For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Health Issues page.

Exercise can reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, and depression, and it can increase your energy levels, help you think clearer, and even slow down the aging process. However, there are pitfalls that can hamper your workout progress.

I was guilty of mistake #3 and #4 below. For thirty years, my only form of exercise was long distance running with little to no strength or interval training.

As noted in the featured CNN article,1 your setbacks may be due to certain bad habits, and by nipping them in the bud you can start reaping results again. Here, I’ve chosen seven common mistakes that may be thwarting your fitness efforts.

Mistake #1: Skipping the Warm-Up

While you
can get away with skipping the warm-up when you’re doing a low to moderate impact workout, not warming up can easily lead to injury when you’re doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises, especially sprinting.

As noted by John Paul Catanzaro, a Certified Kinesiologist and exercise physiologist, it takes
10-15 seconds of muscular contractions to raise your body temperature by 1°C, and a proper warm-up should raise your body temperature by 1-2°C (1.4-2.8°F).

This is enough to cause sweating, and is really all that’s required in terms of warm-up. So, all you really need are a few repetitions of motions that increase the blood flow to the appropriate muscles. Aerobic activity isn’t necessary, and will actually take longer as its target is non-specific.