Fitness: Avoid these mistakes, achieve your goals

Health is wealth. These words of wisdom have been passed onto us by our parents, and onto them by their parents. It simply encourages us to follow a simple mantra to prioritise our health which is ultimately the best form of wealth. Be it maintaining a healthy diet, or following a workout plan, there are experts who are there to guide us at every step of this journey and stop us from making mistakes that delay our progress. Djordje Dukic, a freelance personal trainer Reps UAE Level 4 certified in Strength and Conditioning Training, discusses a few mistakes fitness enthusiasts make and provides tips on how avoid them.

Not Warming-Up Before Workout

Most people sit at the desk all day. That said, a proper warm up is essential for optimizing gym performance and safety.

A proper warm up should aim to mobilize your shoulders, thoracic spine, hips, and ankles.

Building strength and technique takes patience, which is why we should not rush the process. We all have more time than we think.

Lifting heavy weights is the only way to build up strength, but lifting heavy all the time is not sustainable. There are days to go hard and days to go easy. Light days are just as important for progression in the long run. At the end of the day, there is no magic pill, just one simple thing -- consistency.

When programming the daily or weekly workout, there are seven basic movement patterns the human body can perform: push, pull, squat, lunge, hinge, rotation and gait. Performing all of these movements will help you stimulate all the major muscle groups in your body.

As a physiotherapist, here are some tips for your muscles:

*If your shoulder hurts, you need to look at your limited t-spine mobility.

*If your back hurts, you need to look at your hips and thoracic spine.

*If you are seeing someone for knee pain and they don’t assess your hip and ankle mobility, you are with the wrong person.

*The worst strategy for dealing with shoulder, back, and knee pain is thinking that “the pain will go away if I take a week or two off”.

Nutrition: Quality Over Quantity

Whether your goal is to lose weight or gain it, the quality of the food you eat is more important than how much you eat, when you eat or what supplements you take.

Unfortunately, many people focus on calories instead of the quality of the food. Relying only on supplements instead of food is also a bad choice. The human body does a much better job at digesting whole foods as opposed to capsules.

Nowadays, there are several nutrition diets. If one diet works for you, it doesn’t mean it will work for others. All diets work by creating a caloric deficit. Do not measure yourself everyday as the number on the scale doesn’t matter.

Here’s why:

*Your body composition is changing.

*Your weight fluctuates each day due to water retention and salt intake.

*Your weight does not show health.

*Just because someone is thin does not mean they are healthy. In fact, a heavier person may have better overall health due to lifestyle choices.

Avoid Social Media ‘Influencer’ Distractions

The best way to select a trainer is through recommendations and knowledge. Find someone who can help you accomplish your goals, not just give you a good workout. Do not let anyone exhaust you or leave you extremely sore after every training session. If a trainer has thousands of followers on social media, it doesn’t mean he will help you achieve your goals.

Instead of using mobile phones during the session and recording every exercise, focus on your clients. Not everyone likes to be recorded and published on social media platforms.

There is nothing wrong in sharing your fitness journey and activities on social media. However, one should not just share to get validation from people they don’t even know. When you lift for yourself, life in the gym gets a lot more fun. Do not fall into the social media trap of trying to come up with the most creative and crazy exercise variations you can imagine. There is genius in simplicity.

• UAE