Five Reasons You’re Not Making Progress In The Gym

1. You’re prioritising the wrong exercises

It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to build muscle or burn fat, your routine should be built around compound movements, this is program design 101.

Compound lifts are movements that involve multiple joints and muscles, which will provide you with the ‘biggest bang for your buck’ in the gym.

2. You’re rushing your reps

When it comes to weight training, execution is everything, it shouldn’t be about moving from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

It is imperative that you focus on the muscle you’re training and develop a mind-to-muscle connection to get the most out of every exercise, it does help if you know which muscles each exercise actually targets, most people don’t.

3. You’ve been doing the same routine for six months (or years)

Every gym has members who turn up every day, week in, week out and they look exactly the same week in, week out. I’d be willing to guess that one of the reasons they haven’t changed their body is because they’re sticking to the same routine every single time they train.

Your body is amazing at adapting, but it needs a stimulus to do so, if you’re not giving it a reason to adapt, then it won’t and best case scenario is you look exactly the same…. worst case, you look worse.

4. You’re not tracking your progress

I’m a stronger believer in having as much data as possible to evaluate your progress in the gym.

I use a log book personally and something similar for my clients. I can look back over days, weeks, months or even years of my clients workouts to ensure that constant progress is being made, it’s not difficult to bring a pen and pad into the gym with you (I’m old school like that) or even a fancy training app on your iPhone.

5. You’re not training hard enough

If you want your body to change then you’re going to have to force it to do so and that means pushing your boundaries.

Now that doesn’t mean you need to adhere to the ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude, because that’s foolish, what you do need to do is strive for progress each week. If you managed to use the 6kg dumbbells for 10 reps last week, then go ahead and jump up to the 7kg dumbbells this week, you might not get 10 reps out straight away, but you will get there, it’s all about striving for progress with every workout, that’s how we improve our bodies.

I could of done another five reasons, but I’ll leave it at that for today, what do you think is holding you back from making progress? Let us know.