Training smart is all about moderation. A lot of people hear a good piece of advice, and take it to the extreme, thus eliminating any benefit that piece of advice might have had in the first place. Here are a few examples of doing this kind of activity, and what you should do instead to get to your fitness goals faster.

1. Eating Tons of Protein

There's no denying that your muscles need protein in order to get larger. But it's fairly easy to go overboard in this regard. In fact, you down a ton of eggs, take protein supplements, and eat a bunch of fish, most of the protein is actually going to just get converted into fat. You should take it easy, and only really eat about a gram of protein per pound of body weight.

2. Focusing Mostly on Cardio

A smart exercise program has to be about balance. If you do nothing but cardio, or almost nothing but cardio, your body will turn to your muscles for fuel, and your muscles will shrink. And you need your muscles to keep your metabolism up. Cardio is certainly important if you looking to lose weight, but doing only cardio will get your frustrated with your routine fast. If you are serious about losing the flab, pick up some weights.

3. Overtraining

In our country, where the majority are overweight, this might be considered a small problem when you look at the big picture. But it does happen to the occasional over zealous exerciser. Just remember the old mantra ?your muscles grow outside of the gym, not inside of it.? What that means is that if you really workout hard, you don't give your muscles a chance to rest and grow.

4. Taking Long Breaks Between Sets

Workouts are divided up into sets for a reason. You have to take small breaks in between each set in order to get enough strength to do enough weight training. But muscles can recover remarkably fast, and need less time you think to be good to go for the next set. Having a relatively short rest time can even increase your testosterone production, which will help build muscle, and maintain your core temperature, which will help you burn fat.

5. Using a Lot of Machines

Superficially, using weight-training machines seem almost exactly the same as exercising with free weights. I mean, your muscles experience the same amount of resistance, so it works them the same amount, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Weight machines can even fail to work certain muscles, specifically, the ?stabilizer muscles? that always get worked when using free-weights. When you use weight machines, you hit a plateau fairly quickly, but free weights, if you are training with proper technique, will almost always help you keep progressing.

6. Doing Stretches in the Middle of a Workout

Stretching before a workout is good, because it gets you loose. And stretching after a workout is good, because it helps clear your muscles of lactic acid. But taking a break to stretch in the middle of the workout can actually temporarily make you weaker. So save the stretching for before or after.