HOW SORE SHOULD YOUR WORKOUT MAKE YOU?
We just finished an awesome leg day workout, we went in and got our butts kicked. We are covered in sweat and feel accomplished! It’s the next day and we are SORE, going to the bathroom is painful, the idea of going up a set of stairs terrifies you, and it’s only going to get worse tomorrow.
You are really feeling the soreness of your workout, and have another leg day coming up in just two more days. We tell ourselves that getting sore and sweaty is a sign of a good workout. We work really hard day in and day out, countless hours of working out, and yet, we are haven’t made much progress in a couple of months.
Let’s learn more about how we can achieve our goals quicker, with doing less.
Are you doing this for your workouts?
Your current workout might consist of the following, Monday is chest day, Tuesday is leg day, Wednesday is back day, Thursday is leg day, and Friday is arm and abs. This style of working out is a good starting point for beginners, especially when you are new to working out. It gets us sore and sweaty, and does the job for our fitness goals.
This style of working out is good, but in long-term, won’t be as beneficial to us as it was when we first started. We begin to lose motivation, life gets busy and we cannot workout as much as we used to, we are not recovering as quickly as we want from our workouts, and we begin to lose interest.
Before we talk about how you can get results quicker, faster, and sustainable let’s cover two things.
Things that don’t determine a good workout.
Soreness and being sweaty is not a sign of a good workout. What did you say?! Take a second to let that sink in. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but let’s talk about why these two things are not a good way to measure your workouts.
We get into the mindset that we need to break our bodies down and be a puddle of sweat in order to get the body we want. The phrases “no pain, no gain”, “sweat is fat crying”, “no excuses” are outdated and need to be taken out of your vocabulary.
I can guarantee that you can get better results with doing less. First, we need to understand why we need to take these phrases out of our mindset.
Our Rebell Savannah working on back squats.
You do need to work hard, but not all the time, we want to remember this, the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule is that you go in and give 80% of what you have and keep 20% in the tank. The reason we do this is because we want to save some for tomorrow. If you are consistently going 100% all the time, you are destroying your own progress to achieve your goals. You don’t need to punish your body to get results.You can do it here and there, but not every day.
What to do instead?
So now that we are considering taking out the idea of not getting sore and super sweaty in our workouts, how do we measure progress or a good workout? This won’t be easy at first, but if you ware wanting to get serious results and do this for the long-term we need to do less.
By doing less, you focus on the things that are important and the things that truly matter in your workouts. You can save time and literally days to your life by doing less and following this format for your workouts.
Squat (any type of squat you want)
Hinge (think Deadlifts and RDL’s)
Upper Body Push (Bench Press, Kettlebell Presses)
Upper Body Pull (Bent Over Rows, Chin Ups)
Core/Carry (Farmer Walks, Planks)
Single Leg (Reverse Lunges, Single Leg Hip Thrusters)
Mobility (Wall Slides, Leg Raises)
If you do these 7 movements 3 times a week, with 5-10 minutes of cardio, you have covered all of your fitness needs. This style of working out allows you to have your chest, back, and leg day all in one.
How many times have you gotten sick or life got busy and it made you miss a chest day or a back day? Imagine now, not having to worry about that anymore because you’re going to work on that muscle group again sometime later in the week.
Signs of progress
The way we can measure our progress is by being consistent and building off of skills. Stick with a few basic exercises and get really good at them. Once you are able to build a solid skill from these exercises begin to find new ways to challenge yourself with them, by increasing weights or increase reps/sets. If we are constantly chasing variation, you won’t be able to build skill, skill is what gets us to our goal.
Our Rebell Saara when her Uncle George finally let her use the augur.
Another way we can measure progress is by seeing how your quality of life has improved. Is it easier to go up and down stairs, are you not afraid to shovel your drive way, has your confidence increased, did you try on a new pair of pants that didn’t fit 5 years ago, etc. You can measure your progress in many ways, soreness and being sweaty shouldn’t be one of them.
Save time, get results
When you train every muscle group once in your workout, 2-3 times a week, you are still doing the same amount of work, but without having to spread your time out so thinly. Now you don’t have to spend so much time at the gym, and get more time with family and hobbies.
Dialing down the intensity and the frequency of our current workout regimen sounds super scary and may make you uncomfortable at first. After working with over a 100 people like yourself, this has been the best way to get results. This allowed for our members to workout less and get better results.
Soreness and being sweaty will happen from time to time, because we will need to challenge ourselves. We do not need to chase after soreness and sweat to get results, remember to build off a skill and the 80/20 rule when you are working out next time. Your workouts should make you feel as if you accomplished something, but still have some room in the tank for more tomorrow.