Mistakes That I Have Made as a Trainee

Hall of Fame basketball coach Pat Riley says that life is a continuous learning process. If you don't strive to get better, you are bound to get worse. I approach exercise with a similar mindset. There is no greater teacher than experience, and while everything that I have learned over the years has come from somewhere else, some lessons have been learned the hard way. After talking with other exercise instructors over the years I have discovered that my early interest in weight training was similar to others that have gone on to work in this profession. The many mistakes that I have made over the years as far as my exercise routine is concerned have hopefully made me a little wiser, and have enabled me to pass along what I have learned.

My first exposure to weight training was in 8th grade PE class, when we did a unit on circuit training. It was nothing too in-depth, just some rudimentary explanation about a series of basic exercises on a Universal machine, but it spurred my interest enough to continue training that summer in preparation for 9th grade football. As I progressed through high school I continued to weight train year-round in the PE class that football players were expected to take. We were supervised by one of our football coaches, but there was no real scientific teaching or much in the way of structure. Even though there was very little record keeping, we managed to become stronger as a by-product of being teenagers going through puberty and having some exposure to weight training. The biggest mistake that I made during this time period was in not having a better understanding of nutrition and hydration. Looking back, I definitely did not drink enough water (this was before I knew how bad soft drinks are for you), nor did I consume enough of the quality protein that is necessary for building muscle.

My football career continued for a few years in college, as did my weight training. I was still as skinny as a rail - maybe 170 pounds - but I did have access to decent food in the dining hall. Once I stopped playing football my weight training became intermittent; some weeks I would workout and others I would not. There were weeks with no activity at all, and I definitely was not getting the full benefit of the gym membership that I was paying for. This was my big mistake at the time - not having a plan, the drive, or the understanding of the benefits I was missing out on. After I finished college I took a job as a personal trainer at Washington Sports Club.

Here I had access to a large facility and what I thought was excellent equipment (it was in short order that I learned otherwise). This was where I crafted an exercise routine straight out of the glossy pages of Muscle and Fitness magazine: four to five days a week of weight training with a split routine and different body parts on each day. Multiple sets of each movement and multiple movements for the same muscle groups. Sheer madness! There were so many mistakes during this period of my training life that it may be difficult to point them all out. I will do my best, though. For one, I am embarrassed at my inability to think critically during this period. I should have known better than to follow the examples of genetically gifted people who did not know the first thing about the way the body adapts to imposed stress. Along those lines, I had a poor understanding of the role that genetics plays in physical adaptations. I was training with way too much volume of exercise and not nearly enough intensity. The speed of movement that I used with each exercise was the standard Nautilus protocol of two seconds lifting the weight and four seconds lowering it. This was better than most of the gym rats that were around me but was still entirely too fast, and I am fortunate that I did not suffer any serious injuries. Because of the insane frequency with which I trained, I found myself getting sick with colds and flu more frequently; I was overtrained and under-recovered, thus stretching the limits of my immune system. Too much variety in exercise leads to an inability to master anything significant. As a result of all of these mistakes I wasted what could have been several productive years in my 20s by barking up the wrong tree. Fortunately, fate intervened.

I was introduced to Ken Hutchins' Super Slow Exercise Protocol by a good friend of mine, and almost immediately I knew that I had stumbled onto something big. This required some unlearning of a lot of the misguided ideas that I mistook for exercise truths. I made better physical improvements more quickly and in less time per week than I did by using conventional bodybuilding dogma. Most importantly I was not overtraining, so I rarely got sick, and because I was using a 10/10 speed there was virtually no risk for injury. Still, there were a few mistakes that I made during this period. The first was not learning about this methodology sooner! Second, it took me longer than it should have to recognize the importance that equipment design makes in terms of the exercise experience, but once I did my first workout with MedX and Super Slow Systems equipment I could not go back to using regular gym equipment. Lastly, even after I embraced a slow-speed, high-intensity exercise philosophy, it took me a while to come to grips with the mental components of exercise: focus, demeanor, and attitude. These are things that I still work on to this very day.

Just because I instruct exercise for a living doesn't mean that I haven't made mistakes along the way when it comes to my own training routine. Mistakes can perhaps be better classified as learning experiences, and I am certainly a work in progress. We grow by learning from mistakes and by working to not repeat them. Learning never stops. In my next article, I will profile some of the mistakes that I have made as an exercise instructor over the past 25 years. Thank you to all of you who have been a part of that journey..