When starting a fitness goal that includes joining the gym and adding both strength training and cardio machines to your training time, your workouts can look many ways. People who join a gym in order to add resistance and cardio training often start out using weight machines, dumbbells and even barbells. However, depending on your athletic history and workout experience, you might find yourself making many of the following mistakes.
1. Not Having a Plan
Going into the gym without knowing what you want to do or how many sets and reps you'll do is an ineffective way to invest your time. A common routine for beginners is to do a full-body day three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), with cardio and core days on Tuesday/Thursday in between. Simply breaking it down with this general training plan is a start. Get specific exercise choices, and do 3 sets of 10 reps. Follow up any resistance training with 15-20 minutes of cardio time and stretching to cool down. See ideas for a full-body beginner plan.
2. Skipping Warmup/Cooldown
When your body is not used to exercise, the need for warmups and cooldowns is even more elevated. Cold muscles and joints are more prone to injury when you skip a warmup before the actual workout. Likewise, the stiffness and soreness the following day after a workout can be reduced by adding a cooldown period. See related article on warmups/cooldowns.
3. Poor Technique
Once the workout begins, the next mistake is doing exercises with poor form. Bad form is one of the biggest causes of injury and will delay progress in reaching your goals, so learn how to do any new exercise you attempt. Get coaching help. Or if no coach or trainer is available, watch technique videos. Video yourself doing the exercise so you can compare good/bad form.
4. Never Changing Routine
Repeating the same workout week after week may be good for the first few weeks to master the exercises' technique, but eventually, you will want to make changes. You may not need to adjust the hard-learned exercises; just change the order and add weight, sets and reps. Progress tends to stall as you get used to the same old thing.
5. Ignoring Recovery
Our two best recovery tools are nutrition and sleep. You need good fuel for good energy to add fitness to your day. But you also need good food and drink to recover from the day's stress, whether from exercise or life in general. The better you eat and sleep each day, the more energy you will have to train tomorrow.
Keep the workouts you start doing simple at first. Make progress with proper technique, pace, weight and reps. Keep cardio low-intensity and low-impact to build a foundation for your aerobic activity. In fact, the 2026 American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recently updated its physical fitness guidelines. This is the first update in 17 years! They now emphasize that sticking to your routine and enjoying your workouts matter more for lasting health than having a flawless or intricate plan. Consistent resistance training, even with basic options such as body weight or resistance bands, leads to greater progress than occasional bursts of intense exercise. Check out the Military.com Fitness Section for hundreds of workout articles and tips to stay consistent with your training.
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