Common gym mistakes

Training without a plan

You walk in and do whatever's free — that's what a workout where nothing grows usually looks like. Bench today, dips next week, bench again with a different weight: nothing to compare, so nothing to build on.

The fix is simple: one program for 8–12 weeks. Not a perfect one — any reasonable one. Take a ready-made program and don't change it while the weights keep rising.

No log

Without notes you don't know what you did last time, so you don't know what to do today. Progress in the gym is "one more rep or one more kilo than last time", and for that you need last time.

Log the weight and reps of every working set. How to do it quickly and what else is worth noting is in the workout log guide.

Weight for weight's sake

A heavy weight with half range and a swing looks impressive, but the muscle gets less than from an honest, lighter set. And the risk goes up: technique breaks exactly where the weight is at its limit.

Weight isn't the only thing you can add: in Plotkin et al. (2022), adding reps at the same weight produced similar muscle growth to adding weight. If the weight won't move with good form, add reps instead. Unsure about your form? Send a video of your set and I'll review it.

Sets far from failure — and failure on everything

Two opposite mistakes. The first is sets where you could do eight more: they hardly grow muscle — that's junk volume. The second is failure on every set, including heavy squats: fatigue climbs with no added benefit — in Refalo et al. (2023), failure showed no clear advantage for muscle growth.

The middle ground is 1–3 reps in reserve on most sets, with failure only on the last set of an isolation exercise.

Short rest and the phone

Two minutes of rest turn into forty seconds ("I'm not tired") or seven minutes on your phone. In the first case the next set comes up a couple of reps short; in the second you cool down. In Schoenfeld et al. (2016), three minutes of rest gave more growth and strength than one.

Set a timer for 2–3 minutes on compounds and 60–90 seconds on isolation — the rest timer runs right in your browser.

No sleep, no food, no deload

Muscle doesn't grow in the gym; it grows afterwards. Six hours of sleep, skipped meals and little protein, and even a good program stalls. A protein guideline is about 1.6 g per kg of bodyweight per day — past that, the benefit barely grows (Morton et al., 2018).

And finally: months without a single easy week. If the weights are dropping and your joints ache, you need a deload first, not a new program. Details in the plateau guide.

Four more mistakes

• Skipping legs. Legs are half the muscle in your body. A week without squats, deadlifts and leg presses is half your volume gone.
• Not warming up. Two or three light sets before a heavy weight lower the risk and help you perform — the warm-up calculator gives the weights.
• Copying a pro's program. Twenty chest sets and six days a week is volume for someone with years of training and recovery behind them. Beginners don't need that much.
• Comparing yourself to others. Someone else's weight says nothing about your progress. Compare yourself to yourself a month ago — that's what the log is for.

Where to start fixing

You don't need to fix everything at once. The order that works for almost everyone: first a log, then one program, then progression, then rest and sleep. The log comes first because without it the other mistakes are invisible: whether the weights are stuck, how many sets each muscle gets, how often you skip.

After a month of logging, look at three or four main lifts. Rising — fine, change nothing. Flat — check the list above for what applies to you. And if you're not sure you're doing it right, ask the coach: it sees your whole history and will tell you what to fix first. More on plateaus in the plateau guide.

Read next

• Progressive overload
• Form check on video
• How to keep a workout log
• Deload