#153: Why follow-along programs don't work for building muscle & strength

There are a lot of follow-along exercise programs out there that claim to be "strength training". And while they are better than doing nothing (ie, sitting on the couch or doing cardio-only), they will never be as efficient or effective at building strength and muscle as proper strength training. 

You'll build strength & muscle more slowly and no matter how many hours you put in, you'll never reach the results you could be getting.

In this episode, I break down why. 

Enjoy the show! x Lynn

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Transcript

#153: Why follow-along programs don't work for building muscle & strength

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ Fitness for Women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women get strong and build muscle and feel great in their bodies again.

So today we're gonna talk about follow along programs and why they just don't work. If your goal is to build muscle and build strength effectively, and I get it, we are used to doing follow along programs. We've been doing aerobics at our gym, enjoying random YouTube workouts, and those are great. For cardio, but if you are serious about building strength, building muscle, which is something that all of us in midlife need to be, then follow along is not gonna work. And in this episode, I'm going to explain to you why it really fails

in today's episode, we are gonna talk about why strength training doesn't [00:01:00] really work if you do a follow along program. I know we women, we love follow along programs. We've been doing them at our gyms, you know, aerobics classes since we were teenagers. And with the advent of YouTube, it's amazing to be able to pull up a workout and just follow it.

And there's such charm to being able to just turn off your brain and follow an instructor and exercise that way. But the thing is, it just does not work when your goal is to build muscle and strength in midlife. And today I'm gonna talk to you about why.

 Lemme start by saying, I wish it would work that way. My job would be so much easier if I could just give you a follow along program. I would have women signing up left, right, and center. But the thing is that I wanna give you fast and effective results, and I have spent hours and [00:02:00] hours trying to figure out like. How could this really work in a follow along format? I actually, when I started strength training, I did a follow along program and at the same time, I was studying how to build muscle and strength. And as I was doing these follow along workouts, I started to realize that it was not really possible. To implement the things that I was learning about how to effectively build muscle in a follow-along format. And the more I did that follow along class, the more I realized that, you know what? I'm just gonna get so much more if I just cut the apron strings and suck it up and do real strength training, and I think it comes down to three main things that are going to really stop you when doing a follow along format.

So first of all is that when [00:03:00] we do strength training, you know you're working in a rep range. So even if you and I were doing the exact same program, and right now I was the instructor and I said, okay, now we're gonna do bicep curls. You're going to do 8-12, you know, following your program because of course you have decided what your weight is. I've decided what my weight is. I know how many I did last time, and how many I'm aiming to do. This time you have the same thing, right? So even if the instructor says, okay, now do your bicep curls, okay. So I pick up my weights and let's say I have a goal of doing six reps. And let's say you are at a point where you're gonna do 12 reps.

So I'm there doing my six reps. You're there doing your 12 reps. Well, obviously six reps doesn't take as long as 12 reps does. So I'm [00:04:00] done. I am starting to do my rest period, and I am close to being ready to do my next set. By the time you have finished your first one, so you finish your 12, you are more outta breath because you've done a longer set. You know it's taken more out of you cardiovascularly, so maybe you need to recover for two minutes. I need to recover for one minute. I've had a shorter set. I have a shorter recovery. I'm ready to go again while you are not yet. Okay, so we're immediately out of sync. And what happens if then you are forced to do your next set before your recovery time is done, before your body has recovered, is you are not able to recruit as much muscle in the second set, so it's less effective for you.

What happens to me if I have to wait for you to be ready? My, workout really [00:05:00] stretches out to be longer than it needs to be, so it becomes extremely inefficient. So what the instructors end up doing in these follow along programs is they give you a set amount of time to do. Whatever exercise you are doing that day, okay?

They might say, okay, now you have a minute. Do bicep curls okay, but how am I going to make sure that I'm doing the right number of bicep curls so that at the end of a minute I am close to failure. You see, it just, it just doesn't adapt for that. And then the second thing is tracking, because tracking is so valuable. For getting results. So you would have a tracking sheet, or an app. But anyway, you would track somewhere. You would track what weight you used last time on that exercise and how [00:06:00] many reps you did last time, and therefore this time you would know what to aim for.

 So, if last time I had 10 pounds and I had done eight reps, then this time I would pick up that same 10 pounds and I would aim to get at least eight reps, if not nine, because you want to see progress. If I haven't written anything down, you easily end up in a situation where you're just using the same weight for. All of your exercises, so you're not actually challenging each of your muscle groups in each of the exercises and that is really important for moving forward. You can't just pedal in place and expect results to happen. 

And the third thing that happens in these follow along programs is there's just way too much variety. Because honestly, why the heck would you be subscribing to my follow along program if every workout session was the same? [00:07:00] You know, if I was like, okay, and today again, we're going to do these five exercises, so let's go. I mean. It would just seem kind of crazy. So what they do is they switch up the exercises, they do different variants of the exercises, which means that A, you're not really learning how to do the technique on that particular exercise very effectively like you would if you were training that same exercise session after session.

And. You can't progress that exercise because you might do it, you know, on the third of the month and then you do it again on the 15th, right? So it's very hard for you to do the progression, but I get it because. I mean, who is going to pay for a follow along program where it's just the same thing each time you do it.

And [00:08:00] then to offer the variety. They even do things like combo exercises because there are so many ways you can combine an upper body exercise and a lower body exercise to keep things fresh and interesting. But as we know, combo exercises really are not effective or efficient for that same exact reason that you are not able to then properly load each one of the exercises as it should be loaded. So if you're doing a combo exercise that's. A squat to a shoulder press, well, guess what? Your shoulders are a way tinier muscle than your lower body, your glutes, and your quads, which are the ones that are working in the squat.

So when you have to pick a weight that your shoulders can handle, then that is going to be way too small to challenge your glutes and your quads. [00:09:00] So the result is that you just don't make progress as quickly. 

And I kid you not, I have honestly thought about this so much because in my Lift-Off! Challenge, for example, women, you know, they come in there and they're like, oh, there's no follow along video. And I'm like. No, there's no follow along video, but I have actually thought that in the next Lift-Off!, maybe I will create a follow along video, and then if somebody really wants to follow along, then they can follow along. But I'm not gonna make a separate follow along video for every single day. It's gonna be just one follow along video to explain like the whole concept of how this works. 

So anyway, that is why it really doesn't work in the follow along format. Believe me, I would love for it to work, but the way that it really works is that you have your program, there are the set exercises for that particular block that you're doing, [00:10:00] and you do those. Same exercises each week for at least six to 10 weeks so that you can learn them properly so that you can progress them over time. 

Though, that may sound really, really boring, I did a poll of women who Strength trained and I asked them, do you like it when your program switches? And, and the majority actually. Don't they like the consistency because there is something so zen about going into the weight room, or if you're training at home going, you know, downstairs and you know what's happening next. Right? You know that this is the exercise. You just have to look on your tracker to figure out, oh yeah, okay, that's the weight I use and, and before you start your set you're like, oh yeah, okay. I need to aim for that many reps. And then you just. Do it. So in a way, it is similar to a follow along [00:11:00] in that you don't need to spend a lot of brain power figuring it out when you've got a program, you've learned your program, and then you just keep repeating it week after week. All right? So I hope this helped to explain and try out proper strength training. Honestly, the results that you get happen really quickly. 

I used to never talk about fast results in, for example, my Learn to Lift program, which is only 10 weeks long because 10 weeks is, is like a minute, right? In our lifetime. But I keep hearing from students about how they're feeling stronger already, how they're already noticing some changes in their bodies, and it's in the 10 weeks. So if you are curious like could it really make a difference try it out and see, and then if you're like, Nope, did not do anything for me, then go back to your follow along programs. Okay? But give it a [00:12:00] shot. Anyway. So with that, I leave you to ponder and hope that you will try proper strength training if you haven't yet.

Happy training.

 And one of the key things that these follow along programs make very difficult is progressive overload. And it's one of the key concepts of building muscle. And if you wanna learn more about that, check out this video. Next. Happy training.