Two biggest mistakes I made in my training when I was younger

If I could talk to 18 year old me, I would have A LOT to say! But let’s stick with training for this blog post. The two mistakes I made in training when I was younger:

1. Too much focus on the mirror muscles
2. Only doing the exercises I enjoyed doing.

Well, that was a quick blog… I better expand on this a little!

My training was variations of:
Bench Pressing
Lat Pulldowns
Chest Flyes
The odd bit of squats and lunges
And a lot of bicep curls 😂🙈

Yes, I didn’t know any better but the lack of direct pulling exercises as well as a lot of exercises for the back of the legs contributed towards a litany of problems including lower back pain, rounded shoulders, imbalances and not addressing previous injuries.

Coaching qualifications are obviously great in seeing all the flaws in how 18 year old me used to train. But experience and learning from my mistakes are great coaches too! The sad thing is that we continue to see these mistakes online from other coaches. Workouts that clearly favour the “mirror muscles” ie the muscles you see in the mirror.

Even the lat pulldown is not a true pulling exercise.

One advanced exercise to throw into your routine is the kettlebell swing (video from our online follow along programme)… as long as you are not squatting the swing (that puts pressure on the lower back).

If I could talk to 18 year old me, I would tell myself to do more rows, hamstring and upper back exercises, overhead pressing, realize that arms are more than just biceps and then say to seek advice on how to programme exercise correctly.

It would have saved me years of hardship!

To give an example of how I would programme my workouts I would ensure to include these type of exercises in my workout splits:

Push exercises eg Press Up, DB Presses, Single Arm Landmine Presses
Pull exercises eg. Single Arm Row, TRX Row, Renegade Rows
Hip (Hinge) Exercises eg. RDL, Single Leg RDL, Kettlebell Swing
Knee Exercises eg Squats, Lunges, Split Squats

Some carry and core exercises as well... and arms exercises. But the above exercises are a must. A push, pull, hip and knee. And because of the way a lot of people train and how we move day to day, I would encourage more pull than presses and more hip than knee exercises.

An example of using these 4 main parts to a workout can be seen in this follow along workout HERE.

My cardio would depend on where I am at with my goals and running programme. This would also determine the intensity of the exercises, duration and how many times I would train during the week.

At the moment, I only do a lower body session once a week as my mileage has gone up for the marathon in a few weeks time. But once that marathon is finished, my mileage will decrease, the gym time will increase as my training changes in line with my goals.