Top Five Mistakes Most Men and Women Make In Designing Workout Routines – Part Two

By Lee A. Mancini, MD, CSCS, CSN

Welcome back to part two of five. Once again I will share my strength and conditioning and sports medicine knowledge to help you correct some common male and female training errors.

Tip Number Two For Men: Not including flexibility work in their programs. When most men get to the gym, they want to hit the weights right away. Some may warm-up for five minutes on the treadmill or exercise bike, and most will do a few warm up sets of whatever their first exercise for that day is (most likely bench press), but it is a rare sight to see a man stretching before his strength training session. One of the worldwide leaders in the strength and conditioning industry, and someone under whom I have studied, Australian Ian King, believes that athletes should be spending no less than 50% of their time stretching as they do training. In other words, if your strength training session lasts 40 minutes, then you should be putting in at least 20 minutes of time stretching that day.

Tip Number Two For Women: Doing too much aerobic training. When I analyze the previous programs used by many of my female clients, one thing that I always seem to find is that they spend far too much time doing aerobic training. Notice that I did not say cardiovascular training. There is a big difference between aerobic and cardiovascular training about which people often get confused. Cardiovascular training is any sort of exercise or activity that raises one’s heart rate – jumping rope, dancing, running, and even weight lifting. Endurance aerobic exercise has been proven to be less effective for fat loss and revving up one’s metabolism than anaerobic sprint or interval training. Doing 60 minutes of an endurance aerobic exercise such as walking on the treadmill is also not as time efficient as doing 15 minutes of sprint/walk interval training.

Apply these two tips to your gym training today!

Note:  Lee A. Mancini graduated from Harvard as a two-sport athlete with honors in biology. Board certified in sports medicine and family practice, he works at the Family Health Center and UMass Sports Medicine Center in Worcester . He trains select clients as a certified strength and conditioning specialist and sports nutritionist. If you are interested in hiring him to design an individualized program, click here for our paid consultation services.