps For Conditioning and Low Reps For Strength
High reps for cutting and a low number of reps for strength have to be one of the most common myths amongst lifters. Tweaking the number of repetitions you perform in a workout can’t solely change your body.
The results from the number of reps don’t work in a vacuum. Other things like your diet, training split, and the amount of cardio you’re doing will play a big role in the results you’ll be getting. Changing the number of reps can act as a shock for your muscles but it solely isn’t big enough a change for your muscles to show any significant results.
Prefer Free Weights Over Machines
This is one of the first things the gym bros tell the newbies. The gym bros argue the golden era athletes built their physiques in bare bone gyms and the fancy machines don’t help in carving an aesthetic body.
Avoiding the machines can be a big mistake as the isolation you’ll get by using the cables and pulleys will always be better than using barbells or dumbbells. Your workouts should strike the right balance between isolation and compound lifts.
Always Use A Full Range of Motion
Almost everyone, at some point in time, has been disturbed in-between a set by a gym bro asking you to perform the exercise with a full range of motion. The gym bros tell you that if you don’t follow a full ROM, you’ll not be getting any results.
On the contrary, when you follow a full ROM and lockout your elbows on the top and let your muscles relax on the bottom of the movement, you’re taking the tension off the muscles and putting it on the joints. It’s okay to limit your range of motion so there is constant tension on your muscles.
Have you ever been injured in the gym?
Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements