You’re Not Supposed to Be Sore After Every Workout | E24

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Welcome back to Train Like a Girl. My name is Abby and I am your host for this podcast. Please send it on to some friends, but I am also an online health and fitness coach, and as you can tell, I've been slowly, slowly building this pod over the months and I'm loving it. So please, before I get into today's episode, which is all about the gym, please share this with some pals because I want to keep this going. And currently I'm losing money on it. So I need to spread my message far and wide. But today I want to talk about something that I see a lot, especially with people who are either new to training or their training stimulus has been like they've been chasing cardio for years, or they just don't maybe understand the what strength training and resistance training actually looks like. Um and it's this idea that a good workout is one that absolutely destroys you. So we're talking about gym soreness today, specifically, but you know, there are a few strings to that. Um so you know the kind of workout that I mean. It's the one that you come out sweating, or your muscles are really burning and you're not able to walk properly the next day, or your your core really hurts, it hurts to sneeze or cough or whatever. And somewhere along the line, that got it turned into the definition of effort. It's like if you're not absolutely wrecked after your session, you're like, I don't think I've really worked hard enough. But that couldn't be further from the truth, and we're gonna debunk what I basically I'm gonna talk about why you should not be chasing soreness and actually the opposite. Um, because there is I guess I should start by saying there is an misunderstanding of what hard actually means in the gym because training, a good training, a proper training program, resistance training with a good um schedule and all the rest of it, and good exercises, etc., is genuinely hard, but it's a very specific kind of hard that a lot of people haven't experienced yet, or they don't really recognize it. Um when you're lifting weights with intention and you're pushing your sets close to failure and you're progressively overloading, that is hard. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of focus, it takes discipline, um, and it takes a good program and it takes a level of discomfort that most people don't really get to, to be honest. We have a lot of beginners that like maybe they do start on a good program and they do start to progressively overload and they see a big improvement really fast, but they sort of stop when things are really getting hard, they stop adding to that progressive overload, they stop going week after week, um, because they don't get to that level of discomfort that is required to keep muscle building or to keep muscle retention. Um but on the other hand, on the other hand, a lot of people don't even understand from the get-go what a decent training stimulus feels like or looks like because it doesn't when we're talking about resistance training specifically, it doesn't always look like sweating your tits off or feeling a massive burning sensation in your legs or in your lungs, or you know the kind of burning you get in your legs when you do like loads of squat jumps. I think a lot of people seek that, and that is where there is a bunch of confusion. They, I think a lot of people, and I certainly fell into this trap. I thought hard, like my version of hard in a workout was like cardio kind of hard, like breathless, drenched, drenched in sweat, heart rate through the roof. And don't get me wrong, like that kind of workout has its place. But when it comes to resistance training and actually building muscle and you know, achieving long-term achieving the health benefits from building muscle, but also the aesthetic, like the toned appearance that lots of women are chasing, that requires a different kind of hard. That typically, sometimes we will get sweaty and like heart rate will go up, especially if we're doing like a really hard leg day, but resistance training typically doesn't resemble the kind of hard that you might be thinking of with like the burning muscles and the DOMS the next day. It looks more like a controlled struggle. It's like looking at a weight and thinking, oh my god, I don't think I can lift that, and then doing it anyway. And, you know, it it looks like those last few reps where your form really slows down and your brain is telling you to stop and you keep going, regardless, until you reach your prescribed reps in reserve. You you until you reach close to muscular failure, essentially. So it might not always feel like super dramatic in the moment, but because people chase that soreness um afterwards or that burning feeling in the moment, they end up unknowingly, they end up almost like biasing their training the wrong way. So they go for workouts that feel really intense in the moment, thinking, oh, this is gonna really make me ache tomorrow. Like they might do a shite ton of reps or, you know, change it up every week because changing up your workouts every week will make you sore, instead of training that actually progresses over time and the sort of training that will actually create a body that you love long term. So, you know, put simply, I guess, more circuits and more random exercises and more variation and more exhaustion, they all feel like they've done something in the moment and potentially the next few days when you can't walk up the stairs or sit down on the toilet. But that isn't, sadly, that's not actually what drives change. And listen, I get it, because I know when I'm on a new program, for example, like that first week of a program and I'm aching, we love the feeling of the ache because it's like an indication, like, oh yeah, like my body's telling me I worked hard. But unfortunately, if we keep chasing that, it simply means that our body isn't adapting. Um, because this this is the thing, and this is where it this is where body composition matters. The goal in training isn't to feel wrecked and have like DOMS for days and days and days. Sorry, I keep saying the word DOMS and I didn't really explain. So DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness. So that's like that achy feeling a few days after the gym. We don't want that over time, and that definitely will happen. Like it happens in a good strength training program if you if you have been on holiday for a few weeks and you come back to it, or if you've recently changed the exercises, like when something's new, a new stimulus on the body, it will create that ache. But over time, we don't want that to be the goal. The goal is the opposite, really, is to create an environment where your body adapts over time. So actually, your body gets better at dealing with that stimulus, and that doesn't mean that we don't get make the workouts harder, but we want to be able to adapt. It's a sk lifting weights is a skill. So we don't want it to always leave us destroyed. That doesn't mean it's not hard though to go back to difficulty. We want to be pushing like crazy. We want to be pushing like crazy, let me tell you. It's the kind of hard that I've never experienced until recent years, and now I know what real hard resistance training looks like, and it's not just like burning from a wall sit. Um, so we want to create that change and adaptation over time, and the way your body adapts is based on one thing only, and that is progressive overload. I've done another podcast on progressive overload specifically. If you want to, I would highly advise you to scroll back and have a little listen to that. But essentially, it's about getting a little bit stronger over time, doing a bit more over time, being able to repeat the same movements and improve them. But what happens in time is through that repetition, your body adapts and therefore it gets less sore. So then some people are like, oh, I'm not sore anymore, it's not working. But it's the opposite. If you're not getting sore sore anymore, that's telling us your body is adapting, i.e., it's building muscle because it knows, like, oh shit, she's done this really hard leg day. If we're gonna see this again next week, we're gonna have to build so that we can fight against it again, you know? So that is what actually changes your physique, not chasing soreness. Because if you're constantly chasing soreness, you usually end up doing the opposite of what you want. You'll either sort of train too hard to recover from, so you become inconsistent and then you don't progress, and you never actually build the strength or muscle you need to improve your body shape, or you you change, you just change your workouts every week because it's like, oh, it makes me really sore, so I'm gonna go do F-45 and then I'm gonna do a bit of Pilates, and then I'm gonna do this, that, and the other. And people almost wear like soreness as a badge of honor, and I'm like, uh, that actually means you're not doing so well because your body's not adapting, therefore your body's not getting stronger. So what we want actually is to create is to train in a way that is challenging challenging over time, but it's repeatable. And that is when something interesting happens. You recover faster, you can train which means you then can train consistence consistently, and you actually push your lifts every week and every month and every year. And that is what creates change in the body. More muscle retention, more muscle building. If we're thinking about fat loss long term, maybe better fat loss outcomes long term because uh when we build muscle, we are our metabolic rate uh turns up, we we burn more calories at rest. And over time, a completely different physique happens compared to somebody that's just chasing DOMS. So the irony is the people who are actually getting the best results in their body composition are usually not the ones that are destroyed after every session. But again, it's not because they're not difficult, it's just a different kind of difficult. But they are the ones that are consistently getting stronger at the same movements week after week. And that is where a lot of women go wrong. Because hard in the gym isn't about sweating and soreness, it's about an effort that you can measure and repeat. It's about control, it's about progression. And once you understand that, your whole approach to training changes. And in fact, you go from just working out to actually training. This is the difference. So if you've been using soreness as your main marker for a good workout, I would love you to use this podcast and listen to this and take it seriously and start shifting that. A good session is one where you're you've challenged yourself in a way that you can recover from and that you can repeat and build from and build on each week. Not one where you like can't walk down the stairs for three weeks because that kind of training might feel productive in the moment and the achiness might feel like a badge of honor, but it doesn't, it doesn't compound, it doesn't last, it doesn't create change in the body body. So if you are like, oh my god, she's speaking to me, if you're like, oh shit, this is me, I always do random workouts. I'm always, I love the burning feeling. I'm I love I love the DOMS, but my body's not actually changing. I'm speaking to you a loud and clear, girl. This is exactly the kind of thing I help people fix in coaching. So we build or I build out a proper structured progressive training plan for you based on everything about you. It's completely custom. So it's whether you're at home, whether you can work out for 30 minutes or an hour and a half, whether you can work out um once a week or five times a week, whatever, everything built around you, whether you've got weights at home or not, that is what I do. I structure your training and obviously nutrition as well. If you've listened to the rest of the podcast, a lot of it is about nutrition because we want the nutrition to support the training too, of course. But if you are somebody that wants that has heard this loud and clear and you're like, oh, I've been doing this wrong. I need a proper training program and you want to take the guesswork out of that, please reach out to me. My coaching application will be in the show notes. But if you've got any questions, I'll also pop my Instagram link in there too. And yeah, uh ask me any questions that you need. But that is everything on Gym Saureness. If you've got a gym buddy that is constantly chasing the soreness, please send this their way. And have a lovely week, and I'll speak to you again next week.