Let’s get one thing clear: there’s no such thing as truly being able to quickly gain muscle. No matter what you do, muscle growth will take a long time and require steady, continuous effort. At best, the physique you’re aiming for may still take months or even years to achieve. However, relatively speaking, if you want to gain muscle mass quickly, what you can do is learn how to maximize the quality and effectiveness of your workouts so you can build muscle as efficiently as possible.
In this post, I’ll discuss seven mistakes you’ll want to avoid in your workouts, as these can severely hinder muscle growth. I’ll explain why that is, and instead offer you a better approach that will help ensure that every workout is a productive one.
1. Doing Something Without Knowing Why
When you first start going to the gym, it’s great to experiment with different exercises and just try things out. But as you begin to develop and settle into a consistent routine, you should be deliberate about what you do and why you’re doing it.
Every exercise you do should have a purpose; at the least, you should know what muscles each of your exercises is supposed to target. Don’t just do something because you’ve seen other people do it, even though you have no clue what it’s for.
This is because if you don’t know why you’re performing a certain exercise and what muscles it should be training, chances are you’re not doing it very effectively.
2. Just Going Through the Motions
Yes, an exercise won’t be of value to you if you don’t know what muscles it’s targeting, but just knowing the purpose of an exercise also isn’t enough.
Oftentimes when you’re working out, especially with isolation exercises, you should actively focus on creating tension in the muscle you’re targeting. To make sure an exercise is actually contributing to muscle growth, you want to feel that the muscle is being engaged and exerted.
This connection between what you’re doing and what you’re feeling is known as the mind-muscle connection, and it’s very important because if you don’t feel the tension in the right muscle, then it’s probably not receiving enough stimulation to force growth.
3. Having Distractions in the Gym
As I just said, the mind-muscle connection can drastically impact how productive your workouts are, but developing and maintaining that connection during your training requires a lot of concentration. Therefore, you should try to minimize potential distractions that’ll take your mind away from the exercises you’re doing.
Having ongoing conversations with others, listening to music that’s too distracting, or even continuously looking around the gym while you perform an exercise are a few examples of things that can easily steal your attention away from what you’re doing. Mental distractions, such as being preoccupied with things in your school, work, or personal life, can also affect the quality of your workouts, so you should also always do your best to have a clear mind when you go to the gym.
4. Taking Advice from Others Without Fact-Checking
Contrary to what many beginners might fear, most gyms aren’t intimidating environments and the people there are actually pretty friendly. On occasion, you might even get some tips and advice from other lifters who are eager to help you improve.
While getting advice from others can be beneficial and should be appreciated, you also shouldn’t just take another person’s word at face value. Just because someone looks big and seems experienced doesn’t mean they necessarily know best.
They definitely don’t know your body like you do, so even if they give you suggestions from their own experience, that may not ultimately be the best approach for you, and it could end up drastically slowing your progression. Therefore, always listen to your own body and do your own research on any fitness-related topic.
5. Getting in a Partial Workout
I get it, life is unpredictable. Things get in the way, and sometimes that means you don’t always have time for a full workout. On those days when you’re short on time, you might think that it’s still better to do whatever you can, even if that means only getting in half of a workout. The truth, though, is that you’re probably better off not doing so.
Assuming you have an effective routine in the first place, it’s important that you always try to get through all the exercises in your routine when you train. Your muscles need sufficient training volume and exertion to achieve hypertrophy, but you won’t get that if you’re only doing a small selection of exercises. Because of this, gym sessions like these end up being a waste of time.
Instead, cardio and core-building exercises can be good for when you don’t have time for a full workout, but still want to get some exercise and activity in for the day. If you want to maximize the effectiveness of every strength-training session, however, I would hold off until you have enough time for a full workout.
6. Doing a Little Bit of Everything at Once
You should also refrain from trying to do a little bit of everything in one workout session. Similar to above, if you try to cover every muscle group at once, doing an exercise or so for each, the result is that you’ll only partially exert all your muscles without training any of them thoroughly.
As a result, this approach also won’t lead to meaningful muscle growth. Rather, develop and follow a set training split, where every session is dedicated to comprehensively working out a few specific, related muscle groups.
7. Trying New Things All the Time
When you’re still in the process of finding exercises you want to include in a consistent routine, you need to try various exercises to find what feels comfortable, what targets your muscles well, and what you enjoy doing.
In general, though, when you’re trying to build your strength and progress in the gym, you want to avoid switching up your routine too often. Once you have a routine, stick to it. This is how you ensure you’re consistently exerting the same muscles in the same way.
In comparison, constantly experimenting with new exercises means you’re always introducing new factors and recruiting muscles in slightly different ways, which makes it very difficult to actually achieve progress.
That being said, you’re not stuck with a routine forever. There are valid reasons for needing to change the exercises you do every now and then, which you can learn about in my post How Often Should You Change Your Exercise Routine?.
Mistakes Are OK as Long as You Learn from Them
Muscle growth simply can’t happen overnight, but for many people it can be especially challenging because they don’t train efficiently and effectively; even though they put in a lot of effort at the gym, not a lot of it ends up translating into actual muscle and strength development. If you want to gain muscle mass quickly, then the less time you waste doing ineffective things, the sooner you’ll see results.
The last thing I want to mention, though, is that if you’re just getting into working out, you don’t have to be too worried about building muscle as quickly as you can. Allow yourself time for experimentation and discovery. Make mistakes.
You don’t need to perfect the process from the start. It’s all part of learning something new, and over time, what you gain from your own experiences may help you more clearly understand what works best for you.
