Everyone wants to know that they’re getting the most out of their precious gym time. And yet, many people are looking in all the wrong places to judge the success of their workouts.
Thanks to the popularity of intense training a la Crossfit or Orange Theory, the average gym goer has learned to associate good training with feeling sweaty, tired, and sore.
It’s fine to chase these things for their own sake if that’s fun for you. However, you will start to run into trouble if you seek out these tings because you think they will make you leaner or stronger.
Let’s take a look at what these markers really mean.
How sweaty you get.
Sweating is your body’s way of regulating its internal temperature. It has nothing to do with burning body fat or increasing your performance.
Getting sweaty just means you got hot. It doesn’t mean you made progress toward your goals.
How tired you felt after the workout.
Many of us equate feeling tired with being productive. In reality, being tired literally just means you’re tired!
You could wear yourself out and feel completely exhausted doing things that that don’t move you any closer to your goals (in fact, I see this all the time at the gym.
How sore you get in the following days.
It’s normal to feel some soreness in the days following a hard training session, especially if you’re new to the gym or reintroducing movements you haven’t done in a while.
However, you should actually expect soreness to decrease the longer you spend on a training phase.
Chasing soreness for its own sake is a great way to waste time at the gym by always bouncing around to new stuff and never taking the time to dig in and see how far you can progress with one set of workouts.
Unless your goal with working out is to feel tired and sore all the time, you need to look elsewhere to know whether or not your workout was productive.
These markers are infinitely more important and valuable than sweat, fatigue, and soreness:
- Lifting more weight
- Doing more volume (sets and reps)
- Improving your technique
- Improving your workout consistency
- Doing your entire workout and not skipping the things that aren’t as fun (like core training, conditioning, and mobility drills or foam foam rolling)
When in doubt, ask yourself if you are able to make some incremental progress after most of your workouts.
If the answer is yes, you’re moving in the right direction (even if you never feel exhausted or sore and barely sweat.)
If the answer is no – or if you recognize that you’ve been chasing fast-paced, sweaty, grueling workouts for their own sake – you have some work to do.
Not sure if what you’re doing at the gym is actually bringing you closer to your goals? I can help with that so you can stop spinning your wheels. Apply for my 1:1 coaching program here.