What's going on, everyone?

Welcome to another episode of the Fit, Healthy, and Most of All Happy Podcast. As always, it's your coach and host Josh here with. This co-host and co-coach, KG, and I'm in the house. Coming at you, we were in the gym. We've been seeing some things. We're like, that's it. Time to take out the notepad. We came up with 15 probably the biggest gym mistakes, and these are commonly made mistakes. I don't care if you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, you're going to pull something from this episode. Even a few of these are me having some self-reflection on some things I could improve, even as someone who's been there in over 10 years. You know, done physique competitions, pat-in compositions. We can always grow. We can always do better. So let's jump into this bad boy. So number one, I'm going to be calling out a lot of you. So get ready for a little bit of a dose of truth here. And that is choice skipping the hard exercises. And I kind of wrote here, eat your vegetables. You know, they always say your vegetables to kids. They don't taste good, but they're good for you. You want to grow big and strong? Same with these choice skipping hard exercises. Examples, dead lifts, lunges, Bulgarian split squats, heavy squats. Very often, we're like, eh, I'd rather not do this. I'd rather be on the ad doctor machine on my phone on Instagram, banging out 80 reps of 10 pounds doing nothing. But the case and point, if something's hard, if you dislike it, if it's challenging, barbell hip thrust, tons of examples here, it's hard for a reason and it's good for you, especially if it's particularly hard to you. Like if you're like, oh my goodness, lunches massacre me, my friends somehow do them,

that's more of the reason why you should be doing it, right? And I'm not just saying to do things if you have bad form or you have an injury, but I'm saying when you know something's hard, you feel the burn, it gets you sore, you know, hey, you need to implement that. Don't skip it. And once again, I know it's easy to do it or try and final alternatives. I don't need to do Bulgarian split squat.

So I'm just going to do it or try and final

alternatives. I don't need to do Bulgarian split squat. So I'm just going to do the quad machine. Like, you know, it's really important. You eat those vegetables with those hard movements. And I know it's caused it a lot of people skipping leg day, whatever it may be. But this is a big one. And this is a huge mistake a lot of people make because this is where you make those extra gains and the people

that look the best in the gym are getting these things done. I feel like we could honestly end that there and it offers so much value for everyone here, but we're going to offer so much more. We got 14 more tips and that's going to bring me right into number two, which is just not knowing the right tempo for movements. And this is calling a lot of people out once again. if you're being called out, that's no problem. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means we can improve. Even myself, I realize sometimes I'm doing a leg extension or a quad extension. I'm just going a little bit too fast, right? So the tempo is just going to be the pace at which you move the weight from point A to point B and then back from point B back to point A, right? And simplified, you know,

when it comes down to it, slow things down just a little bit, right? And there's different types of tempos for different types of movements. For us on our squat day today, we're just absolutely blasting it out. We're going to go, you know, up and down, nice and quick, good form. You know, for us as we're doing calf raises, we might just do two to three seconds on the eccentric, trick, to slow it down a bit, get some good control. But once again, different tempos have different purposes, and they all have their purpose, in my opinion. So really, make sure you're doing the right ones and get the best results possible from them. Yeah, so there's levels to tempo. I'm not really a believer in programming tempos. I know some personal trainers really like it. You know, they'll get absolutely crazy programming, crazy number of tempos, you know, and doing different things. Personally, for me, like the way I see it, if I'm doing something to improve my physique, to grow my muscle, I'm going to be slower on that negative. I'm going to take two to three seconds and which Kyle referred to as eccentric. So a negative is the portion of the weight you're not lifting it. You're just fighting against gravity essentially to support it, whereas the concentric is when you're actually lifting something. So an example of a concentric wrap for a curl would be when you're pulling it towards you. Concentric for leg press would actually be when you're pushing it away. Because whenever you're contracting that muscle, that's when you want explosion. That's when you want power. And yes, you can always do a squeeze, but the negative is where you always want to go a little bit slower because you're fighting against gravity. And there's actually a lot of muscle that could be put on in this part of the rep. where people go wrong and especially I see a lot of women doing squats.

They'll do them extraordinarily slow.

You know, in this part of the rep. Where people go wrong, and especially I see a lot of women doing squats, they'll do them extraordinarily slow, you know, and this to me is something that should be utilized a little bit more for strength. And there's nothing wrong with controlling negatives and doing things like slow tempos and pause squats. But, you know, it is important to really differentiate in your routine. What am I doing for strength, you know, an ability, and which is going to feed in my hypertrophy, and what am I doing to improve my composition and muscle mass? Yeah, super well said, man. Number three, another high level tip is learning how to properly breathe. I'd say nine or ten people in the gym have no idea how to breathe, what's important with breathing, what to really pay mine to. this is a huge one so first and foremost breathing is very different for a lot of movements for most movements it's nice and easy though on the concentric you're going to breathe out on the eccentric you're going to breathe in and you can kind of time that with a big breath in for that negative where you want to be careful is some people are doing some big breaths i do but I don't want you to be like, what the heck am I listening to in the mic right now? When people do big breaths, you are using a lot of oxygen. You know, when you get lightheaded because you've held your breath, that's where you want to be careful using too much of your breath. You can really kind of fatigue yourself out. And breathing is just so important too because it supplies oxygen to the muscles you're working. So if you're neglecting this, you're going to pop,

you're going to look like a freaking tomato when you're lifting. It's going to do you no good. And you're actually going to be leaving a lot of strength and ability on the table. So once again, you're going to want to really make sure you're breathing in on the negative, breathing out on the concentric. Where the rules get a little bit funky is with compound. So squats are kind of unique because you're actually holding your breath for bulk of the movement and you're breathing in at the top. And when you stand up, you're actually going to be breathing out. That's where it gets a little bit interesting. Same with that lifts. Pretty much any compound where you have to brace pretty heavily. That's where the timing can be a little bit different. And you might be saying me, well, what the heck? Now you just made me question my entire existence at the gym. I'm never going to be able to work out again. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm just questioning everything. So first and foremost, we have a free form guide for you, just totally free. This actually is usually reserved just for clients, but we just want to help people out because that's pretty much how we started, you know, blowing up on YouTube is we're just like, that's it. We're going to help people learn to do form the right way. So even in these videos, we cover breathing for each of them and it really will go a long way. It's like a personal train in your pocket. It's just literally a list of before and afters of like us doing all the movements with the accompanying youtube videos and we have like i think like over almost a hundred

things there which is crazy so totally free first link in this episode you just slap in your email

and we'll take care of you no uh catches there just want to give back which is really cool so that's

breathing and you know just the same point like i know some people can get really in their head about breathing

and it can make them not focus on actually just lifting. Maybe set like a week or a workout or a movement or the first movement of everything to maximize that breathing. And like just try and make a habit of it. And once you kind of ingrained that in your head, you start doing it intelligently. you're going to be in a good place and a good position

to just keep doing that with the right habits going forward.

Yeah, and even like a good time to practice this could be a dealode where, you know, every eight to 12 weeks you, you know, practice doing about 60 to 70 percent of the usual weight that you're using, take a bit of a break. And that, you know, that's where we really encourage our clients to do some better mind muscle connection focus on the essentials getting their form down and that could be a good time to integrate

some focus on breathing as well that's going to bring me into number four and this one is just

you're going to notice in the form guide as well but just lazy form and body positioning so we find

so often you know we try not to you know i look around the gym motivation, learn some things, get some good topics and everything like that, but we see just so much lazy form. And, you know, just a lot of times you're just not really thinking about it. You're just ripping their weight up and down. You're just not really getting your chest postured up. You know, you're just, you always want your chest loud and proud for majority of the movements. You want your core tight, you know, body position times people are too hunched forward there's just you know and that's where the form guide is really going to come in handy if you think of even like a seated row you're going to learn exactly where to set up like even just the set up position of it like a lot of times people get onto a leg extension and their body's position weird and the machine's position weird. I'm not saying just leg extension. That's just a random example. But I'd say a lot of exercises

out there. extension and their body's position weird and the machine's position weird. And I'm not saying just leg extension.

That's just a random example. But I'd say a lot of exercises out there. So focus on, you know, once again, good control, getting that, you know, form just optimized and you will get the best results possible while keeping your body in the optimal lifting position. Yeah. And, you know, it goes so much past you. Like even learning to brace your abs, you know, throughout movements and learning how to stabilize yourself is going to improve your abs significantly and improve your posture. But even past that, you know, it's going to prevent injury. Even a lot of people are swinging their head all around the place when they're lifting, you know, they're bending their back, getting lazy. They're just powering through movements. Like, it's all fun in games till it's not.

You get a bad injury once and that'll really mess you up and put you back. So it's really important you learn how to do it right. And a great thing too, if you're like, hey, well, I'm really stuck here. You know, film yourself doing it. It really does go a long way. If you film yourself doing it, you'll be in a better position. you can kind of see from a different view of like, ooh, that doesn't look right, or hey, let's go, that's coming along.

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