5 Mistakes To Avoid When Restarting Your Fitness Training

Even if you’re able to maintain some sort of training routine at home, nothing beats the full experience you get from the gym. As excited as you may be to get back to your fitness regimen, there are some things you need to be careful of if you want to make the transition as smooth and as painless as possible.

Fitness Training 101: Getting Back On Track

Now that you’re more ready than ever to restart your fitness training, you’ll have to arm yourself with more than just enthusiasm and determination. You also have to be mindful of some fitness mistakes to avoid, including the following:

1. Not Assessing Your Current Strength

This mistake would probably be more typical among great fitness enthusiasts, bodybuilders, and weightlifters. Being so excited about getting back into fitness, you’d assume you have the same strength and capabilities as before. It could be tempting to immediately do a full and intense workout, but you might want to consider that again. Lifting is different when you’re doing it at home unless you have all the same equipment the gym has. 

The best thing you can do is to gradually start familiarizing your body with the different routines you used to do. That way, you can assess your strength and know how much weight you can take especially on your first day back. 

2. Training Without Warming Up Or Stretching

Warming up helps in preparing your body for any fitness training you’re about to do. It's highly recommended even when you didn’t stop your routines. Now that you’re restarting your workout, you need to get your muscles and joints warmed up first.

Because you’ve been sedentary for a while, your posture might has been affected; and if you’re not careful when lifting weights, it could potentially lead to injuries. To avoid this, stretch and warm your muscles before working out. Arm circles or leg swings for at least 60 seconds could be a good start to get your blood pumping. 

3. Overtraining

It's completely understandable if you’re too eager to get back on track. So, there’s a tendency for you to overtrain or spend long hours in the gym. However, this is a mistake that can potentially lead to poor performance and results. It could also affect your endurance, agility, and strength. When that happens, your performance would most likely drop rather than improve.

You may want to catch up fast on the days or months you’ve lost staying at home, but it’s better to give your body ample time to keep up with the pace you can take. Take your time, and for the first few days, train for an hour only. From there, you may assess yourself and increase your training time gradually.

4. No Definite Fitness Plan

You want to get back to your training, but what about a fitness plan? If there’s something you want to achieve, you need to build a fitness plan revolving around your goal. That way, you can set your expectations and make an efficient workout schedule, as well as how long you intend to work out.

Of course, this is different if you just want to maintain your body fit. Still, a plan has to be incorporated somewhere to see if your body will react to different routines. That way, you can avoid your performance from plateauing. It’s also a good opportunity to re-evaluate your fitness goal and how you plan to achieve it.

5. Not Eating Right

Your diet plays a vital role in making sure your body can keep up with your fitness training. Unhealthy foods won’t only make you weak, but they can also affect your motivation. If you’re planning to restart your workout routines, prepare yourself by eating a healthy diet. Consider getting enough lean protein, fruits and vegetables, and also healthy fats by consuming seeds, nuts, olive oil, and avocados.

Coming back from a fitness hibernation could be a bit of a challenge. But still, you can make it happen as long as you’re armed with enough motivation and determination to claim your old self back. Additionally, take time to check some mistakes you should avoid when restarting your fitness training.

Don’t overtrain, prepare a fitness plan, warm-up or stretch before working out, eat healthily, and don’t overestimate your strength. It might take some time and getting used to, but you’ll surely get there if you focus and do your best to achieve your goal.