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With all the conflicting advice and information available on exercise it can be difficult to know what to do and what works best to get into awesome shape, feel good, and have a body that you feel confident in.

Using our 16 years of experience in the fitness industry here are five mistakes we see many people make in their workout and fitness plans.

 

You Use Exercise As Punishment

Exercise is intended to be a reward for your body. Exercise should be something that makes you feel better, more confident, and add to your life. It should not be beat down that leaves you laying dead on the floor, or as a punishment for what you ate or gaining a few pounds.

 

You Only Do Cardio and High Intensity Interval Training

While cardio and HIIT can be beneficial and have a place in fitness, when they are the only form of exercise they can hinder your results. Overtime they both will cause a loss in muscle tissue, which leads to increased body fat percentages, and HIIT tends to make you extremely hungry afterward causing you to overeat.

This doesn’t mean that you have to give up your cardio or HIIT, you just need to limit them to 1-2 workouts per week and get in 2-3 total body strength workouts first. Following this order will get better results and create positive change.

 

You Don’t Eat Enough

You cannot restrict calories forever. Your body needs fuel to power through your workouts and keep everything running like a well oiled machine. When calorie restriction goes too long the body begins to lose muscle and gain body fat, leading to the dreaded skinny fat body type.

Also, as you change your nutritional requirements will change. As you get leaner and stronger your body needs more daily calories and needs a higher daily carb intake.

 

You Don’t Allow Your Body Time To Rest

Working out every day may work for short period of time, but it soon leads to burn out and an achy, tired body.

Three to four workouts per week is optimal and if you want to add a daily walk or light mobility work that will help you recover faster between workouts. Again as you get stronger you are able to stress the body more each workout and that stress requires more time to recover in order to keep making progress.

 

You’re Only Focused On Burning Calories

How many calories you burn in your workout plays a very small role in the results you get. It is very easy to get caught up in the calorie burn of your workout and feel the need to do more cardio and HIIT, as those tend to create a higher burn.

You will never out exercise a bad diet. So thinking you can go out drinking and eat bad tonight and then burn it all off in the gym is a recipe for failure. Clean eating done 80% of the time with a few strength workouts each week will beat the pants off of cardio and HIIT workouts when in comes to getting results and decreasing body fat.

Hard work and consistency are important for results, but it has to be the right consistent effort. If you’ve been making any of the above 5 Fitness Mistakes correct them in your routine and watch your results take off!

Related Articles:

• Strength vs. Cardio
• 5 Fitness Hacks
• 8 Beers That Won’t Wreck Your Fitness

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