6 Huge Mistakes Intermediate Athletes Make At The Gym

Overcome these mistakes to keep making gains and evolve athletically.

Have you been to the gym for a while now? Pay attention to these mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym that you should deviate from for your personal growth.

Remember when you first started going to the gym? So many new things to learn and so much muscle and progress you were making with little effort. Now that you’ve been to the gym for over a year or so, you are no longer a beginner, but rather an intermediate athlete.

And what does that entail? For one thing, you might be making some crucial mistakes that you could get away with as a beginner. But now you need to change that and that is what Dr Mike Israetel wants to help with.

Dr Mike Israetel has a PhD in Sport Physiology and is the co-founder of Renaissance Periodization, a YouTube channel focused on hypertrophy. He is the person many bodybuilders turn to when it comes to anything related to building muscle.

He shared a video explaining 6 huge mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym. Check it out below.

Here are the 6 huge mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym according to Dr Mike Israetel.

You were used to putting on 5 pounds on the barbell each week during training and kept getting stronger. That is no longer the reality. You simply can't continue making what bodybuilders call newbie gains.

Israetel advises you to add weight to the barbell every other week, instead of every week. On the weeks you don't add any weight, perform the same exact reps and sets as before but focus on getting the technique better and improving the mind-muscle connection.

Doing the same exercises as you were as a beginner doesn't pay off any longer. You should also try to change your technique.

"As an intermediate, you have to start to learn how to figure out your body and listen to its science and symptoms."

Keep focus on the amount of stimulus and if you feel the pump in the correct muscle after the exercise you are doing. Change appropriately if needed.

As a beginner, you don't need many exercises to build muscle. Sticking to compound movements, about 10 of them, is good enough to pack on serious muscle. Sadly, that is one of the huge mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym, staying with the same mentality later on.

Some exercises will begin to get stale on you as you become intermediate. As a beginner when training lower body, lunges and squats were all you needed for a full year. Now, perhaps, you need to do calf raises, split squats, leg presses, hack squats and more.

Another one on the list of huge mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym is regarding to volume training. Some go too hard, some go too easy.

You need to find out what is challenging for you and keep challenging yourself regularly to keep making gains in the gym.

Might sound backward, but too much mind-muscle connection can be daunting for you.

"As an intermediate, you need to be very concerned, with good technique, getting stronger over time," Israetel says. You need good technique with each exercise, of course, but you need to push the progression as you continue going to the gym.

Either add more weight, more reps, more workout sessions, or any of the other progressive overload techniques we talk about here.

Lastly in Israetel's list of mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym regards training programs shared online. Some are good, some are not, but most of them are likely not ideal for your growth.

That is because you are unique and you will have to learn how to adapt and modify a program or create a whole new one yourself.

And that was Dr Mike Israetel's list of 6 huge mistakes intermediate athletes make at the gym. Click on the video below for more detailed information from the man himself.

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