How to know if you are working out hard enough I How to tell if you had a good workout

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome to the video. Welcome back to the channel. In this video, we're going to be talking about what are the signs that you are having an effective workout, that your workout is actually getting you results, that the workout is what you should be doing, you're not wasting your time. Because let's be honest, like, you're probably very busy, probably got kids and a spouse and a job and other responsibilities, social life. You don't wanna just be working out to not see any progress, right? So in this video, we're gonna be covering what you should be looking for inside of your workouts to make sure that you are actually having effective workouts and you're gonna get the results that you wanna see. So we're gonna break this up into what is not effective and what is effective, because honestly, what most people think is leading them to have an effective workout is not actually leading them to have an effective workout. And we're going to cover those 3 main things here in this video, right? Meow. So first and foremost, being sweaty. Being sweaty has this much correlation to if you had an effective workout or not. This much. I sweat peeling an orange. Right? I've trained people in person who I put them through one of the hardest workouts I thought ever, and they didn't break a damn sweat. They didn't sweat anywhere. No sweat on the shirt, nothing. And I have some people who they'll sweat— me peeling an orange. And so being sweaty has nothing to do with how effective your workout was. Go stand outside, literally just stand there or lay there. Go lay there. outside on a really hot sunny summer day? You're gonna sweat, aren't you? Is laying in the middle of the street outside on a hot sunny day— does that— are you like, oh man, I really had a great workout today, I really kicked it up a notch today, like I just laid on the concrete floor all day, that was a really effective workout because I sweated? No. Being sweaty has zero correlation To you having an effective workout or not, to you actually seeing progress or not. Can you be sweaty and have a great workout? Absolutely. Can you be sweaty and not have a great workout? Absolutely. I know some people are going to say, oh, but Eric, I love the feeling of sweating. And I get it. Listen, mazel tov. I understand. And like, if that's what you enjoy, then, you know, there's other modalities you can do to have that. But I just want you to know, just because you're not drenched in sweat 24/7, Doesn't mean you're not having an effective workout. I get a lot of people who come to me from like a background of whether it's like CrossFit or HIIT cardio or boot camp or P90X or Orangetheory or any of those things where they are in a modality of training that is going to be very, very, very high heart rate and they're gonna be sweating all the time and all these kind of things. And that's what they think they have to do in order to see results. The God's honest truth is it does not matter if you're sweating or not during your workout. You aiming and pushing for like being super sweaty during your workout, it just means like, I guess you're dehydrated. Like, I don't— that's the only like outcome you're gonna get from sweating is like eventually you're gonna get dehydrated. Like, sweating has again no correlation to you having an effective workout or not. So number one, don't think you have to be drenched in sweat leaving your workout routine. Well, you might be a bit sweaty. Yeah, I don't know, maybe your gym is really Maybe your gym's really hot or maybe your gym's really cold. Maybe you're working out in your garage in the middle of the winter. Like, it might not be that hot there, so you might not— it all just depends. So number 1, don't think you have to be drenched in sweat. And number 2, stop chasing being drenched in sweat. You're chasing a feeling, you're not chasing a result. Those are 2 different things. Number 2, being out of breath. Once again, being out of breath and like gasping for air. Does not mean that you're having an effective workout. Doesn't mean you're having a good workout. You know, you can go— I'm looking down at my street outside. I see a squirrel. I could go chase that squirrel for like 8 seconds. For me, it might be 3 seconds. But for a normal person, you can go chase a squirrel outside for 8 seconds and you'd probably be like— you'd probably be out of breath. Or you're like, oh man, okay, cool. I'm out of breath. That means it was a really good workout. Thank you, squirrel. Had a great 8-second workout there. I'm really out of breath. That means I worked really hard. Sweet. I'm done. No. Once again, being out of breath has zero correlation to you having an effective workout. And honestly, we're gonna talk about here in a second, I would argue the more out of breath, the constantly out of breath you are, the less effective your workout is going to be. Let me say it again. The more constantly out of breath you are, if you're never able to catch your breath and if you're just like running yourself into the ground and you're always Huffing and puffing 24/7. I'm gonna argue, and you're gonna know why here in a second, I'm gonna argue that that is making you have a less effective workout. Again, you chasing this feeling of like being out of breath, being sweaty, these 2 things go together a ton. And again, it comes from that like people think they're doing these like HIIT cardio workouts or the Barry's Bootcamp or the P90X or the Beachbody or whatever, and you think you have to be drenched in sweat and completely out of breath for it to be a good workout. Honestly, I think those 2 things combined, if that's what you're chasing, number one, you're chasing a feeling. You're not chasing a result. You're chasing a feeling. And number 2, those 2 things are probably gonna lead you to have a less effective workout in the long run, and we'll talk about why here in a second. And number 3, being super sore. And again, this is one that really kinda riles people up sometimes because, number one, let me just make it very clear, Can you have an effective workout and you were sore? Yes. Can you have an effective workout and you were not sore? Yes. Once again, being sore is not a direct correlation to whether you had an effective workout or not. And again, if you're so sore, like I have some people who they're like, oh my God, I did this leg day and, you know, I did it on Monday and Friday my legs are still sore. Like, um, Susan, that's not a good thing. That means that your body's not recovering, and we're going to talk about body recovery here in a second, but if your body's not recovering from the work, then your body's not going to change because the way your body changes is you put a stress on it, working out, your body recovers from that, and then it adapts. It adapts by growing stronger, more defined muscles and changing your physique, right? That's how this circle of life goes. If you miss the recovery step, you're gonna miss the adaptation step. If you miss the adaptation step, you're not just gonna see any results. Again, your workouts will not be effective. You'll just keep running in circles and circles and circles and never seeing any progress. So if you're somebody who, like, prides themselves on being sore— either if you're somebody who prides themselves on being sore, or if you think you need to be sore in order to have an effective workout— I just ate, so I apologize for the burps. If you're somebody who's sore, who thinks you need to be sore to have an effective workout, both those things are inaccurate. Number one, again, if you're chasing the feeling of being sore, you're chasing a feeling, you're not chasing a result. And number two, again, you do not need to be sore. And I would argue— not argue, I know for a fact— if you're debilitatingly sore for multiple days at a time, that is not a good thing. That is a bad thing. That means you're doing too much and your body's not recovering, and you will not change from that. Now, can you be sore and will you be sore? Probably, yeah. Especially when like you first start a new program, for example. So when like, whenever my clients start a new workout program, the first week or two, they're a bit more sore. Why are they a bit more sore though? What is that? What does that mean? They're a bit more sore because when you start a new workout program, it's new. So your body is like, oh, what is going on here? So it's just going to be more sore because you're doing new movements. You're doing new rep ranges. Like, let's say for example you go from doing a barbell back squat to a Bulgarian split squat. Your legs are going to be really sore. Why? Because it's a new movement. Or let's say you go from doing barbell back squats for 4 sets of 10, and then you go do barbell back squats for 3 sets of 5 the next program. Your legs are going to be really sore the first, the first week or two. Why? It's different intensities. It's different rep ranges. That's a huge reason why your muscles get really sore. It's just because it's new. And again, this is where if you're chasing a feeling, you would try to chase that feeling and just keep changing things up, keep changing things up, keep changing things up. And that is the worst way to have an effective workout. Okay? So remember, being sore— I would say if you're sore for 1 to 3 days, 3 days max. So let's say, for example, you work out your legs on Monday. If you're still sore on Friday and Saturday, You did too much. That was too much. You have to pull back next time. But if you're, you know, if you do legs on Monday and you're a bit sore on Tuesday and you're really sore on Wednesday, 'cause that's DOMS, that's just like the delayed onset muscle soreness. That's normal. Thursday, by Thursday you should be good. Like you should be good. You shouldn't be like not being able to sit down on the toilet still. You should be recovered and good to go. If you're still sore on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you've done too much. So being sore is not necessarily a good thing. It's not a bad— it can be a bad thing, In longer durations. But if you're a bit sore, it's normal. But that doesn't mean, like, if you finish a workout and you're like, oh my God, I'm not that sore, that doesn't mean you didn't have an effective workout. Okay? Now, now that we know that right there, let's go into what does go into you having an effective workout. So the first thing to know if you are having an effective workout is if over time you are doing more reps. So let's say, for example, You are doing a dumbbell shoulder press and you did 10 pounds for 3 sets of 8 on the first week. So the first week of the program, it calls for 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps. So in the first week, you did 3 sets of 8 reps. On the second week, you did 3 sets of 9 reps. On the third week, you did 3 sets of 10 reps. On the fourth week, you did 3 sets of 11 reps. That right there, my friend, would be an indicator that you are having effective workouts. Why? Because you're increasing your workout performance over a period of time. Adding more reps is a way of basically telling your body, hey body, remember that we— I talked earlier about the way you change your body. You put a stress on your body, your body recovers, and then you adapt. All that circle, right? Doing more reps is basically saying, hey body, there's a stress great enough That your body has to adapt to. And so when your body— it's a stress great enough, you'll recover and you'll adapt. But if that stress is not great enough on your body, you are giving your body no reason to change. Your body doesn't want to change. Your body likes homeostasis, which just means you stay the same, because that's what is the easiest for your body to maintain, and that's what is— it takes the least amount of energy, all that kind of stuff, right? Your body wants to maintain. You wanna change. Your body doesn't wanna change. And so you have to make your body change. And doing more reps over a period of time is you giving that stimulus to your body to say, hey body, here's one more rep, let's change. Here's one more rep, let's change. And you can see over the course of time, again, if you started with 3 sets of 8 and you finished with 3 sets of 12, for example, you have made progress over that period of time. And your body will change from that. This is also why I talked over here about people who constantly change up their workouts. That is not what you should be doing. You should be sticking with a workout program for anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks at a period of time. Why? Because again, let's take this example. If on week 1 you do dumbbell shoulder press, 3 sets of 8, and then on week 2 you do a one-arm half-kneeling shoulder press for 3 sets of 10. And then on week 3, you do a barbell shoulder press for 3 sets of 6. It's like, okay, like you're doing all these things, but where is the progression? Where, where are you putting more stimulus on your body? How are you giving your body a great enough stress? You're just doing a bunch of different things. So there's no— it's— this is what this is called, and we'll touch on this here in a second. It's called progressive overload, and we'll touch on it more here in a second. But essentially what progressive overload is, is you're just doing more Over a period of time. You're doing more work over a period of time. You're adding more stress over a period of time. That's what you need in order to have an effective workout. And doing more reps is a great way to have that progressive overload and give your body that stimulus it needs to actually see progress and have effective workouts. Because again, if we're not seeing progress, what are we doing? Number 2, lifting more weight. And so again, you're doing more Over a period of time. Every time you lift 5 more pounds or 2.5 more pounds or 10 more pounds, you are telling your body, hey body, here's a, a great enough stress, here's a, here's a bigger stress that you're gonna have to adapt to. You're giving your body that stimulus in order to then change the way your body looks. That is how you are going to change your physique. Again, it's having this progressive overload. And again, you could combine these 2 things right here. And which, by the way, I have an entire video on this channel on like how to progress your weights and how to lift heavier weights and when you should increase your weights and how much weight you should be lifting. I'll link it here above, but feel free to go check that video out. But you can combine these 2 things. So like, for example, let's say— again, let's use the same example. Let's say you're doing a dumbbell shoulder press for 3 sets of 8, right? Let's say week 1 you do 3 sets of 8, week 2 3 sets of 9, and week 3 3 sets of 10, right? Let's say once you get to 10 reps you want to increase the weight. So what you would do is you would do 3 sets of 8, 3 sets of 9, 3 sets of 10 with 10 pounds. On that 4th week you would go to 12.5 pounds and you would drop the reps back down to 8 reps. So again, one more time, 3 sets of 8, 3 sets of 9, 3 sets of 10. On the 4th week you would do 3 sets of 8 with 12.5 pounds and you'd do the same thing. You would increase again, 3 sets of 8, 3 sets of 9, 3 sets of 10. 3 sets of 9, 3 sets of 10. Over time you would keep building, building, building, building, and that is how you're going to have effective workouts. Because for you to have effective workouts, you need to give yourself, your body, that stimulus that it needs to adapt to. Because if you don't give it that, there's no reason your body's going to change. You're just going to keep running in circles and kind of spinning your wheels and not ever really seeing the progress you want to see. There's a big difference in like This stuff over here, what people do with like the HIIT cardio or the, uh, the Beachbody or those kinds of things, it's exercise. And there's nothing inherently wrong with exercise. Like, that's great. But if you want to see a change in your body, you have to get on a training program. You got to train. And what I'm talking about over here, doing more weight, adding more reps, those things are following a training program, which is going to lead to that progressive overload, which is going to lead to you changing your body. And so, you know, number 3, just basically any way that you are increasing your workout performance. Anyway, that could be getting a better range of motion. So let's say, for example, if you're doing squats with a barbell on your back or just a regular dumbbell, whatever, and you can only go down halfway, if in 3 weeks you can go down 3/4 of the way, and in 3 weeks you can go down all the way, that is improving your workout performance. That is having effective workouts because a bigger range of motion, not all the time, but most of the time, a bigger range of motion. If you can get the full range of motion, definitely full range of motion. If you can get full range of motion, that is going to lead to better results. It's going to lead to better change in your body. So that could be one way. It could be having a better mind-muscle connection. If you're doing a, you know, if you're doing a row for example, and you can't ever feel your back muscles and your shoulder kind of feels weird and you feel your biceps, But then over time you improve your form and then you improve your mind-muscle connection. That could be a way where you're increasing your workout performance, which is going to lead to better results, which means you're having an effective workout. You could be improving your mile time. If you have a goal of improving your mile time, okay, over the course of a period of time, is your mile time improving? Because if not, what are we doing? Right? If somebody's trying to get a faster mile time, If you don't track your mile time and it's not improving, what is the point of you— again, exercising is better than nothing, but if you want to have effective workouts, something needs to be improving. The biggest kicker here is most people don't track anything. They just go and do their workouts. Oh, I'm just going to go do this, or I'll put on my Beachbody thing, or I'll do this and I'll do that. They're not tracking anything, so what gets tracked gets improved upon. If you're not tracking it, it's not going to get improved upon. So you have to make sure you're tracking your reps, you're tracking your weight, you're tracking your sets, you're tracking your mile time. Yeah, it might take you an extra 5 or 10 minutes every single workout, but it's going to lead to you having more effective workouts. And again, let's be honest, what are you working out for? Are you working out just to do it or do you want to see results? I work out because I like it, but I want to see results. I like the results. That's why I work out. I'm sure you want to see the results, right? Put in this little extra time and effort here to make sure you're tracking these things. And over a period of time, if you see these things improving, that's how you know if you have an effective workout. Like, again, you could do more reps and do more weight and you could not be out of breath. You could not be sweaty and you could not be sore. I don't care. You're still having effective workouts. If you are leaving your workouts and you're doing more reps, And you're doing more weight, I don't care about any of this stuff over here. This means nothing. That means you're having an effective workout. And this is where people kinda lose it. They think like, oh, well, what am I doing wrong if I'm not getting sore? Or if I'm not sweaty? If I'm not out of breath? You know, those kinda things. You're not doing anything wrong. If you're doing this over here, you're having effective workouts. I will say this, and this is especially for you if you're coming from kinda like a Beachbody, P90X, HIIT cardio, Orange Theory background, you probably are way stronger than you think. Because I get a lot of people who have come to me in the past, present, and I'm sure future, who are gonna come from more of like a HIIT cardio background, and they're gonna think, oh my God, like I'm not doing enough, or I'm not pushing enough, or whatever the case may be. In that instance, you just gotta lift heavier weights. 'Cause I can assure you, if you're pushing yourself close to failure, Doing more weight, doing more reps, you're going to be pretty spent and it's going to be a very difficult workout for you. And again, if you want to know how much weight you should be lifting, I have an entire video on my channel, so check it out. But that's what I'll kind of throw that caveat in there because I see a lot of people who they're not pushing as hard as they could with the weights because now if you're on a proper program, you're probably going to be resting longer in between your sets. Whereas like a Beachbody thing, you're just like going and going and going, going, going. Of course you can't lift heavy. your weights. And then of course you're not going to see progress, right? So when you actually start a real program and you might be, let's say, taking longer rest periods in between sets and those kind of things, you might feel like, oh my God, like I'm not doing enough, I got to do more, I got to do more. I would just say do more in the way of lifting more weight or doing more reps. And so just kind of keep that in mind as well. And again, I'll leave you with this very quickly. Every single time that you do a workout, you have an opportunity to give your body a reason to change every single time. It could be on every exercise for that day. It could be on one exercise for that day. It could be on one set for that day. Like if you go in there and you do one more set, I'm sorry, one more rep on one more set of one exercise, that is going to be a signal to your body saying, hey body, let's change, let's adapt. All right? Every single time is almost a time to like give yourself a PR, a personal record. And you should know this going into your workouts because again, if you go into your workouts knowing every single time is an opportunity for you to give yourself a stimulus to your body so your body can adapt to it, your workouts are going to start to be more intense. They're going to start to be way more effective because now you're going into your workouts with intent. You're going into your workouts with a plan as opposed to just like, I guess I'll do this random YouTube video workout or this random Beachbody workout or whatever. The case may be, go into your workout with a plan, go into your workout with intent. You're going to increase your workout performance, you're going to increase your effectiveness of the workout, and you're going to increase your results as a byproduct of those things. All right? So hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, please feel free to give a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and feel free to leave a comment because I'd love to hear from you and learn that. Hope you enjoyed and we'll chat soon. Okay? Bye.