Most people would rate the value of a strength training workout by how much sweat they have produced, or how sore they are the next day. While it is good to work up a sweat and know that your muscles have been worked hard, this is not the only way to measure the effectiveness of your workout. In some cases this can even be detrimental to your health. What are more beneficial ways to measure the effectiveness of your workout? There are several important signs you should be aware of to determine if your workout hit the sweet spot and deliver the best health and fitness results to your body. In this article, I will discuss what these signs are, and the various methods you can use to improve your results.

Before I jump right into the six signs it is important to understand that each person has different objectives and needs with regards to their training. This means that the way we measure the success of our training will vary significantly, for what means a lot to one person may not be relevant to the next.

I work with so many people of varying ages and needs it is important that I recognize what is their specific need each time I train with them. I have to remind myself before each session what are the problems they are facing? How I can help them get closer to solving these problems and help them achieve their goals?

While it is impossible to achieve these goals in one session it is good to have little markers to know you are on the right track. These are where I often measure the following 6 signs I am about to discuss to determine if the workout hit the mark.

Okay, let's take a look at the 6 signs of a good workout.

1. You Made Progress?

If you want to know how great your workout was, the first thing to do is reflect on any progress you made in your performance. As I just mentioned it is unrealistic to expect you will hit your goal in one training session but you do want to know if you are making progress.

Here are some ways to see if you made progress in your workout:

• You increased your mobility and range of motion
• You lifted heavier than your last workout. (Sometimes the load may not be heavier but you increased the amount of reps or sets)
• Exercises that were struggling with previously now feel easier
• Your balance and stability has improved
• You find it easier to maintain correct form with each exercise
• Your endurance has improved and you can tolerate longer periods of high intensity training

Reflecting on these parts of your workout can lead you to find cause for celebration you might not have realized. Plus, when you reflect on your performance you make it clearer for yourself what you did well and what you want to improve on next time. It’s one of the best ways to be proactive and own what you’re doing in the gym.

But remember, there are other ways to gauge how effective your workout was. So if you just did a workout and didn’t notice any of those improvements, that’s okay! It’s totally normal to hit a point of slow improvement where you notice only minor changes over a period of weeks. You’re still getting stronger and you’re still making progress.

Did you notice that I did not list weighing yourself as a way to measure progress? This is one of the worst things you could do and only ends up making a person obsessed with more exercise or taking drastic measures to make the scales look good.

Simply losing weight does not automatically mean you become healthy.

Many people can easily lose weight by adopting very unhealthy and even dangerous eating and exercise methods, so this is not a good way to measure your health. We must aspire to become healthy first and with time allow our body to reduce fat and overall body weight.

You can read more about this in the article – Stop measuring your health by what the scales say

2. You Feel Better at the End of the Workout

Most of the people I work with each day are busy, overworked, over stressed. They have an incredibly busy schedule and fitting in exercise in their life is something they know they need but it can be very tough when they feel so tired and exhausted.

For many people their problem may be with feeling sluggish or lacking in energy, and a great workout that is challenging but enjoyable can make all the difference to their day. We all know that exercise is great for mental health and known as a natural mood enhancer and if your workout is something you dread doing you are not going to achieve good results.

When you complete a great workout you get those endorphins rushing which is why you might notice yourself feeling superb after a good workout. Plus you get the extra confidence boost that comes from accomplishing a challenging task

This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to tell if you had a great workout. It is also highly under-rated as so many people fixate on the end result that they forget to pay attention to how they feel. If you feel amazing and like you could take on the world after you exercise, then your workout was effective.

Those struggling with injury or chronic pain can easily feel depressed and defeated when they walk into the gym.

Instead of trying to crush them with a killer workout my goal is to make them feel better when they leave. This means I may need to change course with my plan to deliver a training session that improves their current state of helplessness. Anyone suffering with severe pain knows exactly what this feels like and also the relief that comes from reducing the pain symptoms and improving the ability to move without stiffness and limitation.

While I may not be able to “cure” or “fix” the person in one training session sometimes the knowledge of what to do when things are really bad can make a massive difference to the person’s outlook and provides them with hope that they are in control of their pain.

3. You Worked All of the Key Movement Patterns

Now that we have covered some of the emotional and mental side of exercise, what about the physical science part of training?

With each strength workout your goal should be to enhance how you move. The purpose of exercise is to enhance our ability to move in life. It is more than just losing weight and looking good in a mirror for you can do that by eating well. Many people actually sacrifice their health in order to look good in a mirror which is never a good idea.

Exercise is important to us more than ever as we have slowly progressed to more sedentary lifestyles. One hundred years ago we did not need gyms as we were forced to walk everywhere, most jobs were very physical and even home life demanded rigorous activity.

We need exercise to constantly maintain our skills of balance, mobility and strength to ensure life’s demands do not exceed our physical ability. This is a high priority with older adults which we have covered in great detail many times in previous articles and where disability is a real risk from lack of exercise. 

Very simply you design a program that includes the following movements.

1. Squat
2. Bend
3. Lunge
4. Twist
5. Push
6. Pull
7. Gait

Each one of these movements is like a base motor program for every movement we can make as a human. By improving movement quality and strength across these patterns you improve the strength of every muscle in the body.

You can download a free report that provides detailed explanations of each of these patterns and the various exercises you can use to develop them.

Most experienced gym enthusiasts will tell you that doing only a handful of exercises is not enough to build muscle and make you stronger. To some degree they may be right, as you will need more than a handful of exercises to continually challenge the body with different angles, positions, equipment, and speeds of movement. 

Modern fitness equipment allows us to train our body in sitting positions that do not demand high levels of coordination, stability, and posture. We learn it is possible to avoid learning these fundamentals before lifting loads or moving fast and the principle of “earning the right” is not needed. A good example here is with the leg press machine, where someone can start lifting incredible loads on the first day, yet be barely able to complete an effective squat with their own body-weight.

Strength cannot overcome poor movement. If you move poorly it does not matter how strong your muscles are your body will have to compensate and create an alternative way to move that is less efficient, weaker, and more unstable.

This is why it is so important you spend time learning how to use functional training methods.

Read these articles for more on this subject

• Learning to master functional movement is everything and this is why
• Do you need an exercise for every muscle to get stronger?
• Can you build muscle size using functional training methods?

4. You Challenged Your Body with Different Skills

In addition to functional movement skills it is important to mix your training program up by combining various abilities. There are 8 different skill or bio-motor abilities you can add to a training workout that will place significantly greater demands on the body.

These abilities include.

1. Strength
2. Speed
3. Power
4. Balance
5. Agility
6. Endurance
7. Flexibility
8. Coordination

Those who play sports will need a higher level of competence in many of these various skillsets if they want to excel at their chosen sport.

Being strong does not guarantee you will move fast or with great agility on the sporting field. You will need other exercises and methods to develop these skills.

Most athletic activities require some combination of speed, quickness and strength with varying amounts of endurance. All require elements of explosive power. Whether it is needed to move explosively to hit a golf ball, jump, sprint, tackle an opponent, react to an unpredictable tactic, the need to produce power is an essential. Traditional training techniques using slow, controlled tempos; decrease your power ability.

If you do not train power, you will not develop power, or conversely to quote the old coaching adage, “Train slow, be slow”.

Most sporting and athletic activities require a fair degree of explosive power, whether it is needed to move explosively to hit a golf ball or tennis ball, jump, sprint, break away from an opponent, reacting to an opponent’s offensive tactic or handle an open-field hit, the need to produce power is an essential component.

You can read more about how these abilities relate to sports in this article – 8 must have skills and abilities for sports

And for those people who do not play sports and are just looking to improve overall fitness and get in shape these skills are still relevant to you. In fact some are essential. The best thing is exercises demanding improvement with these abilities can be a great way to challenge your body with something new and develop improved movement. For example, skills like balance and agility are of great importance to older adults for preventing falls and should make up a big part of any training program for an older adult.

A study by Zhen-Bo Cao on evaluating the success of a falls prevention program found whole-body reaction time improved by nearly 7% with older adults who completed agility training exercises.

With regards to power training that we discussed for sports, it is just as relevant to older adults as it is to the athlete. From the age 65 to age 89, our ability to produce power with our legs declines 3.5% per year. This is much faster than our rate of decline with strength, which is 1-2% per year. That is 2-3 times faster!

Check out these articles for additional information on these specific skills I briefly discussed here.

• Why you should include power training in your workout
• Everything you need to know about agility training
• Preventing falls with older adults
• Everything you need to know about balance training

5. You Are Sleeping Better

People who live more active lives, particularly those who engage in high-intensity workouts such as strength training, need to have more sleep than their more sedentary counterparts. The purpose of sleep is to restore the body’s energy supply and provide time to recover, repair and rejuvenate. As a result, it’s only natural that anyone who utilises more energy throughout their day needs more time to restore it. 

But how much sleep do you really need?

The usual recommendation for the average adult is between 7-9 hours of sleep daily. However, if you consistently train with heavy weights, you’ll need more sleep than the average person. Your high intensity routines require longer recovery time as the body has used more fuel. It’s a case of high intensity workouts equalling longer recovery times. 

In the vast majority of studies about sleep and exercise, researchers found that exercise improves your sleep. So if you find that you’re sleeping sounder throughout the night, then your workouts are effective.

When you exercise, you increase your chances of getting a better, deeper night's sleep. The better your sleep, the longer your body has to balance your hormones. Your hormones act to increase tissue repair and growth that make it necessary for continuous healing.

However, if you are working out too hard, or too often you could compromise your health and respond negatively to your training workout. While it is great to be able to work hard it doesn’t mean you need to be completely exhausted at the end of every workout you do.

With such a determined focus on progression and performance it is easy to begin to push too hard, train too long or simply do way too much. It is in our nature to strive for perfection and often we are led to set goals that may be out of reach. While we can work to achieve our potential, we must always consider our abilities and our limitations and avoid the danger of over-training which can be a serious problem to your health. It can lead to decreased performance, decreased energy, depression, and potentially serious injury

Always remember that rest is training, and the harder you train the longer you need to rest.

You can read more about this in the articles provided below

• Heavy sleeping – How weight training impacts your sleep
• Why sleep deprivation causes weight gain and disease

6. You Are Looking Forward to the Next Workout

This sign relates very closely to sign number 2 where you feel good after the training session. When you have a great workout and feel great after it is normal to be really looking forward to the next one. If your workouts are boring you will find it hard to be motivated to get started. And vice versa if they are too difficult you will also find excuses and reasons to skip the workout. This is where people sometimes use exercise as a form of punishment and it is hard to look forward to a workout that is aimed at hurting you!

When someone eats the wrongs foods they instantly feel crap for doing so and now turn to exercise as a form of punishment and try to “burn off” the calories they just ate. Once again this is a very unhealthy relationship to have with nutrition and exercise. All this will do is create body shaming and eventually illness or disease as your body is constantly being placed under attack with stress.

Exercise is about challenging yourself, but not pushing yourself to extremes that leave you dreading the next workout for fear it’ll be too hard, too exhausting, and just not fun. It’s very hard to look forward to the next workout if you’re too sore from the last one. Staying consistent with your plan is pivotal to maintaining high levels of motivation.

While we strive to be the best we can be it is not wise to aim for perfection, and it is okay to make mistakes. The person who takes their health and fitness too seriously takes all the fun out of life and really looks at eating healthy and exercising like a job that has to be done, instead of something to enjoy. The secret to getting results is not about being perfect 100% of the time, it is all about staying consistent.

This is where I often tell people to enjoy the journey and not to obsess about the results. This way each training session is fun and something to look forward to.

Some days you’ll be able to push your body harder, and that is fine. But there will be many other days you’ll need to take it slower. Remember to listen to your body and choose the right type of workout that challenges you but also keeps you excited for your next workout.

You can find great information about this topic in the articles below.

• How to maximize your motivation all year round
• Aim for consistency and not perfection with your training
• How long does it take to achieve great health and fitness results?

Do You Want More Information?

As mentioned at the start make sure you get our Functional Training Free Report as this details many of the programs and progressions of exercises from easy to hardest for all of these patterns. For more specific programs for general fitness, various injuries, sports and even older adults methods I encourage you to get our Little Black Book Of Training Secrets book below. This has over 100 detailed programs with exercises, sets, reps, rest and tempo all done for you and broken into specific chapters to make it easy to reference what you need. The ultimate tool and resource for you to get the most out of your training.

Click here or the image below to get your copy.

Conclusion

There are many people who have great intentions with their exercise programs and habits but they lose sight of what is really important and end up training in ways that produce negative health results. I hope this article helps to open your mind and make it easier to use your training more effectively to not only produce great results, but also make it fun and something to look forward to.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.

If you do need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program.

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 16 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

References:

• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Corrective Exercise Solutions - by Evan Osar
• Athletic Body Balance by Gray Cook
• Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
• Low Back Disorders - by Stuart McGill
• Knee Injuries In Athletes - by Sports Injury Bulletin
• Back Pain Mechanic - by Stuart McGill
• Understanding & Preventing Non-Contact ACL Injuries - American Orthopaedic Society For Sports Medicine
• Anatomy Trains - by Thomas Meyers
• Motor Learning and Performance - By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
• Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance - By Vladimir Janda
• How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
• Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course - By Paul Chek
• Advanced Program Design - By Paul Chek
• Twist Conditioning Sports Strength - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Movement - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Balance - By Peter Twist