To improve your workout quality, avoid small mistakes that make you weak or low your rep count to bigger mistakes that completely ruin your workout. If you want to get optimal results from your workout, whether you are trying to burn fat or build muscle, you will benefit from this by avoiding the following before a workout.
Avoid Static Stretching
Ideal warm-ups such as dynamic stretching help improve agility and acceleration by moving muscles and joints lightly to improve muscle temperature and reduce muscle stiffness, leading to more oxygen supply to the blood, preparing the body for a more strenuous workout.
Static stretching involves moving a joint as far as possible and elongating a muscle, holding it in a stretch position for a given amount of time, usually 20 to 30 seconds, with little movement between stretches. Static stretches do the opposite and tend to harm the muscle’s performance if done before your workout.
Taking big meals
Having a good nutrient before a per workout is good for the body without starving yourself, but you don’t want to take big meals, especially too close to your workout routine, because during digestion, the body directs the blood flow directly to your digestive organs.
When exercising, your muscles’ blood flow is at competing odds with the digestive organ, both fighting for more blood flow. Neither gets the right amount of blood flow necessary, causing bloats, nausea, cramps, indigestion leading you to throw up and potentially reduce the ability to perform your best. Also, digestion requires a lot of energy, so it is good to take light miles before a workout.
Too much caffeine or pre workout
As caffeine is a ubiquitous and helpful supplement to take, it gives more energy. It enhances your performance and focus, making it the main ingredient in most workout supplements in the market. Taking too much may lead to contractions in your colon and induce bile production, causing a bowel movement.
You will tend to take more unnecessary breaks, also leading to rapid heartbeat, insomnia, anxiety, heartburn, increased blood pressure, and restlessness of the body. You must follow the recommended pre workout supplement intake and avoid too much coffee before and doing your workout.
Drinking alcohol
It is highly advisable not to take alcohol before a workout because it is a depressant. It will effectively slow down your focus, coordination, reaction time, and balance. It will render your training less effective, and it is much more dangerous as one misstep can cause serious injury if you are not careful.
Alcohol also tends to dehydrate the body. Since blood has alcohol, fewer nutrients and energy gets carried to your muscles, and fewer byproducts that create fatigue like lactic acid get carried away. Much of the alcohol gets to your torn-out muscles, which are not ideal for your recovery and workout results.
Taking pain reliever medications
Drugs cause a lot of hum and are not advisable to take before your workout regardless of how sore you are or how painful your back or muscles will feel afterward. An article shows that these drugs cause gut problems and intestinal injuries.
These can lead to injuries, and it makes sense not to take such drugs before and go on with the workout regardless of the soreness as the body will be slower to respond when pushing past your threshold, and if the condition is the server, you should skip the workout entirely.
Taking long naps
There is nothing wrong with taking short naps or breaks, although taking extended periods of sleep can adversely affect your general results. A 20 to 30 minutes power nap leaves your body feeling more energized and refreshed. However, sleeping longer will leave you feeling tired and lethargic worse than before taking a nap.
Hydrating too much water or starving yourself
Keeping hydrated is essential, although taking too much water before or during a workout may not be a good idea as you tend to cause more harm as you can feel nauseous and experience cramps throughout your workout. Take small amounts during your training.
Do not work on an empty stomach as this will tend to slow down your performance as you are burning more energy than needed causing fatigue.
Long cardio
Doing cardio as a warm-up before a workout causes harm because it reduces performance, leading to lifting lighter weights or lowering your rep. Glucose is the primary energy source when lifting weights stored in your muscles and liver in the form of glycogen.
When you do cardio before lifting weight, you end up burning most glucose that would have helped you during your workout, and you lack the energy to push during lifts.