{"id":835810,"date":"2026-07-30T11:58:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/835810\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T11:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:58:22","slug":"fitness-expert-says-these-4-common-gym-mistakes-could-be-holding-back-your-strength-and-muscle-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/835810\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitness expert says these 4 common gym mistakes could be holding back your strength and muscle gains"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s nothing more frustrating than training consistently, putting in the effort at the gym and seeing little or no progress, says fitness expert Sarah Mackay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

‘Is it the programme, the food, or are you just built like this?’ she asked in a recent YouTube video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on some of her own mistakes over the years, Mackay shared the habits and training choices that held her back, along with the changes she made to break through plateaus and keep progressing.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, she says, the reason you’re not seeing results comes down to ‘four little mistakes you didn’t know you were making’.<\/p>\n

4 reasons you’re not progressing in the gym1. Pairing long, hard cardio with strength training<\/p>\n

When she first started training, Mackay bookended every strength session with cardio.<\/p>\n

‘I used to do at least 20 minutes of hard cardio either side of every lifting session,’ she reflected. ‘This left me with nothing to lift with, leaving the gym too flat to do anything with my day.’<\/p>\n

Now, she separates the two.<\/p>\n

‘I keep the hard stuff away from lifting [by doing] cardio in the morning and [strength] training in the afternoon, or vice versa,’ she explained. ‘Shorter or easier around your session is fine.’<\/p>\n

Research supports this approach. One systematic review <\/a>found that lower-body strength improvements were significantly greater when resistance training was performed before endurance exercise. On average, participants increased their lower-body one-rep max by 3.96kg more than when they completed cardio first. However, the order of training did not appear to affect improvements in aerobic fitness.<\/p>\n

2. Only doing ‘pump sets’What are pump sets?<\/p>\n

‘Pump sets’ is an informal term for resistance training designed to create a temporary muscle swelling known as ‘the pump’.<\/p>\n

As exercise scientist Brad Schoenfeld explains<\/a> in The Strength & Conditioning Journal<\/a>, this happens when exercise increases blood flow and fluid within the muscle.<\/p>\n

Pump sets typically ‘involve moderate to higher repetitions with limited rest intervals’, he says \u2013 usually around the 10\u201325-rep range.<\/p>\n

‘The veins taking blood out of muscles are compressed, whereas arteries continue to deliver blood into the muscles, creating an increased concentration of blood plasma,’ he continues.<\/p>\n

‘[This] results in a phenomenon referred to by sports scientists as “cellular swelling” and by bodybuilders as “the pump”, where muscles become engorged with blood [and fluid],’ he says.<\/p>\n

Pump sets are not a good indicator of muscle growth<\/a><\/p>\n

However, relying on pump-focused techniques such as drop sets<\/a> \u2013 where you perform an exercise to failure before reducing the weight and continuing \u2013 or supersets, where two exercises are performed back to back with little to no rest, is not the best way to judge muscle growth, warns Mackay.<\/p>\n

As Dr Milo Wolf<\/a>, a researcher and coach with a PhD in sports science, explains on YouTube<\/a>, we don’t yet know whether the pump directly causes greater muscle growth, and it is too subjective to be a reliable indicator of progress.<\/p>\n

‘The mechanisms regarding how much the pump actually matters for growth and why it does are still relatively poorly understood,’ he says.<\/p>\n

‘If one exercise gives you more of a pump and the other less, that is not a good reason to pick one exercise over another.’<\/p>\n

Instead, as Mackay advises, ‘keep your main strength training as basic working sets’, such as 3 sets of 6-12 reps.<\/p>\n

These are much easier to track because you can clearly record the weight lifted, the number of reps completed and whether you’re progressively overloading<\/a> by increasing the weight or reps over time.<\/p>\n

3. Spending more time warming up than working out\"not<\/p>\n

PeopleImages\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

‘The whole point of a warm-up is to prepare your body for training by increasing blood flow and helping you practise the movement, not to tire yourself out,’ says Mackay.<\/p>\n

‘Performing your session with a bit of cardio or using lighter weights to warm up to your working sets is generally all you need.’<\/p>\n

For an effective warm-up, combine some general movement with specific warm-up sets of the exercise you’re about to perform. One study<\/a> published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that people who spent 20 minutes on a stationary bike before completing warm-up sets of the leg press improved their one-rep max more than those who only performed leg-press warm-up sets.<\/p>\n

4. Only focusing on protein<\/p>\n

Protein is important, but its benefits plateau once you’re consuming around 1.6-2.2g per kilogram of body weight, says Mackay.<\/p>\n

‘Carbs, however, give you energy to train and make sure you have enough energy throughout the day. So, prioritise them. Time to carb load,’ she advises.<\/p>\n

One of our most frequently asked questions here at Women\u2019s Health? How to build muscle and burn fat at the same time. So, we asked superstar trainer Oyinda Okunowo<\/a> exactly how to do it. In this 4-week plan \u2013 created exclusively for Women\u2019s Health COLLECTIVE members \u2013 you\u2019ll get the workouts and nutrition guidance needed to help you on your way to better body composition. Tap the link below to unlock 14 days of free access to Oyinda’s plan and start training today.
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Get the plan<\/a><\/p>\n

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