posted Wed, 09/09/2026 - 22:37
208
+ 3 What’s the biggest mistake you made in your first few years of training?
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Looking back, what’s one thing you wish you had done differently when you first started training?
Could be training, diet, recovery or just bad advice you followed for too long. Curious what the experienced guys here would change.
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Dropped a vial of stano 30ml after only 1 pin. Very painful
Ego lifting, lack of intensity, diet.
Just because I could move 405lbs, doesn’t mean I was getting what I wanted out of it.
Put it this way, are you using the weights or are the weights using you?
Are you using the weights to generate to proper stimulus or are the weights just using you for a ride form point A to point B?
The weights used me. That and I was just eating intuitively. If I was trying to grow I’d stuff my face until I felt like throwing up 1-3 times per day. If I was trying to lean out, I’d eat next to nothing.
Once I got training and diet figured out, everything changed. Imagine that
“Are you using the weights, or are the weights using you?” - that’s actually a great way to put it. A lot of people chase numbers for years before realizing stimulus matters more than just moving weight. What change in your training made the biggest difference once that clicked?
Waaay too much volume, as time goes on I do less and less and get more and more results.
I'm down to 2 working sets per excercise taken to near or at failure, and depending on my recovery between 8-14 total working sets per session.
More was definitely less in my case.
Also taking a lot more rest days, or active rest days of just cardio and stretching. Trying to push while tired had me in a constant loop of getting viruses, even now I get a fever/sore throat/body aches most months.
The second I feel a twinge in the throat or have a fever I pound some food and lay in bed as much as possible, sleep 10 hours, whatever I can to recover and it usually passes within 24 hours. Used to keep training and end up properly sick for a week or more.
A big one for me was doing failing to connect with the target muscle. Bench pressing for me was a front delt movement and pull ups were a biceps exercise. For the pull ups, it was just bad form and with the bench press, I have to adjust my form and be hyper focused due to my personal anatomy. These are two examples of many.
That’s a big one. I had the same issue with certain movements - technically doing the exercise, but the target muscle barely felt involved. Once you start adjusting technique around your own structure instead of copying someone else’s setup, a lot changes.
Ive got the same problem with bench, its all front delts.
I've gone and asked a big powerlifter at my gym to help me and its starting to improve. Focusing on "bending" the bar and doing some pull-ups pre bench helps.
He's got me squatting, deadlifting and benching with next to no weight a few times a week to really lock in form and it was probably the best thing I could have been pushed towards.
100% over training and under recovering. Ultimately probably what lead to me fucking my back up deadlifting a few years ago. To many max effort 1-3 rep sets and not giving myself nearly enough time in between sessions to fully recover after that level of fatigue I was causing. Significantly smarter about my training these days.
I went to the gym for a little over a year with no plan and mostly machines. I was also going 7 days a week. I made 0 progress but I did lose weight. Found westside method, trained 3-4x a week, wrote everything out and within 7months I was at a 285 bench 485 dead and 495 squat.
Probably recovery. I used to think more training always meant more progress. Took me way too long to realise sleep, rest days and consistency matter just as much.
Same here. I used to think more volume automatically meant more progress. Once I started taking recovery and sleep seriously, everything became way more consistent.
Watching too many of these fitness influencers trying to tell you how to do everything perfectly. I've realized that 95% of it is showing up and doing the exercises.. once you're in a habit then slowly optimize if you want.
But after a certain point over complicating gives severely diminishing returns
Yeah, I agree. Consistency beats trying to make everything perfect. Most people would probably get better results just by showing up, training hard and sticking with it long enough.
Is there anyone here with a lot of experience who’d be willing to share their progress and results over the years? I’d be interested to hear what worked best for you and what made the biggest difference long term.
I’d be interested in this too. Especially from people who’ve been training for 10+ years — what actually mattered most in the long run: training style, food, recovery, consistency, or just learning what works for your own body?
Yeah, exactly. I’ve noticed the same thing — once I stop chasing numbers every session and focus more on tempo and control, the target muscle actually does more of the work. Sometimes dropping the weight a bit gives a much better session than forcing extra reps.
I find what happens is if I have a target number of reps that I tell myself I have to get for the set to be a success - then all the initial reps get rushed and manipulated in order to stagger out the energy and strength needed for that extra rep at the end and the contraction quality is lost - So you are best saying to yourself quality reps are all that count and if the extra rep comes at the end then great, if not then it will the next session.
Focusing on pushing heavier weight instead of making the muscle do the work
Not training small muscles like side/rear delts often enough
Guilty of this too, my quads overpower hamstrings and calves so much
Starting gear before I learned how to do it naturally.
Prioritizing gains > health. And going with cheaper/harsher compounds > less toxic. Wish i discovered primobolan earlier in life.
Not listening to my body even though it was telling me I was in pain. The idiot I was would say “fuck that keep training, and don’t be a pussy!” Biggest mistake ever…listen to your fucking body when it’s giving warning signs.
100%. I used to try to push through the pain on an exercise because that's what was in the program I wrote for myself. Now if something feels off by my last warm-up set, I switch exercises.
Same, if something is weird feeling during warmup well that's a wrap! I go and hit something else entirely.
I was actually pretty proud of myself on my last leg day where I was about to do my first set of leg press but my lower back was still feeling off. Unloaded all the weights and moved over to hack squat and ended up having a killer leg day. So now I'll continue to hack squat until my knees tell me otherwise lol
Agree totally - taking extra time off to heal pain is A LOT more productive than continually battling through it, all you are doing is making the injury progressively worse. Healing it up and restarting is what keeps you injury free - especially with tendons because eventually those little microtears all add up to one BIG tear in the end.
By backing down from a lift and saving your self from a possible injury, it saves you so much time in the future and protects all your hard earned gains.
Chasing the log book, I’ve started lowering the weight and slowing down reps and I’m significantly more sore in the targeted muscles
Very guilty of this too - continually trying to better numbers and reps each session over time ends up in shite to zero muscle contraction or control.