5 habits that negatively affect your workout results

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

How you behave in everyday life directly affects your performance in the gym. These five habits can negatively impact your performance and even increase your risk of injury.

1. Sleep on your stomach

Sleeping on your stomach creates excessive lower back flexion, and because you cannot sleep with your face in the pillow and turn your head to one side, your neck muscles become overly tense. If you sleep like this every night for many years, the compression and pressure will cause degenerative processes in the spine that cause various posture problems and back pain.

Also, this position during sleep can lead to a reduction in the range of motion and irritation of the nerve roots. With a reduced range of motion, you will not be able to maintain correct technique for many exercises, from squats and deadlifts to lifting free weights over your head.

How to solve the problem

Your bed and pillow should help you maintain a natural body position while you sleep. Train yourself to sleep on your back or on your side, choose a pillow with which your neck will be flush with your back.

Also pay attention to the mattress. It should not be too soft, so that your back does not sag and collapse during sleep.

2. Warm up the neck until it crunches

When you sit in one position for a long time, and then stretch and sharply turn or tilt your head to the side, you can hear a crunch.

This habit is detrimental to your neck. And it's not even about the sound that occurs due to small air bubbles in the synovial fluid, which burst during a sudden movement. The main danger is that you strongly and inaccurately affect the neck - a rather fragile part of the human body.

Sharp movements stretch the ligaments of the neck, which over time can result in hypermobility of the cervical spine. This disrupts the mechanics of movement of the upper back and can result in neck injury during weight-bearing exercise.

How to solve the problem

If your neck is stiff, do not crunch your joints, but do a gentle warm-up or use a massage ball to work out the trigger points. We have already told you how to stretch and relax your neck after a long time working at the computer.

3. Grinding of teeth

Grinding your teeth can lead to temporomandibular joint dysfunction. To fix the damaged joint, hypertonicity of the masticatory and sternocleidomastoid muscles occurs, the tension is transmitted to the trapezius muscles.

Muscle hypertonicity can result in pain in the neck, shoulders and thoracic region, as well as cause disturbances in posture: scoliosis, instability of the sacroiliac joint and other problems.

These changes and pains will not allow you to give your all in training and get the maximum benefit and pleasure from them.

How to solve the problem

See your dentist. He will check the bite and advise on what to do to get rid of the bad habit of grinding your teeth.

Track when you start to clench your jaw, which makes you tense so. Try yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises to relieve tension.

You can also try massage. Lie on your side and place a tennis ball under your cheek for two to three minutes. Constant pressure will cause the muscles to relax.

4. Prolonged sitting

Our bodies are not designed to be seated all the time, but the modern lifestyle forces us to spend long hours in a work chair. Because of the seated position, the hamstrings and some of the hip flexors become shorter, and the muscles that support the back weaken over time.

Weakness of the muscles, especially the gluteal muscles, causes the pelvis to move forward, which creates unnecessary compression of the lumbar vertebrae. Also, when seated, the head and shoulders often move forward. The fascia fixes the wrong position of the body, it becomes habitual.

These posture problems are not only bad for your health, but also for your workout: tight and shortened thigh muscles spoil your technique. For example, when doing the deadlift, you will not be able to tilt your core enough without rounding your back, which can lead to injury.

How to solve the problem

Try to get up and move whenever possible. Try switching from your regular workplace to a standing workstation, and get a small glass of water to get up and walk up to the cooler more often.

Taking a walk at lunchtime, getting into the habit of getting up when on the phone, going outside during the workday for a breath of fresh air - all these small breaks will help you maintain your posture and health.

It is also important to take care of your workplace: your chair should support your back well and fit your height. Learn how to create the perfect workplace here.

5. Inability to move correctly

Exercises from your workouts are often found in real life. For example, when you lift a heavy object off the floor or chair, your body performs the same movements as during the deadlift.

Lifting weights in the wrong way (round back, outstretched arms, no squat) creates a habit that carries over into your workouts. This increases the risk of injury, especially when lifting heavy weights.

How to solve the problem

Learn to move correctly both in the gym and in everyday life. Work with a trainer or learn the correct technique from articles and videos, and then transfer your knowledge into everyday life.

Never lift things, even fairly light ones, with a round back, do not roll your knees inward when stepping onto a chair or lifting with a heavy object in your hands. By forming a habit of correct movement in everyday life, you save yourself from both domestic injuries and injuries in the gym.