You may be training hard but not make a progress as desired. You may be wondering what could be the probable reasons. Well, in most of the cases it is seen that most females have some preconceived notions that hold them back. Needless to say, these notions are mostly wrong.
The most common notion amongst gym-goers, male or female, is working more will provide better and much faster results. They therefore exercise more than required which invariably damages their muscles, health and body composition.
Ideally, when it comes to women fitness, and even males for that matter, there is no shortcut to achieve success. Even doing more will not help you in accomplishing the desired results. Therefore, refrain from working more in a gym. This will also prevent you from injuries.
Sweat and soreness
In most cases the amount of sweat and soreness is considered as a sign of a good workout. Well, you may have got enough of exercise even if you do sweat! Well, sweating is not the purpose of a workout and soreness in your muscles may not necessarily mean that the workout is working.
- Sweat and soreness may be very tempting to chase as most people believe that sweat is the tears of the fat in the body.
- This notion results in the “No pain, no gain” concept. But that is not the case.
The fact is sweat can only make you feel good and a little bit of soreness in your muscles may be an indicator that you have done something physical, but that is all about it. None of these are the real indicators of an effective work out and do not have any solid physiological carryover. You will have to exercise right according to your body type.
You can sweat it out in a lot of different ways but that may not even fall under the category of workout even. For example, you can stand in your yard under the blazing sun for three hours and get a bucket of sweat and feel extreme soreness the following day.
- This will not burn the fat in your body
- It will burn your skin
- It will dehydrate you and have all sorts of consequences.
However, none of these indicate that you have had a workout that will keep you healthy.
Reasons to sweat
There are lots of reasons to sweat when you work out. It is a natural response and process of any healthy male or female. The sweat ideally helps your body to cool down as it evaporates. This prevents overheating when you exercise when your heart rate as well as the body temperature goes up.
Having said that, rise in the body temperature once again does not mean you are making progress with your work put. There are lots of reasons for your body temperature to rise such as:
- The environment
- Your hormones
- The clothes you are wearing
- When you have eaten
- The genetic predisposition to sweating
- When you are nervous, excited or anxious.
You may not sweat at all if you are exercising wearing a moisture wicking clothing in a cool environment, even if you work hard.
Food and workout
It is also believed that no matter the type of food you eat, you can work it off at the gym. It is for this reason most people gorge on forbidden food, wine and what not. However, such type of approach towards fitness will only make it harder for you to reach your fitness goals.
In fact, you will need to align your exercise with your nutrition efforts for the best results. You should not make overeating, daily or even in the weekends, your habit if you want to have the right results.
However, you may get hungry and women especially have a greater ability to control their appetite. Exercising for hours at a time for five or six days in a week suppressing your appetite may not do any good for your health and fitness goals.
There is no way in which you can out-exercise your nutrition and not get overly aggressive with your exercise. It will crank up your appetite which will in turn increase your food intake and in turn overpower your training. If you follow this approach, you will reach home absolutely ravenous and end up eating anything and everything that is available.
However, you will need to be very selective about your food you eat just as you are selective with your clothes, your fashion accessories and even your underwear. Therefore, just as you use the bra size calculator USA to select the right bra for you, you must use a diet calculator to select the right food for you.
Evaluating your feeling
You will need to evaluate your feeling after a training session. This will help you to determine whether or not a specific training modality or activity is suitable for you or whether it is causing intense hunger cravings, insatiable appetite and undesired or every slow results. In such situations you should consider the following:
- Reduce the intensity of your workouts to pure strength training programming it strategically with plenty of rests between two consecutive sets.
- Give up metabolic resistance training as that will elicit the cardio effect and elevate the heart rate
- Pay close attention to the hunger cues and whether there are any changes in it
- Change the frequency of the training sessions so that you get enough rest in between two sessions and
- Substitute the HIIT workouts with walking.
All these will reduce muscle soreness, appetite and cravings and at the same time increase the chances of better results.
In fact, it is important that you find the right combination of your training, its modality, frequency, as well as intensity. A few things may need a bit of fine-tuning. You will need to know and follow the relationship between your exercise and your body and work accordingly. Lastly, you should always take help of a professional trainer to ensure better and desired results.