Pulse
\\\ Liberty City Press
Mike Smaltz is the director of operations at Platoon Fitness. Photo courtesy of Platoon Fitness
Work Out Right Avoid common exercise mistakes by Dana Ricci
G
etting to the gym can be difficult enough on its own. However, once you get there—or wherever you happen to be exercising—a new problem arises: how to get the most out of your workout. It may seem simple, but some common workout mistakes can lead people to do more harm than good. “One of the most common
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Dec. 23-30, 2012
mistakes I see is people always thinking more is better,” says Mike Smaltz, director of operations at Platoon Fitness in Bryn Mawr. This makes sense; people who are trying to reach a certain goal may think that the longer they spend at the gym, the better the results will be. However, Smaltz says that this may cause people not to work efficiently toward their goals or to fail to reach them when it takes much
longer than they think it should. In fact, studies have shown that less exercise may be more effective. A study released this summer from the University of Copenhagen found that exercise contributes to weight loss as long as the amount of exercise is not too little or, surprisingly, too much. The study assigned three groups of overweight, sedentary men in their twenties and early thirties to 13 weeks of either no exercise, daily moderate workouts (of about 30 minutes or until they burned 300 calories), or more strenuous, hourlong workouts in which participants burned 600 calories. The men were asked to not change their diets, but they kept food diaries. On some days during the study, participants wore motion sensors to measure how active they were before and after the workouts. Interestingly, while the control group that did not exercise saw no weight loss, the men who did the 30-minute workouts lost more weight than those assigned to more strenuous workouts. While it’s not entirely clear why this could be, the researchers looked at the food diaries of the men and saw that those doing the 60-minute workouts ate more. The motion sensors showed that these men were also less active and spent a lot of time sitting when they weren’t working out, while the men who did the shorter workouts were more active generally. Researchers speculated that the participants who were assigned the more strenuous exercise regimen may have been fatigued. Thus, these long workouts could be more physically draining and cause an increase in ap-
petite. If weight loss is your goal, you may want to keep this in mind the next time you’re clocking hours on the treadmill. And while running and other cardiovascular exercises are great, there is such a thing as too much cardio. “Many people tend to grind out hours of cardio constantly trying to lose weight and get fit,” Smaltz says. “But they will rarely work at an intensity level that will attain them any results, and their only results are overuse injuries.” Cardio is a tool in the grand scheme of getting fit, but it needs to be done along with strength training and other forms of exercise. Sometimes people begin exercising in hopes of seeing results in one problem area—tight abs, lean thighs, toned arms and the like. However, the body does not have the ability to spot-reduce fat, Smaltz says. “You can work a problem area if the goal is to work one of the three components to movement: stability, flexibility or mobility,” Smaltz continues. “This can be done using various modalities of training that are very specific to the movement pattern being performed.” Also, men and women tend to make gender-specific mistakes. “Women make the mistake of steering away from strength training because of the myth that lifting weights makes one bigger,” Smaltz says. “And men tend to steer away from flexibility training and focus only on strength, not taking into consideration that flexible muscle tissue is 17 percent stronger and much more likely to not to get injured during movement.” Going back to the study from
Copenhagen, both under- and
over-performing in fitness can
lead to problems. Smaltz says that listening to your body is the key to figuring out if you’re guilty of
either. If you experience a lack of
motivation to train, constant acute injuries, lack of results, and/or are overly tired and run down, you
may be over-training. If you notice that you are not reaching your fitness goals, or if you never set
any in the first place, Smaltz rec-
ommends reevaluating your approach and recommitting to making the effort to reach your goals.
Also, start a workout log. “It is
very hard to gauge progress unless you record progress,” he says.
The good news is all of these
are fixable problems. When addressing specific health and fit-
ness issues, it is very important to be educated. And you don’t have to be a doctor or a personal trainer
to learn how our bodies work best. “We know how to program
the most complex of TV remotes,
drive newest technologically advanced automobile or work on the
newest piece of information technology,” Smaltz says. “But the
one machine most people don’t know anything about is the only machine we need to be successful
in living a long and healthy life: our own bodies.”
Whether it’s your New Year’s
resolution to start getting in shape or you’re a fitness veteran, remem-
ber that doing a little research and listening to your body can have a great impact on your results.