Working out with all the wrong moves
Are you wasting precious gym time? Perhaps even courting injury? Here is some of the dumbest, most counterproductive or dangerous stuff people have been spotted doing on the gym floor.
* Failing at the core: Failing to engage the core -- essentially, the muscles in and around your belly -- is “probably the biggest mistake most exercisers make,” says Jason Carden, fitness director at Washington, D.C.’s Thomas Circle Sport Club. Keeping a mushy middle increases risk of back injury and prevents you from building a strong foundation.
The fix: Use your abs to pull your bellybutton in toward your spine and tighten up -- and hold it throughout a movement. Or tighten as if bracing for a belly punch from a (small) child. Mayo Clinic experts recommend coughing lightly to get that tight-belly feeling.
* Loafing: Roger Mack, a master trainer at Tysons Sport & Health Club in Virginia, ungenerously estimates that “about 99%” of customers “don’t even get their heart rate up” on the treadmill, meaning they are devoting a lot of time yet burning few calories and making little improvement in heart-lung health.
The fix: Using the heart-rate device installed on many gym machines, or counting your pulse at your neck using the second hand of a watch, estimate your heart rate. Determine your (very rough) maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220. Your target heart rate is 55% to 65% of that number. If you’re 40, your maximum heart rate is 180 (220 minus 40) beats per minute; your target will be 99 to 117 beats per minute.
Working out at 55% of your maximum won’t make you miserable, but it’s enough to do some good. If you get ambitious, buy a heart rate monitor so you’ll always know if you’re working hard enough.
* Using lousy form: Many exercisers pull weights up too quickly, using momentum or leverage. Carden gives the example of people who elevate their shoulders from the bench as they reach the top of a bench press repetition -- a flourish that transfers pressure from the target muscle (the pectoral, or chest) to the shoulder, raising the risk of injuring the rotator cuff.
The fix: Choose a weight that lets you do eight repetitions slowly, in perfect form. Your eighth rep should be hard enough that your form starts to fall apart. That’s probably far less weight than you now use. Live with it.
* Aping the wrong apes: Given how many people make mistakes at the gym, Carden says, it’s dangerous to mimic other exercisers. For instance, some women follow men’s workouts, Carden says, even though they often seek different results.
The fix: Ignore alien orders. Develop your own workout with a trainer, or at least read a good strength training book aimed at the sort of exerciser you are. That guy waddling around with the fat “lifting” belt? He’s a fool. The gal doing rapid-fire crunches with her fingers laced behind her head? She doesn’t exist.
