Are Your Workouts Actually Effective?
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Honoring your body with movement is better than NOT honoring your body with movement at all. BUT, if you are 100% committed to building the body you want, you want to ensure you’re utilizing your workouts to fullest.
If you have goals of getting stronger, it would be a shame if you consistently put in the effort to show up, but the workouts you are doing aren’t helping you reach your goals. In this episode of Embrace Your Real, I want to help you understand whether or not your workouts are effectives, to ensure your effort is actually going to pay off. I actually have four questions I need you to answer about your workouts and when you do, you’ll have a clear idea as to whether or not your workouts are helping you reach your goals.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey, hey, beautiful human. Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're are ready to embrace a reel. Let's get in, let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode of the Embrace Your Real Podcast. Today, we're talking about if you were workouts are actually effective. I will always be an advocate for honoring your body with movement. No matter what it is, movement is movement, but if you are 100% committed towards building the body that you want, I think that it's really important that you're actually utilizing your workouts to the fullest. Especially if you have goals of getting stronger, it would be a shame if you consistently put an effort and showed up, but the workouts weren't actually helping you reach your goals. So in this episode of Embrace Your Real, I want to help you understand whether or not your workouts are effective to ensure that your effort is actually going to pay off. And I have four questions that I'm going to ask you about your workouts. And so that way you'll have a clear understanding as to whether or not your workouts are helping you reach your goals.
But before I dive into today's episode, I wanted to ask you a question. Are you currently subscribed to the Embrace Your Real Podcast?
I listened to podcast episodes on a weekly basis, but what I realized was I was actually not subscribed to the podcast on the podcast app on Apple. And so when I was up in the mountains and we were driving, we didn't have service, I wanted to listen to this specific episode, but I wasn't realizing why it wasn't downloading. And it was because I was not already subscribed to that podcast. So I encourage you, if you are wanting to get episodes directly downloaded to your phone without you having to do anything so that way you can listen to these episodes, whether you have service or you don't have service, be sure to hit that plus sign in the top right corner, they just changed it on Apple Podcasts. So be sure to open the podcast app, type in embrace real and hit that plus sign so that you will always be number one, notified on Mondays and Thursdays when brand new episodes go live. But two, they will automatically download on your phone so that you can have them regardless of if you have service or not.
Okay, here are the four questions that I am going to ask you.
Question number one, are they programmed workouts or are you just being sporadic? Like I said earlier, honoring your body with movement of course is better than not honoring your body with movement at all. But if you're 100% committed to building the body that you want, you need to make sure that your workouts are programmed. Going to the gym and doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of more of whatever is great for moving your body, but it's not best for building muscle and building the body that you want.
After years of training, I actually created my weekly training program, which is Movement with Julie, and I have found it to be the most effective. So we have one upper body day, we have one lower body day, one full body day, one cardio and core day, and one shoulders and glutes day. I love this layout simply because we are able to who be time effective, efficient, and we are effectively training every single part of our body. And I don't know about you, but I love a good booty. And so that's why we actually train our glutes more. So we're training them on lower body days. We're training them on shoulders and glutes days. And then we are training them some in full body days as well.
But if you are just going to the gym, if you are just doing your workout sporadically, you will likely neglect certain muscle groups. And typically that happens because you are drawn to a certain muscle group that might be easier for you. So I know for me, when I was in a funk before I actually created the app and it was kind of in my time period where I was still working out at the gym, but I was in a serious funk. I personally am just stronger in my lower body, but I really had the goal of upper body strength. But because I had no workout plan or program that I was following, I would gravitate towards always doing booty exercise. So I was doing like the same exercises almost every single day. And then I was wondering why my upper body strength was suffering tremendously. Well, it was because I wasn't implementing exercises into that, because it wasn't something that I naturally gravitated towards. So that's why I think it's really important to follow a program so that you're not just sporadically following something and training ineffectively.
Question number two, are you actually being consistent? Working out once a week or doing sporadic workouts means you typical aren't consistently working each muscle in your body. For example, if you're only doing leg workout once a month, how do you expect your legs to get stronger? Or in my example, that I just mentioned, how do I expect my upper body to get stronger if I was only training it like once every other week, because I wasn't even being consistent in the first place? It's really important that you are actually being consistent. You're showing up week after week, training the muscles over and over again so that they can become stronger. If you're showing up to your workouts when you feel like doing whatever random exercises you feel like, you can't really complain that you aren't seeing results. You're not seeing results because you're not being consistent with working each muscle group, which is why it's again, important to remain consistent and train your body effectively.
Question number three, are you continually challenging yourself? It's really, really important that you are constantly challenging yourself. I know that this is something that I struggled with for a long time. I didn't really understand progressive overload. And so for me, I would just stay in my comfort zone. I would pick up the 10-pound dumbbells and I would do bicep curls over and over and over again because I was intimidated to pick up stronger dumbbells. Well, I'm telling you that you have to implement progressive overload to see change because your body will adapt to the stress that it's being placed on. So if you're using, let's say for example, 10-pound dumbbells over and over again, it's going to be hard for your body to build more muscle fibers to accommodate the load that is being placed on it. So if you are constantly picking up the 10-pound dumbbells over and over again, your body's not going to have a challenge. But if you to pick up the 15-pound dumbbells and it's hard, your body's going to build more muscle fibers to accommodate for the load being placed on it. That's exactly how muscle growth happens.
So it's really important that you are implementing progressive overload. We talk about this inside the Movement with Julie app, and it's awesome because there's actually a history tab on the exercises that you log inside the app. So like, let's say for example, the first week of the month you did standing bicep curls and you used 10 pounds. And then you look at the history and four weeks later you see standing bicep curls again. You're able to see what you used four weeks prior and you can potentially add or up the weights. There's also so many other ways to implement progressive overload that's not just increasing your weights. You can decrease your rest time. You can increase your volume, which is essentially increasing the reps or sets or both of those, but that is so important in order for you to build your muscle strengths. So constantly challenging yourself. I have found that it's really helpful to follow a program am that will ensure that you are constantly challenging yourself so that you can actually see results.
And question number four, are you working out but not nourishing your body properly? It's really important because no matter how much you work out, if you're not nourishing your body properly, you're likely not going to see results. It's just as simple as that. I talk about this all the time when people come to me and they say, "Julie, I've been so consistent with my workouts, but I'm not seeing results." The first question I will ask them is, "Do you know how much you're fueling your body? Do you know how much you need and are you staying consistent with that?" And typically nine times out of 10, the response is no and no. "But I don't want to do that. It sounds overwhelming. It sounds time consuming."
I'm here to tell you ladies, first of all, investing in education around how to properly nourish your body is single-handedly one of the most important things that you can invest in, because if not, you're just going to constantly waste time and you're going to be confused. You might be overwhelmed. You might be anxious around food. But I will tell you, when I invested in learning how to properly fuel my body, I not only became educated, I became empowered around food. And no matter how much you are training, you can truly not out-train a bad diet. I know you've heard that before, but it's really, really important for you to focus on nourishing your body properly so that it can support your goals and it can support you in you working hard towards those goals and being consistent in your workouts.
Okay, let's recap how to make sure your workouts are effective.
Number one, make sure you are following a program and not doing sporadic random workouts. Number two, remain consistent with the program that you're following. Number three, continue to challenge your body by placing higher demands on your body aka implementing progressive overload. And number four, dial in your nutrition, nourish your body with what it needs so that you're not wasting time.
If you are interested, or if you are needing direction in your next steps when it comes to nutrition, I have my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. Inside this academy, it's honestly the easiest way to figure out how much your body needs. We give you all the tools that you need so that you can properly nourish your body. And then we also personally calculate your macros so that we can teach you how much your body needs based on where you're at and what your goals are. You can learn more about that going to macrocountingmadesimple.com, or I will link it in the show notes.
The other thing, and then when it comes to movement, if you are needing direction when it comes to moving your body consistently, I want to invite you to join the Movement with Julie app. The Movement with Julie app is a workout app that gives you five brand new workouts, every single week, straight to your phone on Sundays at 12:00 PM, Mountain Standard Time. Like I said, we have a lower body, an upper body, a cardio and core, shoulders and glutes and full body. You can use all five of those workouts. You can use one, you can use three of those workouts. It's totally up to you. Two workouts come to your phone every single day, a full workout, which will take you anywhere from 45 minutes to 60 minutes just depending on how slow or fast you go through it. Or if you have time constraints for that day, there's always a 30-minute variation for you. So there are truly no excuses in this.
You can check out and learn more by going to sale, that's S-A-L-E.movementwith julie.com. Again, that's sale.movementwithjulie.com. We are currently running a sale right now where you get 50% off your first month, or if you want to join annually and commit to the full year, you actually get two months for free. So again, go to sale.movementwithjulie.com to learn more about that.
I hope that you found this episode helpful. I encourage you to share this with your friends and I encourage you to take this seriously because I don't want you to waste any time. And I want you to actually get the most bang for your buck when it comes to your workouts so you can start actually reaching your goals and finding a rhythm in your workouts. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
All right, sister. That's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the Gram, be sure to do so, juliealedbetter, yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.