5 Common Fitness Habits That Can Hinder Your Exercise Goals

Common Fitness Habits that Can Prevent You from Reaping Maximum Results

November 15, 2013 | 26,214 views

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By Dr. Mercola

When it comes to creating a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, your habits can literally make or break you. Setting good habits from the start can save you a lot of frustration and wasted time down the road.

Two featured articles address some of the detrimental exercise habits many get trapped in, and a third article offers up helpful tips to improve your workout.  I’ll summarize some of these here, and focus on what I believe are the most important parts of a healthy fitness routine.

Busting Bad Fitness Habits

Prevention Magazine¹ and fitness trainer Jillian Michaels² recently wrote about common fitness habits that you would be wise to reconsider, if you want to improve your results.

This includes:

1. Avoiding exercise due to sore muscles—More than likely, you’ve at some point experienced the muscle soreness that sometimes follows a new or vigorous workout, called DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness).
   Tempting as it may be to coddle and rest your sore muscles, recent research³ has found that exercise using light resistance actually provides acute relief similar to that of massage.
2. Ignoring severe pain — On the other hand, ignoring messages transmitted through sharp pains is not to be recommended either.
   Pushing through pain can result in hard-to-heal injuries, so always listen to your body. Pain can signify that you’re doing an exercise incorrectly, so make sure to pay attention to your form.
3. Staying within your comfort zone— This is a critical flaw of any fitness regimen. Without variety and challenge, your body will quickly adapt and plateau.

continue to 5 Common Fitness Habits That Can Hinder Your Exercise Goals