Why your workout isn't working

You just don’t get it. No matter how much you push yourself at the gym, you’re just not getting your desired results, whether it’s losing ten pounds of fat or reclaiming your waistline. Am I not working out hard enough?, you wonder. While that could be a possibility, there are other factors that may be affecting your workout results.

Could you be working out too hard? Raymond, a 37-year-old graphic designer, goes all out every time he’s at the gym. “I take boxing lessons in the morning, go to the gym in the evening, Mondays to Sundays,” he says of his workout schedule. He has been working out consistently for the past two years. While he has lost a significant amount of weight, he shared that there was a time when his results plateaued for a few months. He pushed harder, but it didn’t help. He was beginning to get sickly, feeling more easily tired after each workout. After he had his workout evaluated by a personal trainer, Raymond discovered that there was such a thing as working out too much. “I thought I was doing something good for my body, but apparently you can exercise too much din pala,” Raymond says.

To help restart his workout routine, Raymond was advised to take a few days off to let his body rest and recover. Upon returning to the gym, he revised his workout schedule by easing in one to two days of rest in a week. He also had his workout plan assessed and revised based to ensure he could get optimized results. “Meron bang gym withdrawal?”, Raymond jokes. While he found it difficult at first, he began to see how a well-rested body can achieve better workout results.

Could you not be working out hard enough? This is the knee-jerk reaction when a workout isn’t working – maybe I’m not trying hard enough. That could be a real possibility, especially if you’ve been using the same workout plan for the past months or years. Over time, doing the same exercises over and over will make the body adapt to these routines. What was a challenge in the beginning becomes “no biggie” to the body. The logic is simple. Your body has changed in the past months, so should your workout.

In an article at the website “Get Fit,” celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, he says “For your body to keep changing, your program has to keep changing.” When your body has entered its comfort zone, calories will be harder to burn. What do you do? Push yourself even harder. Try out a new exercise class instead of going on the treadmill for your cardio exercise. Maybe even changing your workout schedule will do you good. If you normally exercise in the morning, try evening workouts. Push yourself by adding repetitions or increasing the intensity of your workout. The key word? Challenge. Push yourself more and you’ll get more results.

Could you be eating wrong? Maybe you’re eating more than you should. Exercise works great, but can be even greater with the proper diet. Eating too few calories can slow down your metabolism, according to Livestrong. When you eat too little calories, your body begins to slow down the rate at which it burns calories.

Make a record of the food you eat. Eating too much makes it harder to optimize workouts. Go for foods that are low in calories, but carry on eating regularly. If you eat too little, load up on healthy food and check how many calories you’re eating in a day.

Revisit how you use food as a reward for your good workout behaviour. If you let yourself dive into a chocolate cupcake because you completed a whole Zumba class, then you just got back all the calories you burned earlier.

Could you be needing more muscle? A cardio workout may be fun. Every day there’s an aerobics class to join, whether it’s something like a hip-hop dance class or a walking class. Strength training is the best way to build muscle.

Resistance training can help increase muscles, strengthen your bones and overall, let you lose weight. Your body composition will change, which will then demand a new workout plan. This makes for a more challenging workout, which will definitely challenge your body too.

Could you be inactive the rest of the day? You may go all out at your kickboxing class in the morning, but if you just sit around in front of your computer all day and plop down in front of the TV at night, you could just be cancelling out all the hard work you put into your body earlier that morning. Try incorporating exercise into your typical day. Take the stairs. Push away from your work desk every coffee break and take a walk instead of playing Facebook games on your computer.

When your workout isn’t working, there may be many factors that come into play. Get the help of a trainer. Step out of your workout comfort zone. Before pushing yourself too hard or feeling bad and diving into a chocolate cookie, take a step back and re-evaluate your workout plan. The more you challenge your body, the more results you will get. That is unless you work out too much. Then a little more rest is what your body needs. Listen to what your body is telling you and your workout plan could work the best way possible for you.

Photo: “Day 32” by , c/o Perfecto Insecto, Flickr. Some Rights Reserved