Stop These 10 Bad Habits To Achieve Your Dream Body & Health Goals 10x Faster

I started my fitness journey 4 years ago and have spent over 1,000 hours training in the gym.

I’ve made so many mistakes over this time and fostered bad habits in the past which severely limited my progress in the gym, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.

Here are the 10 bad habits you need to STOP to achieve your dream body & health goals 10x faster:

1️⃣ Sacrificing your sleep:

For work, watching Netflix, doom-scrolling on social media, or even for socializing.

Your bedtime should be an absolute non-negotiable if you want to improve your body composition & progress in your training.

Go to bed at the same time every night & wake up at the same time, this will ensure you’re setting a consistent sleep-wake cycle.

2️⃣ Changing up your workout routine all the time:

If you want to measure real progress, you can’t be changing your exercises every week or even every month.

Stick to the same movement patterns for AT LEAST 6-8 weeks before reassessing through either testing your 1RM or 3RM in that movement.

Real progress is seen by repeating & progressing with the same movement patterns for an extended period of time.

3️⃣ Not meal prepping for the week:

Whether your goal is weight loss or weight gain, you can’t accurately track your intake if you don’t control what you’re eating.

Plus, prepping your lunches & dinners can save some serious 💰💰 over the course of a year compared to eating out all the time.

4️⃣ Drinking alcohol after work:

This is a serious gainzzz killer!

Alcohol can:

• Wreck the quality of your sleep.

• Disrupt muscle protein synthesis (muscle building).

• Promote poor nutritional choices.

No, you don’t need a drink to ‘destress’ after a long day at work. Replace this with taking a walk outside.

5️⃣ Skipping your cardio all together:

There’s no point in being jacked if you get puffed walking up one set of stairs.

Good cardiovascular fitness is essential for your overall health, and can potentially extend your lifespan and decrease your mortality risk.

6️⃣ Not being present during your training sessions:

Without your full focus, you won’t work as hard during your sets. Limit distractions, keep your phone out of the gym & focus on being fully present.

Set your playlist before you enter the gym so you don’t fiddle around with changing the songs.

Being present & focused is essential for keeping the intensity high.

7️⃣ Setting big goals without making a plan to achieve them:

Create process-driven goals to ensure you complete the actions required to achieve your big goal.

For example, if you’re trying to gain muscle mass:

• “I will consume X amount of calories daily, and ensure I track this every day on MyFitnessPal to make sure I’m hitting my calorie target.”

8️⃣ Not keeping a record of your training sessions:

You’re not going to remember what you did in your last training session. What gets measured, gets managed.

Write down:

• Exercises completed

• Reps, sets, rest times

• Exercise tempo

• Subjective notes of how you felt during the session

9️⃣ Succumbing to ‘shiny object syndrome’

Don’t replace your basic compound exercises with a cool new exercise you saw on Instagram. Don’t change your diet to try a new fad diet you read about on social media.

Develop a sensible plan suited to your goals → Be disciplined & relentlessly consistent with following it.

🔟 Comparing yourself to others:

Everyone is on their own health & fitness journey. We are all individuals, with different bodies which respond to different stimuli.

Only compare yourself to how YOU were yesterday/last week/last year.

A good way to overcome this is to regularly track your own progress → Through physique photos, taking body measurements, and strength & fitness testing (3RM, 1RM, 12-minute run test).

Thats it!

Reply to this email if you’re struggling with any of these bad habits & I can help you out!

Thank you for taking the time to learn & improve your health today.

Zak Wolstenholme

Aussie Physiotherapist 🇦🇺