If we had to sum up the most common goals, we’d say that people want to lose fat and gain muscle. This is often the main reason we go to the gym and what helps us stay focused during our workouts.

Weight loss is usually pretty straightforward since it mostly just involves watching what you eat. Gaining muscle is much harder because there are so many different ways to do it. Anyone can start lifting weights, but not everyone does it correctly to get the results they’re looking for.

In this article, we’ll go over the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to both execution and mindset. Both are important when it comes to building muscle. Everything affects this, and mistakes can have the biggest impact!

1 – Focusing on increasing rather than improving

It’s time to stop thinking about increasing and start focusing on improving! This means you’re looking at the situation the wrong way, and it can affect how you approach it, whether you realize it or not. These well-known terms encourage a mentality of pushing through a heavy movement at all costs without being aware of what you’re doing and perhaps sacrificing technique.

Things move slowly in this world. Even a small change will necessarily have a different impact than you expect. You have to be consistent and believe in yourself!

Everything comes in its own good time. It’s also worth noting that the amount of muscle you can gain isn’t always consistent, so you always have to push the muscles a bit more to keep them growing.

2 – Always do the same exercises.

It’s okay to stick with the exercises you know and love, but don’t make them your only go-to.

Changing up your exercise routine has some great benefits when you’re looking to gain muscle. One thing to keep in mind is that it helps to prevent muscles from getting stuck in a rut.

When muscles are used the same way over and over, they can become more resistant to injury.

Not all muscle fibers are the same length and different nerve branches often innervate them. Mixing up your exercises helps to change how your muscles are used, which is great for getting the most out of all your muscle fibers.

Your solution: Mix up your exercises throughout your training cycle. You can switch things up by changing the modality, training angle, plane of motion, and so on. This article explains muscle stagnation in more detail.

3 – Don’t isolate the muscle

There are two main approaches to choosing exercises. At one end of the spectrum are the compounders, who focus on making gains by performing exercises like squats and deadlifts. At the other end of the spectrum are those who say that the key to building muscle is to “isolate” muscles with exercises like biceps curls and triceps extensions. Who’s right? Both have some merit.

As it turns out, the two types of movements are complementary. Doing multiple exercises is a great way to gain muscle, so it’s very effective in aiding the process.

On the other hand, single-joint exercises let you focus more on individual muscles (or even parts of muscles), which helps with overall growth and symmetry. Mixing up your routine with a combination of both types of movements can have a beneficial effect on muscle size and balance.

Your solution: Your routine should include a mix of compound and isolated exercises. As a general guideline, each workout should include at least one or two core exercises and some isolation exercises.

4 – Too much cardio

Spending long hours on the treadmill or doing lots of cardio exercises won’t help you achieve your goal. What you should do is a weight training program combined with moderate doses of cardio. You only need a little since weight training also incorporates cardio exercises. In reality, what is recommended is a higher intensity and shorter duration.

Summary

To sum up, building muscle takes more than just lifting weights. You need to think carefully about how you do it and your mindset. Pay attention to form before focusing on lifting heavier weights. Mix up your routine with different exercises to keep your muscles from getting stuck in a rut.

Balance your training with both compound and isolation exercises to promote overall muscle growth and symmetry.