Does Every Workout Need To Kill You?

Our philosophy for exercise is pretty simple. Working through various movement patterns on a regular basis to ensure people are ‘fit for purpose’ whether that’s sport or everyday life. We use resistance from various pieces of equipment and lots of variations of the previously mentioned movement patterns. This is what we BELIEVE in.

I have no problem with people who have different philosophies as not everyone thinks the same as us. I do strongly feel that everyone should have a form of resistance (Strength) training in their weekly exercise routine. As we age we lose muscle mass and our bones get weaker. I would say this is pretty common knowledge. However common knowledge doesn’t always lead to common practice. When I say muscle mass I don’t mean big biceps. We need muscles mass to function and carry out daily tasks. So surely we want to hold on to as much of this as we can for as long we can

I am getting to my point.

It seems people are under the impression that to get results in the gym we need to be sweating buckets. This doesn’t need to be the case we don’t need to be crawling out the gym for the workout to be effective. People go to dance classes and sweat buckets but don’t see much change in their body shape even though they lost a couple of pounds. I show someone a 16kg Kettlebell and they run for the hills.

Every time someone comes to one our classes for the first time then might think at the time that wasn’t too hard ‘I didn’t sweat too much’. Obviously it depends on what class it is because they are all different in terms of intensity but when they wake up the next day they DEFINITELY know they were at a class last night. Some people can barely use their legs. I don’t say this to boast. Only to highlight they are using their muscles in a way they normally don’t. This soreness passes after a few classes and the muscle start to adapt to the exercise. Then we need to increase the intensity, reps, frequency or resistance to ensure progression.

I am all for variety when it comes to exercise and love people doing different sports and different types of exercise. It needs to be fun and sustainable. I just NEED there to be some form of resistance training in their. When people get this and run with this it’s great. I have women in the gym who went from lifting 6kg or 8kg when the first started and it being tough to now lifting 30+kg. Now that is progression. They surprise themselves and get great confidence in not only how it makes them feel but how it makes them look. AWESOME.

So just remember you don’t need to be on the verge of passing out for a workout to be useful.