Lostende Personal Fitness

...because your health is your wealth !

Allan Reeves, CSCS, ATC.

Serving clients in Marin since 1992

There are many mistakes that people make with their fitness training, and they all come from a lack of understanding or knowledge about what they are doing.  The mistakes lead to poor results, frustration, possible injury, and ultimately a poor commitment and drive to keep fit.  It is very important to get proper instruction and commit yourself to a your fitness, otherwise the quality of your life suffers.  A mastery and understanding of fitness takes time, but your health should be worth it.  Here then are what I believe to be some of the common mistakes people make concerning their training.

Training components

Importance of Posture

Common Mistakes

Correct Cycling Posture ( pdf )

• A belief that your weight is controlled by exercise.  Body fat ( excess undesirable weight ) is a function of your eating habits.  Exercise makes you strong, and unless you are involved in long endurance activities and weight training it will not and can not be the primary criteria to control your weight.

• A lack of focus on posture, skeletal alignment and movement.  As I mentioned in the section on posture, posture is the bedrock of a physically fit body.  If your posture is not correct, then proper movement is impaired.  This will lead to repetitive stress injuries, poor athletic performance, poor muscular definition, and an overall reduction in your physical potential.  Every joint needs to be able to pivot to the extent of its design, but it can not do that if the joint is stuck and impaired because of poor alignment.  It will perform correctly when aligned correctly.

• Too much training and not enough recovery.  Are you guilty of thinking "more is better."  Most of us believe that the more you train the better your results.  This is wrong.  The goal is not to train endlessly, but to train correctly, and that means allowing your body to recover.  You need to include active rest in your training program so that your body can recover and adapt from the training.  Otherwise, you can over-train, which means that you end up taking two sets back for every step forward.  Take the time to analyze and reflect on your body's response to your training, and make sure you are not over-training.

• More to come...