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NOTE: All articles in BetterU News are written by Nick Nilsson -
http://www.fitstep.com/ unless otherwise credited.

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The 8 Biggest Mistakes I've Made In My Training and How You Can Avoid Them To err is human but to learn from my mistakes before you make them yourself is a whole lot easier!

It is very important to learn from your mistakes but why even make the mistakes yourself if you can learn from mine?

I've been training for more than 13 years and I've made mistakes. I want to help you avoid making those same mistakes in your training. It could save you years of frustration!

1. Training Too Long

When I first started training, I wanted to get the fastest results possible so I figured more would be better. My wake-up call came when one day I did a 2 1/2 hour session and then lost a considerable amount of strength in my next session.

Lesson: keep your training sessions from approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour MAX! Any longer and you are either just breaking your body down or not working hard enough to get results.

2. Not Eating Enough Protein

After training for about a year and gaining a whole lot of weight (not all of it muscle!), I went on a very low-fat diet. The problem with this was I hardly ate any protein because meat had fat in it! I couldn't figure out what the problem was until one day, when I had had enough of low-fat eating, I cooked up four chicken breasts (with skin) and ate them all in one sitting. My strength jumped up immediately!

Lesson: protein is critical for muscle-building (and dieting). Don't get enough and you will compromise your results.

3. Not Enough Cardiovascular Training

When I first began training, I went from a 145-pound cross-country runner to a 217-pound weight lifter in 8 months. During that entire time I didn't do any cardio training. Not only was a lot of that weight gain fat, I felt really unhealthy and unbalanced.

Lesson: even if you're trying to gain weight, keep at least some cardio training in your program, even if it's just walking a couple of times per week. Your heart (and muscles) will thank you for it.

4. Too Much Cardiovascular Training

After the previous extreme, there was a time when I was trying to lose fat and went to the other extreme: too much cardio. I remember one session where I did 20 minutes at the highest setting on the Stair Master, then skipped rope for 10 minutes, then did the stationary bike for 20 minutes, then the Stair Master for another 20 on high, then 10 more minutes of skipping.

I was in great cardio shape but my strength and muscle mass plummeted and, to be honest, I could have achieved better fat-loss results with 15 minutes of high-intensity interval training.

Lesson: too much cardio can be counterproductive. Certainly, it will burn a lot of calories but your muscles will burn more during the day just sitting there. Short, intense sessions will spare your muscle mass and boost your metabolism more effectively.

5. Using a Weightlifting Belt

When I started training, I used a weightlifting belt for every exercise. I would basically keep the belt on for my entire workout. It was a big mistake and here's why:

A belt is very effective for stabilizing the abdominal core area. However, it is so effective that your core muscles aren't challenged and don't develop effectively. This can leave them weak and your core unstable, fostering a reliance on the belt.

A belt should really only be used for near-maximal lifting with very heavy weights. If you need a belt to do bench presses or barbell curls, you should re-examine your form and honestly evaluate your core strength. You may be setting yourself up for a back injury.

Here is another thing to think about: a belt works to stabilize your core by making your abs push outwards against it. Do you really want to be training your abs to push out and stay there? It's like training to make your gut stick out.

Lesson: ease yourself off the belt if you currently use one. You will need to slowly work back up to your current weights to ensure you don't hurt yourself. When you go to do a lift, suck in your gut and tighten your abs. You will develop far better core strength and stability, not to mention tighter, flatter abs.

6. Lifting Too Heavy

My goal has always been to develop muscle mass and strength. There have been times when I used a weight that either caused me to compromise my form or didn't allow me to get enough reps to build mass.

The rep range between 6 to 12 reps per set is most effective for building muscle mass. If you consistently use weights that only allow you to get 5 or fewer reps per set, you will build strength and some muscle but most likely not nearly as much as you are capable of.

Lesson: if you want strength, do 1 to 5 reps per set. If you want muscle, do 6 to 12 reps per set. Always push yourself to use more weight but not so much that you compromise your form or results.

7. Working Too Hard

I can clearly remember one dieting cycle I did where I was so enthusiastic to lose fat that I severely overtrained myself within the first two weeks. In my enthusiasm, I buried my recovery ability with extreme training volume and intensity. Coupled with a reduced-calorie diet, this overly-hard work spelled disaster.

Lesson: train hard but don't overwhelm yourself. Your body needs time and nutrients to recover and rebuild. This is especially important when dieting for fat loss.

8. Not Eating Enough

This is a mistake I've made many times before and am sure I will make again. It applies not only to muscle-building but to fat loss as well. Not eating enough can really limit your results. But, as we all know, life gets busy and it's hard to eat and prepare frequent, healthy meals.

Lesson: Do your best with the time and food you've got and be aware that the more regularly and frequently you can eat, the better. If you want to gain a lot of muscle, you are going to have to eat even when you don't feel like you necessarily need to or even want to.

Conclusion:

Everybody makes mistakes. There is no doubt about that. I sincerely hope that the information I've shared with you here will help you to avoid making the same mistakes I have.

Nick Nilsson
Vice-President
BetterU, Inc.

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Secret Training Tip #685 - A Back Blasting Superset - Bent-Over Rows to Deadlifts. Harness the power of the superset to send your back training to the next level.

The power of supersets is undeniable. Supersets (doing 2 exercises one after another with no rest in between) are very effective for building strength and muscle mass.

The following is a superset for your back that will pile on muscle like no other. One word of warning: you should be comfortable doing both of these exercises separately before attempting them together in a superset. There will be a link to exercise performance tips and the end of this article.

The first exercise is the barbell bent-over row. You can use either an overhand, wide grip or an underhand, close reverse grip. Both grips are effective but work different areas of the back.

Select a weight that will cause you to reach failure in the 6 to 8 rep range. Do a hard set of bent-over rows then immediately after setting the weight down, move into the second exercise: deadlifts.

You will use the exact same weight for deadlifts, however, you may wish to change your grip to a mixed grip (one overhand, one underhand) so that you can hold onto the bar better.

Do reps of the deadlift until either your grip fails or until a rep before your back fails (don't do deadlifts to absolute failure - always keep the do-or-die rep in you).

After you get done with the deadlifts, your lats should be extremely pumped up.

There are several reasons why this superset is so effective:

1. It uses two of the best mass-building movements for your back (and body!).

2. The bent-over row uses the lats to actually move the weight while the deadlift uses the lats to help support the weight. Since the lats are already fatigued from the rowing, they will be forced to work far harder when you do the deadlifts. In a nutshell, the rest of your body will help push your lats harder!

3. The weight you use for bent-over rows should be relatively easy for you on the deadlift. This allows you to do even more reps with the deadlift.

4. It is very easy and convenient to go from the bent-over row to the deadlift. All you need to do is change your grip (if even that! You may choose to use the same grip.).

Give this superset a try in your next back workout. The results will speak for themselves!

For tips on exercise performance for the bent-over row, go to:

http://www.fitstep.com/Misc/Newsletter-archives/issue14-row-tip.htm

For tips on exercise performance for the deadlift, go to:

http://www.fitstep.com/Misc/Newsletter-archives/issue14-deadlift-tip.htm

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11 Things You Can Do In The Gym To Mess With People's Minds Interested in playing mind games? Try these little tricks next time you hit the gym.

Going to the gym should be fun! Are you stuck in a rut? Try a few of these psychological mind games and enjoy the confusion of everyone around you. It's just like facing the wrong way in an elevator and looking at the other people instead of the ceiling or wall.

1. Fill an old vodka bottle with water and use it during a workout. People will wonder if that's "your secret weapon" to great results!

2. Wear a helmet. I think you'll find that people will give you a lot more room when you're lifting when you walk in with head protection (especially when you do overhead exercises!).

3. Pick up the 2-pound nose-itcher dumbells and proceed to lift them like you're doing the hardest set in your life. Scream and strain like you're pushing it to the limit. The larger you are, the more effective this one will be.

4. Load a tremendous amount of weight onto the bench press bar, e.g. 500 to 600 pounds. Make a big production with your preparation, lie back on the bench, then, just as you are about to lift the bar off the rack, your watch alarm (previously set by you, of course) should go off. Look at your watch, shake your head, unload the bar then move onto your next exercise. The smaller you are, the more effective this one will be!

5. Do actual squats in the squat rack. You may have to wait for a few people to finish their barbell curls but the strange looks you get when you start squatting in the squat rack will be well worth it.

6. Wear an electric ab-training belt with an extension cord duct-taped to it. Plug yourself in just before each set.

7. Have your workout partner bring an old remote control from home. When he presses a button, do a rep. When hits "fast forward" go faster. When he hits "pause" hold the weight where it is. Just make sure he doesn't hit the "eject" button, especially after a hard set!

8. Count your reps out loud starting from 100, e.g. your first rep, say "101", then "102", etc.

9. Bring a suitcase to the gym instead of a duffel bag. The little rolling ones with the pop-up handles are good. Also, a really huge one that you can fit a person comfortably in will work.

10. Do a set of Rolling Dumbell One-Arm Handstand Push-Ups. Or Turkish Get-Ups. Or Triceps Extensions on the Leg Press Machine.

11. Use sandwich bags instead of workout gloves.

And when you walk into the gym pulling a huge suitcase, carrying a liquor bottle in your hand, with a helmet on your head, two sandwich bags instead of gloves, and an extension cord hanging from your waist, you'll know that you've probably taken this article a little too seriously...

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