#135: How to Tell if Your Workouts Are Actually Building Muscle & Strength

Not all workouts build muscle even if they feel hard.

In this episode, I look at ways to tell if your training is actually helping you build muscle and strength or just making you sweat.

You’ll learn:

• Why soreness, sweat, and ‘feeling the burn’ don’t mean you’re getting stronger
• 4 real signs your workouts are building strength and muscle
• How to track your workouts (and why that matters more than you think)
• Red flags that your current routine might not be effective at building muscle & strength
• What to change if you suspect your workout is not effective

If you're not seeing results — or you're wondering whether your strength training is actually working — this episode will help you know what to look for, and what to do next.

Resources mentioned:

• Episode #121: Are You Strength Training or Just Working Out with Weights? >
• Episode #106: How to take form videos > 
• Free strength training tracker >
• How to take progress pictures > 
• Flip stick (to stick your phone onto various surfaces) > 
• Learn to Lift Programs > 

Transcript

#135: How to Tell if Your Workouts Are Actually Building Muscle & Strength

[00:00:00] Welcome to the show. My name is Lynn, and today I wanna talk about how to know whether your workouts are actually making you stronger or not. Because a lot of women are spending a lot of time doing all kinds of different workouts, but are they really working? So we'll talk about that today. But before we get into that, I just wanted to say that, oh my goodness.

I am in the middle of my Lift-Off! Challenge. It's a 10 day introduction to strength training, and this is actually the second time I've run it. It is amazing. It is so wonderful to have women join and to be able to help them to understand what is going on in their menopausal body, which makes strength training so important at this point in our lives, and also to help them.

To understand what kinds of exercise [00:01:00] modalities are actually going to strengthen their bodies, build the muscle and give them all the benefits that strength training and muscle have to give. So anyway, that is a super lot of fun. But to today, uh, we're answering the question of are your workouts actually making you stronger?

Now I need my glasses so I can peek at my notes. 

A lot of us are working out, and I was doing the same thing for years and years and I wasn't really thinking about this question of, are my workouts making me stronger? Though I maybe, maybe should have asked myself that question, like, let's say five years earlier, that would've been a good time, so I would've stopped pedaling in place.

But even if you've just started strength training, this is, um, something that's good to keep in mind because the thing is that muscle and strength, it takes a while to build, and I definitely encourage you [00:02:00] to progress at a. Uh, well, I don't wanna say slow pace, but at, at a reasonable pace and not, not push yourself like crazy, but also not be scared to move forward because, you know, our bodies aren't 20 anymore and so it's good to listen to our bodies and progress at a gentle pace, let's say.

So the thing that makes strength training so confusing and so hard to know like, am I doing it right? Is this actually doing anything? Is that, it's so different from the kind of exercise that we've kind of grown up on, right? I mean, we have been raised to understand that. A workout is a good workout.

If you've sweat a lot, you've burned a ton of calories. I mean, who doesn't have a sports watch nowadays, you feel the burn, that is definitely a good indicator that you are doing something right as you feel the burn and that you're sore the [00:03:00] next day. Now. Unfortunately, well first of all, there are some problems with these, uh, ways of looking at whether a workout is effective or not.

First of all, like the myth of soreness, is soreness actually correlated with getting results, and at least in strength and muscle? Those two things are not very well correlated. Soreness is more correlated with just doing something new, something you haven't done in a while.

So if you haven't done any kind of hiking or you haven't done strength training in a while, you may feel really sore in the beginning and think, oh yeah, this is really effective because I'm sore. But yeah, even though I would love, I would love to, for you to think that, yeah, it's really effective 'cause I'm getting sore.

Uh, but actually it's just that your body is getting used to it. [00:04:00] Chasing soreness, you know, just stop doing that. That is not the way to get results to chase soreness. 

The other thing is feeling the burn, feeling that burn in your muscles, which you do feel if you've been in those classes or followed online workouts where you're working with small dumbbells and then you're doing lots and lots of reps. Or let's say one classic example was that a woman who holds her arm out to the side holding a tiny dumbbell and you.

Do these little circles, you know, your arms out straight to the side and you do these little circles forward and oh my God, you do that for like a little bit and you really do start to burn. Then you do some circles going backwards and you certainly cannot hold much weight, if any weight, doing those, you feel tons of burn, but is that like actually building any muscle? Nah, nah. So we kind of need to let [00:05:00] go of these things that we used to, hold near and dear as, Hey, I know that what I did today was good, or I know what I did yesterday was good because I burned a lot of calories.

I was so sweaty by the end of it. I felt the burn while I was there and I'm sore, you know, and, and you can just kind of toss those things out. It's a bit of a culture shock when when you start strength training and you're like, okay, my heart rate is most of the time down there at about the same level as it is when I'm sitting at my desk working.

So how is that like exercise? Right? Because most of the time that your strength training, you're actually in those breaks between sets. And then you don't feel the burn because your sets are shorter. Okay. Maybe in a few of the exercises you might, if you're doing sets that are like [00:06:00] 12 to 15 reps, you might start feeling the burn or somewhere after 10 reps.

But as you get more advanced and you start to do shorter rep ranges, you like, I can't remember the last time I felt the burn. And I can tell you that I have been building muscle. Without the burn and soreness also is something that will go away because in proper strength training, you are repeating the same exercises for weeks on end, right?

And applying progressive overload so your body gets used to them so you don't anymore gets. That soreness that you get when you introduce something new. Of course you get sore again when you swap exercises for something different, which is good to do to, challenge your muscles in a little bit different way and also to alleviate boredom, but 

these things that you've held near and dear, you kind of have to kick out the door. So, so how do you actually know [00:07:00] that your workouts are working and that you are getting stronger?

In the first sign that you are getting stronger is going to be an obvious one or one that I hope all of you will be able to see, which is that you notice that you're able to. Lift heavier weights or do more reps. And for this by the way, you need to be tracking. So please, if you don't have a tracker, come download my strength training tracker and start tracking your lifts so that you can see that you're making progress.

Don't try to just remember all the numbers and remember, oh, I think I did eight last time, or, you know. Really do not rely on your memory for this. Write it down. So as you see when you're tracking that you are increasing your weights over time and increasing your reps over time, then that is a clear indicator that you are getting stronger.[00:08:00] 

And that your workout is effective. So you know, there's the opposite end of that, which is, for example, what I was doing in Body Pump for years, I was doing bicep curls with those same five kilo. Weights and yeah, I was feeling the burn. My biceps were really exhausted by the end of the arms. workout. but I wasn't getting stronger for years. I was with those five kilos. Five kilos. Five kilos. Five kilos. And then when I started proper strength training. Then my weights started to go up little by little. I mean, in the beginning it was a lot faster but nowadays, when I've gotten closer to kind of my biological max. It, it really is a matter of, okay, I'll get in one more rep every few weeks. So yeah, it changes over time, but you want to be seeing that [00:09:00] progression that you are lifting heavier weights or doing more reps than you were before. And just a little pro tip, for those of you who've been lifting for a long time, um.

You will get to a point, most likely if you've been doing the same exercise in, you know, for a while where you don't notice much progress. And that is a really good time to switch to doing something a little bit different and see if you can push through and start to progress again. And it might be something as simple as, let's say you're doing shoulder presses with dumbbells and then switch over to doing it like with a Smith machine or, or another machine. Instead. So just a pro tip in there.

The second way that you know you're getting stronger is that your form, your control, your stability, all those things are improving, and these are things that you'll be able to see if you take those form [00:10:00] videos. So I've talked about form videos in an earlier episode. I will link to that in the show notes.

So form videos, because your form will get stronger, it'll get cleaner, it'll get crisper as your whole body gets stronger. So if I compare what I looked like when I started, because I started taking videos early, like not that many people do, but started taking videos early and I compare to now, I can see that I'm just so much more solid and strong and confident in my lifts than I was. Back then, and that is a really good sign that you're progressing.

I think one of the things that so many women actually mention to me, and this comes quite quickly in just, you know, two or three months, , is women who are in my program, they'll say, oh, I can already feel it in my day-to-day life. Things are easier to pick up and. [00:11:00] That is amazing. So if you're noticing that, ah, hey, picking up that, big jug of water is easier, or carrying those groceries in, or whatever it is, going up those stairs, I mean, for me, yesterday I was walking up this hill and I mean, it is a hill.

I noticed that, wow, you know, I can walk up this hill just as quickly as if it was flat and my legs don't feel at all exhausted or whatever. And that's because I have more strength and power in my legs. So it's things like that that you can start to notice. And if you are noticing those things, you know that you are getting stronger over time.

And then if you wanna be more scientific again about it, you can do, some body composition. Measurements. So this can be done through a DEXA scan or through in-body measurements. And I mean though these are not perfect, [00:12:00] they will give you a sense of the direction that you're heading in and you can see if you are losing fat building. More lean muscle because the scale won't always show that. So for example, for me, in the beginning when I started strength training, my body weight stayed the same. But what I noticed from the InBody measurements was that I was losing visceral fat and gaining muscle. So my body composition was changing even though nothing was showing on the scale 

and then another way of checking for progress, like are you actually gaining more muscle, is to take progress pictures. And there again, I have, instructions on how to do that. So basically what you're going to do is. Pick an outfit that you are gonna have for a while, like maybe your favorite jog bra and a pair of [00:13:00] shorts, or, you know, a bikini, a, a revealing bikini. Whatever you feel comfortable in. I know some women feel very, very uncomfortable having pictures of themselves even on their own phones. I use a black, bra and black underwear so that I can see as much of my body as possible. Then I take a video of myself and I just did this on Monday 

I'm always in the same room. It's in the basement. It's my bedroom, so I use, the blackout curtains are drawn. When I do this, I turn on the lights, so the lighting is always the same. I always stand in the same spot. I do the same kind of positions, so I back up from the phone. I, I attach my phone to my wall. I have this sticker called, flip stick, but you could also just prop it up somewhere in the room, but always use the same place that you prop it up.

Then I back up away from my phone. I stand [00:14:00] facing the phone, just in a relaxed position for a few seconds. Then I go into a flexed position for a few seconds. Then I turn, so my left side is facing the phone. I do the same thing, relaxed position, flexed position. Then I turn my back to the phone, relaxed position, flex position.

Then my right side to the phone, relaxed, flexed. And then, then I stop the video, and then I'll go through and watch the video and take screenshots of myself in each of the positions. Relaxed, flexed, relaxed flexed, relaxed flexed. And I save those. And the reason that I take the screenshots right away is just, 'cause then the date ends up being accurate, right?

You could take the screenshots later, but then it's hard, hard to remember which one is from what day. So, um, yeah. So if you take those. Over time, you will see that your body looks different. I mean, it's not gonna be a week to week difference, but if [00:15:00] you take them now and then look at it again in three months, you should be able to see some kind of a difference, at least in some part of your body. Okay. And at the very latest in six months.

 If you have many ways of tracking, whether you are making progress, getting stronger, building muscle. You know, at least one, one of these things should have changed. In other words, you should be able to see from your tracking sheet or your tracker, your app that you're using, that you have gotten stronger.

Either you are increasing in your weights or that you're able to add reps as you go along. That your body composition has changed. So if you've done body composition measurements, you see a difference there. You've noticed that it's easier to manage an everyday life that picking up heavy stuff is easier than it used to be.

Um, and then these kinds of progress pictures. So these are all really good ways of checking your [00:16:00] progress to make sure that you're actually building strength and muscle.

Now, if you've been doing these things and you haven't noticed any change in any of those things, at least not any change for the better, then I encourage you to look at what kind of workouts you are doing. So are you doing proper strength training, workouts? And for that I have a whole podcast episode, which is, called Are You Strength Training or Just Working Out with Weights. So that's really worth listening to, um, to understand the difference there.

Then maybe you are like actually following a strength training program. You've had somebody build it for you, found it online, but you're not. Tracking, you're not applying progressive overload because you're not tracking. So grab my free tracker and start using it and start tracking and you'll see [00:17:00] results way better. I mean, that's assuming that the program is not total crap, but, but tracking and making sure that you're applying progressive overload is very important.

 And by the way, if you wanna stop trying to figure it out yourself or guessing, then why not just join my program if you're new to lifting or you haven't been doing it very, very long. Then join the Learn to Lift program. And otherwise, if you've been lifting for longer, join the membership. 

And by the way, if you're not on my mailing list yet, then get on there because I have a very special limited time offer coming up on September 11th, so if you don't wanna miss that, get on my mailing list. Link is in the show notes. 

Okay. And I really hope that this has helped you to be able to assess, are you actually building muscle and building strength [00:18:00] with the program that you are doing? And

if you're like me and you notice that, oh my goodness, I've actually been working with those same weights for months or years like I had been, then please, if you want to take care of your body, if you want to build muscle, build strength, age strong, then start doing proper strength training, and I would love to help you out to get that going.

All right, and with that, I leave you till next week and wish you happy training.