How to make sure your workout is DOING something

Do you ever wonder if what you’re doing in the gym is having any effect?

That’s when you need to have some faith in your plan.

What, no plan?! That’s probably what’s making you doubtful.

Here are 3 workout strategies to keep in mind when you’re at the gym. Get these in order and you can rest easier that what you’re doing is actually going to bear fruit!

1. Have a plan

A plan helps to ensure you’ll use your time in a sensible way. Having a plan helps you avoid “winging it,” which is seldom a good idea. Winging it—wandering from one exercise to another with no clear purpose—dilutes your focus.

Fat loss, muscle gain—whatever your goals, are less likely to be realized if you constantly wing it.

Now, you can change things up a bit—like, if machines aren’t available or if you discover you have some gas left in the tank.

Pulldown machine taken? Go do a row (many different kinds!) or a pull-up. There’s always another exercise you can do. No need to stand around waiting for a piece of equipment to become available.

You may decide in the moment to throw in a drop set or two. That’s where you reduce the weight once or twice and continue getting repetitions, usually on the third set of an exercise. Drop sets are a nice way to increase your intensity.

Which brings me to…

2. Manage your intensity

Are you guilty of lengthy gym chats? There’s a great New Year’s resolution!

And you’ll be pleased when you DO avoid them. You’ll get more accomplished and you won’t leave the gym with that guilty feeling that you’ve wasted your time. Or, that you’re late for other things you need to get done.

If you do take a moment to talk with someone, simply start back on your next set after your usual rest period. They should “get the idea,” and they may even be grateful to get back to their routine. If not, well, at least you’ve established with them the way you train, which may help next time you encounter them in the gym.

On a similar note, if you’re able to carry on a conversation during a set, you’re not working hard enough. Concentrate on your form and on working through the full range of motion on every set and exercise—assuming an injury prohibits you from doing so. With time, you’ll get a sense of how long your rests should be between sets and exercises.

Know, too, that some days you’ll be more tired than others. Don’t push yourself to perform at breakneck speed when your energy is low. You’ll increase your risk for injury.

As for cardio, try interval sessions, but work at your level of conditioning.

Interval cardio allows you to push yourself, then pull back a little to recover, and repeat. It can even help you cut your cardio time down considerably, and that’s a good thing! (I do 12 to 20 minutes, tops, of interval cardio. And I find it effective!)

3. Challenge yourself

You won’t continue to make progress unless you challenge yourself. Options: lift more weight, lift more repetitions, cut your rest periods down (move faster from set to set, exercise to exercise), add more sets, perform more challenging and/or more demanding exercises. But don’t do all these at once!

Your body is constantly adapting to the challenges you present it. This means, you’ll constantly need to “one up” your body. So, make sure you change your plan—giving considerable thought to it, of course—from time to time.

One caveat: Your challenges shouldn’t be exhausting and shouldn’t increase your risk for injury.

Go or reasonable challenges.

If you’ve been following me, you know that I recently added box jumps to the end of a workout. But I was already tired from an intense workout. Bad bench to jump on. Wrong shoes. And my inner trainer neglected to say, “You’re done.”

Where I would have been cautious with a client, I took a risk on myself. Sigh. That’s when I missed my landing and fell onto the bench. Ouch.

Think before you train

What all three strategies take is a bit of mental power.

Take time to think about your goals, assess your progress and your current workout and determine what you might want to do next.

Plan ahead. And then assess as you’re doing.

An effective exercise program requires more than going through the motions. It takes a little thought. But that also keeps it fun.