Making time for the gym is harder than ever these days but also more important than ever. With the dramatic increase in obesity rates and the near epidemic rates of diabetes it is vital to healthy living that we make time for exercise. With that being said it is just as important that we use our gym time wisely to get the most out of the training session. Below is a list of several things that I notice every time I go to the gym or speak with a typical gym goer.

Spending endless time on the treadmill
This is without doubt the vast majority of peoples problem when they set out to lose some fat, I will always refer to weight loss as fat loss as it’s the fat we are trying to lose not the muscle or organs, which all contribute to total weight. I am fairly positive if I remove a kidney I will lose weight but I don’t think I will look any better. Back to my original point, every time I walk into a gym in Dublin I see countless people doing mind numbing steady state machine cardio, sometimes even accompanied by a personal trainer. This has to be the most ineffective method of fat loss in the exercise world apart from the obvious(yoga, etc.). Excluding the first few sessions when the body isn’t used to running at 10 km per hour for 45 mins there is minimal amount of fat being burned off in these sessions. This is in my opinion the main reason everyone joins a gym in January and quits midway through February. They make some decent progress for the first few weeks, plateau for a week, add an extra 15 mins and then quit 2 weeks later when no more weight falls off the scales.

Your time would be far better served doing some form of interval training where you vary the intensity of exercise from 90% for 10 seconds to 70% for 90 seconds followed by adequate rest to allow you to repeat this 6-12 times. This type of training session is far more beneficial to fat loss as it raises your resting metabolic rate for several hours following your training session causing more fat to be used as energy.

Following a bodybuilding routine from a magazine.

You will see this in almost every gym in Dublin and every other city around the world if you pay attention to how the vast majority of guys train. They dedicate a full training session to one single body part. 90-120 mins once a week, more often than not on monday for national bench press day, get spent blasting the chest from every different angle with the hope of encouraging them pecs to grow. This is more often than not repeated with back and biceps on Wednesday and shoulders and abzzzz on Friday, with some extra kurlzzz on Saturday afternoon before they go out. Unfortunately this type of training will produce very little if any results. Let me explain; training a body part per session is fine if you have the time to train it twice per week, however if you are only able to get to the gym 3 times a week then that body part will lay dormant for one whole week before it receives any stimulation again. This unfortunately is not enough for the vast majority of people to see progress.

The general gym going population would find it far more beneficial if they spent their time concentrating on movements rather than body parts. So instead of chest day they would do a horizontal push-pull day. With this type of training they will train their back and chest on the one day freeing up another day to train the chest and back in a different plain of motion(vertical).

Needlessly fuelling their session with “energy” drinks

This one drives me mad. Every time i walk into a gum in Dublin I see at least half of the people on cardio machines inhaling lucozade. The companies who make these drinks are very clever. They market the drinks to the general population as the only way to get through the last few minutes of a session because without it you’re going to be struggling to get through the session. NEWSFLASH…..if your trying to lose fat the training is supposed to burn energy, yet we have everyone nailing a bottle of lucozade throughout their session adding in calories which they are attempting to burn off. This is similar to punching hole in a bucket while trying to fill it up, your going to be constantly stuck in the same place going nowhere. Ditch the energy drink and stick to water.

Taking too much rest between exercises.

I see this most often with the people who do bodybuilding styles of training while trying to lose fat. Let’s use the bench press as an example, they typically do a set of 12 reps, rest for 2:30 and repeat 3-4 times. They continue in this vein for the incline press, decline press, flys and extensions. The essence of fat loss training is raising the heart rate above resting levels, yet by taking such a long rest period their heart rate drops back to resting levels almost immediately.

Now I’m not suggesting that they try to do all 4 sets in 3 minutes as they will most likely experience a case of barbell in the face. Instead they should do supersets or tri-sets. This type of training requires you to do 2/3 exercises in a row without any break, targeting a different body part each time. The advantage to this is that as you work the 2nd and 3rd body part you are allowing the first one to rest, yet your heart rate is never getting a chance to slow down so your increasing your metabolic activity, which will lead to a greater potential for fat loss. An example tri-set would be bench press/dumbbell rows and dumbbell squats.

Neglecting leg training.

As I’m sure nearly everyone is aware the most popular exercises in the the gym goers arsenal are the movements involving the chest, arms and abzzzz. Some people even go as far as repeating the same session every time they go to the gym(this is what a personal trainer is for). The biggest mistake they are making is not including leg work in their training. Leg work in my opinion is the most important vital type of training anyone can do for several reasons.

The leg muscles are the biggest in the body and therefore burn the most energy when they get trained.
Most people have poor mobility and flexibility due to day-to-day living, most of which can be solved by incorporating leg training into your program.
Having a big upper body on a small lower body just looks stupid, it’s like an upside down pyramid.

Avoiding resistance training for fat loss because you don’t want to bulk up.

The vast majority of people who are training to lose fat will be doing one of the following; steady state cardio work, Zumba, step aerobics, exercise to music or some other dumb fad.

They avoid the weights area due to this fear of bulking up. Now here’s the thing even if your goal is increased size and you are TRYING to put on muscle it is difficult, even more so than fat loss in my opinion. So rest assured you are not going to look like you injected a basket of steroids and decided to become a bodybuilder if you lift some weights.

Also when designing a program for fat loss you can pick exercises in a manner that will encourage fat loss instead of muscle gain by manipulating rest persons and the number of sets and reps. An added bonus of weight training that cannot be accomplished through cardio work is that by lifting weights you send a signal to your body to hold onto its muscle and prioritise fat as an energy source. This means that as you drop fat your figure will look leaner and more athletic than if you did cardio alone as your body would burn off some of your muscle as you will not be using it.

Cillian Hurley
Personal Trainer Dublin – The ABS Gym Dublin