Over the past few years, I have really learned a lot about my training, my diet, my performance, and myself.  I feel it would be appropriate to share those mistakes with others.  Similarly, some of these mistakes are not my own, but mistakes that I commonly see others make.

I encourage additions to this list.  I am hoping that by identifying our individual mistakes we can easily identify the mistakes of several others in the community and therefore allow the whole community to grow. 

1) Not Understanding Mistakes

Over the years of my training in various disciplines, I obviously made many mistakes, learned a bunch, and grew from it.  I see many people who, in their training, lack the open-minded nature to understand that what they are doing is not correct.  Rather than admit that they may be wrong, they continue to do poor workouts without exploring their methodology.  Understanding that you will err in some ways is an important part of the growth process.

2) Working too hard

When most people find their way into an athletic lifestyle, they get addicted to their sport and to being active.  This is great, however, many athletes, even some who consider themselves "seasoned", often neglect the importance of rest and recovery into their regimens.  Working out for 6 hours, 7 days a week, is a bit of overkill.  When i first fell into my athletic lifestyle I was going to the gym 2x a day for 3 hours of a time, then would scratch my head as to why my performance was not increasing. 

On a novice (and even intermediate) level, which 90% of the population falls into, you can recover quite quickly from the stresses of a workout and a short, 20-30 minute workout 6 days of every 8 will provide substantial performance gains.  Depending on goals, these times and cycles will vary, but the bottom line is that less is usually more.

A common argument against this philosophy is the lifestyle of a bodybuilder.  Bodybuilders often workout 2x a day, 2 hours at a time, doing extremely rigorous lifts.  The response to this argument is concise - you are not a bodybuilder.  For one, bodybuilders are not "fit".  Secondly, bodybuilders, by definition, are not functional.  Thirdly, bodybuilders' musculoskeletal system is more adapted to extreme levels of stress on their skeletal muscles, causing them to require more lifting (work volume) to perturb their homeostasis that cause gains.  You also can't neglect the bodybuilders' strict adherence to rest days. 

You must remember that you are an individual, and your own rest cycles will be determined based on your personal level (novice, intermediate, advanced, or elite) in your domain (all inclusive, power lifter, weight lifter, long-distance runner, short-distance runner, etc).

3) Violating KISS (keep it simple, stupid)

A common error I see among novices, self included, is not keeping their workouts and diet simple.  When one becomes obsessed with fitness they often start reading very much, from very different sources.  The sources never seem to agree and always seem to have very strong points that contradict one another.

Results, however, is one thing that you can never, ever question.  At a novice and intermediate level, keep your workouts simple.  Do not worry about your fast and slow twitch fibers.  Don't worry about your energetic pathways.  Don't worry about your Omega3:Omega 6 ratios in your diet.  Sure, these things are important, but you are better off worrying about them when you know much more about them.

If you try to make things too complicated too soon, it is disheartening and you wind up either swearing off training, diet, research or all three because it is much too complicated.

An important thing to remember is that, no matter who says any different, no-one knows EXACTLY how the body works.  An overwhelming amount of biological and physiological findings have occurred within the past 20 years, and most of the ground breaking discoveries have only been happening in the past 100 years.  Hell, DNA was only discovered in the late 1940's.  The effects of IGF-I on muscle growth are still being explored, and have only been discovered about a decade ago.

The point is, don't let yourself get bogged down by science that is still yet incomplete.  Train for results.

4) Not Questioning Sources/Informers

This is a big mistake.  People will pick up Men's Health Magazine or some similar piece of garbage and read about Tyrell Owen's workout plan and immediately start doing it the next week because they want to look like TO.  Bad idea.

Another Bad Idea is to not question a scientific paper, just because its in a journal such as the Journal of Applied Physiology.

I deal with Ph. D's on a daily basis.  I have dealt with dozens of trainers who are well respected in their field.  Whether the source in question is a Ph. D or a trainer, they have respect from a group of people somewhere.  Their certifications, degrees and titles leave people with the impression that they know what you are talking about.  Don't be fooled, many of these people lack common sense, logic and deductive reasoning.

With this in mind, anything written by a trainer or Ph. D should be taken with a grain of salt until they have been proven credible through your own research or their acceptance in the fitness community you are a part of.  Examples of such people include Coach Mark Rippetoe, Coach Christopher Sommers and Coach Greg Glassman.  A counter-example would be Billy Blanks, Chuck Norris, any other infomercial-type trainer.  While I am throwing names around, don't take anything Arnold Schwarzeneggar says as truth in any way shape or form.

You should always question what people tell you, including those who are "credible".  What you will come to realize over time is that some people know very much about one domain but know little about another.  For example, Mark Rippetoe knows much about weight and powerlifting, but I would not go to him for advice or information about planche progressions.  Some (poor) trainers think that because they know much about one domain, that they know much about all domains.  This is just not true.  You will never see an expert on Airplanes trying to fix a locomotive.  They are two different things, both accomplishing similar goals and you should keep this in mind when reading article or asking advice from trainers.

A good example of this is when Ryan Ford recently assigned "elbows-in" pushups because they were more "parkour-specific".  After hearing that, I asked him why he made such a claim and it seemed pretty sound to me.  A true professional trainer will not only enjoy answering these questions, they will likely be happy that you asked.  If your trainer gets upset by questions like this I would seriously question his experience and merit.

5) Setting Goals

This is pretty major.  Goals are pretty much the only reason any of us exercise.  Training is a means of achieving your goals.  For a long time I had no real goals, I just wanted to "look better" or "not be fat".  You run into this mistake with a lot of females, in my experience.  Their only goal is to "be skinny" and "workout without getting too big".  Setting quantifiable goals, a wide variety of them, will accelerate your training vastly whether you are male or female.

Firstly, setting goals gives you direction...it gives you something to achieve thats quantifiable.  It gives you something to check off a list.  Studies show that creating to-do lists, and then checking things off of it actually releases endorphins which heighten mood.  If you don't believe this, try it for yourself...you will notice that crossing something off your list actually does give you a little bit of a high.

This is what psychologists call "positive reinforcement" and is known as the strongest method of behavior modification.  We are modifying you as an athlete and your dedication to your training.  Taking advantage of your biochemistry and psyche is a great way to accelerate your training and keep you focused on an ever-changing list of achievements.  Before you know it, the list of goals gets tremendous and you learn tons of new things that you want to do -- but so does your list of goals that have been achieved. 

6) Keeping a Log

This is another one that is pretty major and often overlooked.  When you do finally set goals, how do you know when you have achieved them if you never write them down?  If you do write them down, but do not note your progress, how do you know that you are actually getting closer to your goal?  If you feel like you are on a hamster wheel in your training, looking back over your log is a great way to make sure that you are not just running in circle but actually progressing.

Another aspect of log keeping, especially in a skill sport like parkour, is often overlooked.  Recording your training in a log allows you to record how you have been FEELING during these workouts.  Sure, your day of training might have sucked, but you might have felt that you were not up to par that day.  Maybe you had a stuffy nose or you went on a bender the night before, which negatively impacted your performance.  It also lets you note how much fear and/or confidence you had that day.  All of these impact your training, which impacts you reaching your goals. 

Another benefit to keeping a log, especially if you maintain it on a forum, is that it leaves it open to critique and criticism.  At this point, you should understand that you WILL make mistakes.  Asking others, especially those with more experience than you, to review your logs allows you to get more detailed advice from them and achieve your goals faster.

7) Understanding What Workouts are Doing

It is extremely important to understand why you are doing what you are doing. 

Perhaps someone suggested that you do a 5x5 linear progression on olympic lifts.  Maybe another person told you to do a split routine including biceps curls, bench presses and front shoulder raises. 

Which one do you do?  What influenced your decision?

If you honestly don't know why you do the exercises you are doing, then I recommend that you STOP doing them until you figure that out.  A good example of this is wall sits.  Many people do this exercise, but why?  There are few, if any, situations where your body will be in this position functionally.  Yet many people train this, some of them with goals to hold wall sits for over an hour.  There are many workouts and goals like this.  If that is what you want to do, then more power to you, but you should understand WHY you are doing it. 

Once you identify why you are doing a certain movement, you should really validate that this movement/technique will actually help you achieve your goals.  This can be done by seeking out external resources and experts with more experience and stronger opinions than your own.

8) Thinking You "Know It All"

Once I started hitting some of my goals, particularly weight loss, I got into this mentality that I was awesome and if anyone needed advice they should come to me.  It took me being put in my place by quite a few people before I realized that I did not know it all.  I think this is just human nature, because since I realized the error of my ways, I have noticed this is a problem with many people. 

One thing to remember when giving advice is that there will be someone out there with more knowledge and information than you.  Unless you can back it up with solid facts, don't say it or pretend like you know anything about it.

Coaching people takes experience.  Not just experience doing something for yourself, but experience as a teacher, trainer and a solid understanding of what you are trying to coach.  A solid understanding denotes that you have examined multiple people from multiple angles enough to make a more broad generalization. 

At my current level of experience and understanding I do not consider myself any sort of authority in any aspect of fitness.  This is why I give most of my advice with the disclaimer that its based on my personal research and opinions rather than my professional knowledge.

This is something many people can, and will, learn the hard way.  The hard way means posting or speaking out in public and being put in your place brutally by someone who knows much more than you.  When this happens to you, then my advice is to embrace the moment, be humbled and hit the gym/library to learn more so it doesn't happen again.

9) Reinventing the Wheel

We see further ahead by standing on the shoulders of giants.  That is, we learn more by learning from those before us.  As I said before, there is no real reason to try and "invent" movements or ways of training.  Chances are, its been done before and has either worked or failed.  

It will save you a lot of time if you learn to ask the right questions and read the right articles so that you can stick with what has been shown to work, as opposed to trying new things that will just impede your training.  There is no reason to try and be a "revolutionary".....that is, until you have a better understanding of fitness as a whole, in which case revolution will likely happen on its own (i.e. CrossFit)

This is an awesome article.  It may have been stickied too soon, I didn't even notice it for a few days because I always look past the stickied threads since I have read them all already.  But anyway, it is an awesome article.  I especially like point #2, which is I think a problem a lot of people have (I know I have had that problem).  One of my favorite quotes about this subject is from Joe Friel (a well known endurance sports coach): "If daily arduous training was the key to victory, everyone would be atop the winner's platform".  A nice formula that I use to remember this point is "Fitness = Workout + Recovery", Remove either one and you will not be fit.

+1. Thanks! It's a great article. I'm copying it/ posting it over on HIpk. [Did - credited you. If that's a problem, I'll remove it.]

I still find myself making all sorts of mistakes. Here's the short list from this week
1) Train the basics. Landings, rolls... it's easy to get sloppy.

2) Train carefully when injured, but still train. With my first ankle injuries, I tried to train too hard, come back too fast. I reinjured myself. This time (ankle/feet) I backed way off. I got quite out of shape, and am really struggling to get to pre-injury levels.

3) Balance conditioning and parkour. Some weeks I work out, and do no parkour. Other weeks I do tons of parkour, but don't condition enough.

4) Learn the right lesson. There are usually several causes when something goes right. There are usually several causes when something goes wrong. Don't just go for the first, easy answer. There are usually a couple other things going on, as well.

5) Priorities. Figure out what's really important to you in life. Then figure out what part PK plays. When you know what you value, it makes decisions easier. A or B? Well, C brings me the direction I want to go.

6) Enjoy the process. It's easy to get focused on a goal, and miss the 'flowers' along the way. It's also easy to get distracted from your goal, and never accomplish it. Again, it comes down to your priorities. This path may be a distraction. This other may actually be better, bringing you closer to where you really want to be.

I definitely agree on the Priorities and Enjoy the Process points. I would also like to add:

Patience
In our excitement and enthusiasm for the new activity, we often want to achieve everything all at once. We may know in your heads that "it takes a long time," because that's what everyone keeps telling us, but we haven't yet learned from experience exactly how long "a long time" is. And since we are all different, "a long time" is different for everyone, and is something we all have to go through at our own speed. I don't just mean with the development of skills and the achievement of goals, but I mean also the sense that one's parkour is going the way we envisioned it when we started. I suppose in a lot of ways this overlaps with "enjoy the process," but I think patience plays a part.

Often we fail to see the small gains we are gradually accumulating over time, and we begin to think that things will "never" happen. For all our best intentions, very little of what we set out to do is within our control, and fighting it only wastes energy. Patience enables us to maintain consistency in our efforts, because it comes from a faith that when the time is right, with consistent effort, our work will bear fruit. Only the seed knows when it is time to sprout, despite the gardener's knowledge and skills, efforts, best intentions, and wishes for it to sprout.

This is something I struggle with very often, and I get discouraged much more easily than I probably should.

Thanks!  This is great but it looks like i'm off my Ahnold Terminator workout.