1. Common Mistake: Failure to set goals. Do you exercise without a clear goal in mind? Having a clear goal set is a critical step in exercise and weight loss success.  Tracking your progress in a journal will help ensure you see your improvements, will help motivate you and help you meet your ultimate goal.

2. Common Misconception: No Pain, No Gain. Pain is your body’s way of letting you know something is wrong. Do not ignore this. When you go beyond exercise and testing yourself, you will encounter physical discomfort and need to overcome it. An example of this would be training for a marathon. It is important that you have the “base training” before getting into the advance training. The base training develops the body and gets it ready for extensive training. You need to learn to “read” your body. Is the heavy breathing because you are pushing your body or could it be the beginning of a heart attack. Exercise is important. Do it correctly and you can do it for the rest of your life.

It is normal for you to hurt after you exercise, but it must be done gradually with a good amount of rest periods to allow proper healing. There are two common problems here with beginning exercisers. You can cause long lasting damage to muscles, tendons and ligaments if you work out while you are in pain, without allowing enough rest time to heal. You might find yourself in constant and long lasting pain if you do this which means that you will no longer be able to exercise.

If you wake up the next morning after you exercised and can barely drag your aching body out of bed because everything hurts, you are going to be less motivated to exercise at all. Constant pain is a sure way to kill your exercise program.

3. Common Mistake: Sacrificing Quality for Quantity. When you are ready to increase the number of reps of a particular exercise, and strengthen the corresponding muscles, instead of forcing yourself to do a little more each time try decreasing the number of reps in a set but increase the number of sets. Also, back off to half your usual number of reps but add a couple of more sets. You will feel less tired and will be able to gain strength in your fast-twitch muscles.

4. Common Myth: Weight Training Makes Women Bulky. Weight training for a woman will strengthen and tone muscle, burn fat and increase metabolism, not build mass. Women do not produce enough of testosterone to build muscle mass the way that men do.

5. Common Mistake: Over-Emphasizing Strengths. You should start focusing on your points rather then what you are good at. This will help you balance things. For example, if your lower body is stronger than you upper body, then try to work only on this area one day a week.

Being smart about how you exercise will take you a long way. It is important to have a healthy body so get out there and start exercising today.

Aerobics are great for losing weight and staying healthy because they strengthen your breathing and heart as well as help you burn fat. However, many people don’t know or understand how to do an aerobics workout in order to best maximize the results. Intensity is a very important aspect of any aerobics workout, so if you want to get the most out of your aerobics, make sure that you’re following these three rules.

First, find that intensity that is your sweet spot. If you work out too intensely, you may injure yourself or will not see results. However, if you don’t work out intensely enough, you will lose any weight or grow stronger. Therefore, you have to work with a program that has just the right intensity for your. When trying new exercises, try to make sure that they include enough weights or speed to make the workout hard, but not impossible. Remember also that you will need to re-work the intensity of your workout as your tolerance and endurance increases, so take a look at your routine every week or two and make necessary changes.

The second rule is to intensity and your workout is to be safe. Over training is a huge problem because it puts you and those around you in danger. When you under train, you see no results, which may push you intensify. That’s good, but too much and you’ll be vomiting before the workout is over and possibly injuring yourself. If you are training properly, your muscles should be sore, but your joints should not. Never do an intense exercise in which you cannot control your form or breathing. Instead, take breaks and use lower weights or speed to get back on track. This method will help you get more out of your workout anyway. In any case, if you are injured during a workout, call for help immediately from those around you. It is a good idea to workout with a partner or to at least let someone know that you’re working out in case anything happens to you.

Lastly, build intensity instead of jumping into the deep end. When you are starting to exercise, you won’t be able to suddenly run the Boston marathon! Building up slowly will help prevent injury, as talking about in the second step, but it can also help you to not get frustrated. If you slowly build up your aerobics routine, you’ll be able to find success more readily.