Real science has long settled that strength training is the single greatest form of exercise there is.

Improving your body composition by building muscle through resistance training improves so many markers of health beyond just looking better.

And the benefits grow exponentially the older a man gets if he continues to train consistently.

Here’s a list of benefits this fountain of youth provides put together by my favorite researcher in the field of nutrition, Alan Aragon:

Unfortunately, many men embark on their training journey without any guidance or coaching and end up either wasting a lot of time, missing out on a lot of the benefits listed, or in some cases even doing more harm than good by accumulating nagging injuries.

It doesn’t help that most “trainers” in the industry have very little knowledge of exercise science, basic physiology, or motor learning principles because the certifying bodies are just money grabs that don’t teach this stuff.

Dr. Doug McGuff, author of Body by Science, is even of the opinion that the fitness industry is one of the only industries to have moved backward in the last 30 to 40 years.

And I think I agree with him.

It would be dishonest of me to claim that I have never been tripped up by the common pitfalls I’m going to share.

But you can have the huge benefit of knowing to avoid these mistakes from my thousands of hours of personal experience, trial and error, research, and working with over a thousand different men at this point.

Here are the 5 most common mistakes men make when strength training and what you can do to avoid them:

1. Doing too much “junk” volume.

Doing set after set of a bunch of different exercises while not accumulating a sufficient amount of actual stimulating reps is probably the most common pitfall for men.

They are spending a lot of time in the gym, doing a lot of work, but it’s not productive because they’ve never experienced what taking a set to true task failure feels like.

Task failure is not simply when the weight stops moving or when you get uncomfortable.

There is an art form that in most cases must be taught to make sure you are reaching true failure and not just hitting a sticking point with the weight.

When you do lots of sets and reps without performing enough quality stimulating reps, you are just accumulating a bunch of fatigue, and possibly wear and tear to the body, while missing out on new strength and size gains.

Solution: Learn what true task failure is and how to reach it safely during an exercise.

Also, use appropriate rest intervals (2 to 3 minutes between work sets) to ensure motor unit recruitment stays high, which eliminates the need to do multiple sets in most cases, saving you time and making your workouts more efficient.

2. Spending too much time with the barbell

Barbells can be great tools.

And many of us were raised on the barbell because it has taken on some kind of “hardcore” reputation.

The barbell’s popularity is understandable because it is easy to load and measure progression, it’s used as a test of strength in sports like Powerlifting and Olympic lifting, and some exercises can be done to target every area of the body using just a barbell.

However, the barbell can break you down just as well as it can build you up if not used properly and with the right frequency.

I will go as far as to say that MOST men are not built to train using mainly barbell lifts.

The barbell forces your body into certain positions and doesn’t allow your joints to move freely as dumbbells, rings, or machines with pivot handles do.

Also, because of the barbell's reputation as a measurement of strength, men who otherwise train with good form often allow the ego to take over once a barbell lift gets challenging.

The temptation to start chasing numbers starts to overpower the responsible use of the barbell as just another tool to stimulate muscle growth.

Your muscles don’t understand the difference between a barbell, a machine, or even bodyweight exercises.

Muscles only understand opposing force and tension.

When a guy over 40 tells me he’s just going to train in his garage with only a barbell and a power rack I always squint as if I’m hearing nails on a chalkboard.

Most guys are simply not going to pull that off over the long term without the accumulation of injuries, not to mention mental burnout from just doing the same few exercises over and over.

3. Not tracking their progress

Effective strength training is as simple as this - new stimulus must be produced for the muscle in order for new positive adaptations to occur.

We must aspire to and record progress over time to ensure our training is working.

This is as important psychologically as it is physiologically.

To commit to a process it’s good to see yourself stacking up wins.

We follow this principle of progressive overload primarily by the following ways:

Improving technique
Doing more reps with a specified weight
Doing the same or more reps with an increase in weight

Most programs have men following randomized workouts, changing exercise selection too frequently, making progress almost impossible to track, and not allowing adaptations to occur.

I’m going to share the reason I think so many of these boot camp-style classes and programs do this -

When you constantly introduce new exercises, it caters to the ADD many people have and their desire for something new all the time.

But also, coaches and trainers often like to sell the idea that your workout should be judged by how sweaty and sore it makes you.

Soreness is just a by-product of muscle damage, which isn’t a stimulus in itself for muscle growth.

Solution: Keep a training log and aim to improve over time in a handful of exercises, only swapping out exercises once progress stalls, or you are mentally burned out from them.

Also, DO NOT judge the effectiveness of a program by how sore or tired it makes you.

Use the feedback in your training log and improvements in your body composition to judge the effectiveness of your program.

4. Training too explosively

There is an undying myth in the fitness industry and among sport coaches that if you perform an exercise in a slow and controlled manner it will make you slower in activities outside the gym as well.

This is a huge misunderstanding of motor learning, the law of specificity, as well as of how muscle force is produced and stimulated.

Because of this many coaches and trainers have their trainees performing exercises using rapid accelerations and exposing the joints and connective tissues to high external peak forces.

While muscle and strength can still be built this way, it is less efficient and is an unnecessary risk to health and longevity.

Even if a training method can make you stronger or more fit, if it does so at the expense of your health, it is no longer proper exercise.

There are many popular training methods out there that have men who have duties and obligations that they need preserve a healthy body for doing idiotic things like jumping over barbells, flopping on the ground, and doing “explosive” lifts that they have no need for.

Explosiveness, agility, quickness - these are all skill specific traits that are not general trainable factors of functional ability.

Only the strength that is involved in these tasks can be trained for.

Think about the skill of typing that many of you have developed.

You got quicker at doing it by practicing it, not by doing “explosive” exercises with your fingers.

Same goes with any other skill that requires quickness or explosiveness, like a proficient golf swing for example.

You can build the strength part of the power equation in the gym.

But the ability to express your strength quickly - which is the definition of explosiveness - requires proficiency at the specific skill you are trying to get more explosive with.

Solution: Learn to train with a controlled tempo (4/2 or 5/3), keeping continuous tension on the muscle, and with smooth changes of direction at end ranges.

A cue I find helpful is to think of “flexing” weight up to avoid jerking or rapidly accelerating it.

5. Not having a structure of accountability or training around other driven men.

The best thing a man can do is have a third place - not at work and not at home - where he is surrounded by other men who are on a path to success.

Men who share in common the unapologetic pursuit of excellence and virtue.

Men who are determined to win and become the best versions of themselves.

When I started San Benito Strength my primary mission was to make it a gym more in the tradition of gyms as they were created in ancient Greece.

The gym of ancient Greece was a place for men only, where they received training in physical exercise and also became a community for networking with other men, holding each other accountable, and sharing ideas and other pursuits.

This has been the most rewarding part of SBS for me personally - seeing the connections made.

Through our association, men have developed new relationships and even launched successful careers as a result of a contact being made.

Many men underappreciate this aspect of the gym that transcends training techniques and great programming.

An atmosphere with women cannot provide a value like this for men.

There is a need for men to have a third place like this that continuously pushes them to the next level.

This is why you are now seeing “Men’s Strength Camps” popping up as weekend events around the country.

Well, we were the first and not just for a weekend.

We are the first and last of our kind.

Solution: Stop training with your wife or girlfriend and get in a real gym. Don’t shy away from accountability from like-minded peers.

And get coaching to help you implement the solutions to these common mistakes so often made by men in their training.

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