Fitness mistakes by patients
By Doctor Mike
Weight loss isn’t just exercise
Think holistically: Recovery, sleep, exercise, nutrition
70%-80% of weight loss comes from nutrition alone.
Spot reduction is a myth
A study with tennis players showed that, even though the dominant hand may have more muscle mass, both arms had the same amount of body fat. In general, you can’t control where fat will be reduced. All you can do is exercise to build up muscles in different areas.
Stick to fundamentals, not fads
Do some cardio with compound weight lifting exercises. Mix in other activities: rock climbing, ice skating, biking, swimming, basketball.
Keep your workouts simple enough so that you can do them consistently.
Consistency is the key to success (that and exercising correctly with proper form).
You don’t need supplements
Supplements make marginal improvements. It’s more important to start and maintain a consistent work out schedule than to worry about supplements. Once everything else is under control, supplements may help you get the small gains they provide. Use protein powders, creatine, or caffeine to improve performance.
Let go of the treadmill
Don’t hold on. It causes bad posture and doesn’t allow your core muscles to stabilize your movement.
Don’t obsess about numbers
Calorie counting and steps in a day can be used to keep track of progress, but don’t use them as your primary source of motivation. They are just numbers. As long as they indicate you’re headed in the right direction, listen to your body. Adjust depending on how your body feels (mostly). Again, consistency.
Repeated bout effect
I need to investigate more, but it seems that the body will get used to muscle activity so that you no longer feel as sore even if you continue to exercise the muscles.
I think this means that even if you feel sore, you should exercise lightly to foster active recovery. The additional exercise will increase blood flow to help repair muscle and tissue damage.
When starting, don’t go hard to start
This increases risk for injury, affects motivation, and may hurt you too much to consistently workout. If a trainer makes you go really hard at the beginning, the trainer isn’t training properly.
Go hard enough to cause some soreness, but don’t sacrifice proper form.
Stretching
Don’t do ballistic stretching. It causes a stretch reflex. Do a proper warm up to get blood flowing. Stretches should be done at the end of the workout.
Do strength training
A study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showed that endurance athletes could improve oxygen and energy use by adding “’explosive’ heavy-resistance training”. But allow proper recovery between different workouts.
Benefits:
- increased metabolic rate
- increased bond density
- improved hormone profile
- improved posture
- improved sleep
- improved strength
- improved balance
Have adequate recovery
Overtraining and lack of sleep can lead to chronically elevated levels of stress hormones (e.g. cortisol) which can also affect immune responses.
- Rest (time off or reduced activity)
- adequate protein
- enough sleep
- hydration
5 narcissistic résumé mistakes to avoid
No objective; use headline
You need to show that you satisfy the job requirements as soon as possible. Create a short statement that broadly references your background.
Example: Connecting talented people with jobs they love
Long bullet points; shorten them
Try to limit to two lines or less.
Remove any unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. The goal of a resume isn’t to tell your entire career story; you just want to hit on a few key points and qualifiable accomplishments that reflect your strongest skills.
Lots of font styling; keep it simple
Using too much styling can make the reader feel they are being treated like a child. Unless you’re a graphic designer that needs to show this skill, limit font styling to bold sections. Even then, using too much can show you don’t have good taste.
Don’t underline or italicize anything. Only bold section headers and job titles so that the reader can easily follow your career progression. Use clean-looking fonts such as Calibri, Helvetica, Arial or Times New Roman.
Multipage resume; keep it under two pages at most
If you have extensive experience, having a two page resume is ok. But try to limit to key skills and highlights. A resume should be the executive summary of your curriculum vitae that is relevant to the job.
If you’ve held a lot of previous jobs, consider removing any that are unrelated to the one you’re applying for. Positions that are too entry-level compared to your current experience level (e.g., a high school job or college internship) are also unnecessary if you’re struggling to keep your resume to one page.
Including a headshot; in the U.S., just don’t
You don’t want to distract the reader or make, for better or for worse, the reader unnecessarily discriminate or create false first impressions about you.
Most impressive resume
- Easy to read (even though two pages from candidate with more than 10 years of
experience)
- Plenty of whitespace
- Good overall style (fonts, line spacing)
- No typos
- It told a story
- No information gaps
- Clear career progression
- Listed accomplishments rather than responsibilities
- Instead of “expanded operations to international markets,” say“expanded operations to eight new countries in Latin America.”
- It told the truth
- Everything was believable and didn’t seem exaggerated
- Employers will fact check
- It didn’t use clichés
- It used specific examples
- Instead of “excellent communicator,” say “presented at face-to-face client meetings and spoke at college recruiting events.”
- Instead of “highly creative,” say “designed and implemented new global application monitoring platform.”
- It came through a recommendation
- A referral is the most effective way to get your resume noticed
- If you don’t have a connection, do some research and find any kind of connection. Try to establish a genuine connection and see if they will refer you.