There’s a big difference between working out hard and working out effectively.
As someone who has spent years in the fitness industry, I’ve watched women walk into the gym incredibly motivated and ready to work. We give 100%, sweat through our clothes, watch every calorie burned on our fitness trackers and leave feeling as though we accomplished something.
But what if some of the things we think make a “good workout” are actually holding us back?
That’s exactly what I wanted to discuss in the latest episode of the “Lift & Glitz Podcast.” I sat down with two of our Lift & Glitz managers and coaches, Katie and Melanie, to talk about the top mistakes we see women make when working out. Before anyone feels called out, trust me: We’ve made some of them, too.
That’s what made this episode so much fun.
There are many messages women have picked up over the years about what exercise is supposed to look like. We’ve been told cardio is the key to weight loss. We’ve worried that lifting heavier weights will make us “bulky.” We judge the success of a workout by how many calories we burned or how sore we are the next morning.
Then there’s the pressure we put on ourselves. We look at the woman next to us and wonder why we don’t look like her. We expect our bodies to change after a few weeks and get discouraged when they don’t. Some of us feel guilty about taking a rest day because we think more exercise must mean better results.
Fitness can become unnecessarily complicated very quickly.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my fitness journey — and from working with so many women — is that more isn’t always better. Better is better.
Your workout doesn’t have to destroy you to be effective. You don’t have to be the strongest woman in the room. You don’t have to burn the most calories. And you certainly don’t have to compare your Chapter 1 to someone else’s Chapter 20.
You need a plan, proper form, progression, recovery, nutrition and, most importantly, enough consistency to give those things time to work.
Katie, Melanie and I dive into all of this in our latest episode, “10 Gym Mistakes Women Make (And How to Fix Them).” We share what we see as trainers, some of the mistakes we’ve made ourselves and a few things that might make you rethink how you approach your workouts.
We also had plenty of laughs along the way.
At the end of the day, fitness shouldn’t feel like another impossible standard women have to live up to. It should help us become stronger, healthier and more confident versions of ourselves.
So maybe the question isn’t, “Did I work hard enough today?”
Maybe it’s this:
“Am I training in a way that will help me become stronger tomorrow?”
Rachel King is the founder and CEO of Lift & Glitz Training Studio, a women-only fitness community with locations in Northfield and Galloway, New Jersey, and the host of the Lift & Glitz Podcast: Lift Your Strength. Glitz Your Life.
