As I mentioned a few posts ago I've now joined a gym so that I can use their cardio machines. I still do my weight training in my home gym.

Anyway, when you spend 30 minutes at a stretch pounding away on the elliptical it gives you plenty of time to be watch the other gym members going through their paces. For example, there's the chap who sets the weight on the lat pulldown machine so high that he literally gets his whole body pulled up on the recovery, then uses his body weight to get the next rep started.

However, there's one thing which I see absolutely no-one doing and it's something which is absolutely critical to a successful weight training programme. I've not a single person keeping a training log.

Whether you are looking to build strength or whether you want to build muscle bulk the key thing is progression. You should always be looking to do one more rep or to move up to a new weight once you have reached your maximum number of reps for that exercise.

Now clearly there will be some days and some exercises where your not at your peak and you can't manage this. However you should always be able to look back through your training log and see that you have made some good progress over recent weeks. If that's not happening then it's probably time to switch to a different exercise for that muscle group to get you out of the rut.