Fuel Your Strength 3 Mistakes Keeping You From Getting Stronger In the Gym
Have you been spending a few workouts a week lifting weights and trying to eat healthily but are still not seeing the results you are hoping for? There are three main common reasons that I hear over and over again in the community that is keeping you from seeing the results you want from your strength training efforts. The good news? They are easy to fix once you have empowered yourself with the knowledge and mindset shifts to do so!
Key Takeaways
If You Want To See The Results You Are Looking For From Strength Training You Should:
- Stop being afraid of calories, and under fueling yourself, and start giving your body the energy it needs to fuel itself
- Manage your stress to recovery ratio to give your body the time it needs to recover
- Improve your movement patterns and tissue outside of the gym so that you can avoid chronic injuries inside the gym
Eating Less and Moving More Is Not the Answer
A lot of us have a negative association with the word 'calories' because of diet culture. We have been told to put an emphasis on 'eating less and moving more', but that is not the magic cure. Your body needs fuel to move, and when you restrict that fuel, it can kill your energy and open you up to chronic energy.
All three of these topics, under-fueling, not managing your stress to recovery ratio, and not looking for ways to improve your movement patterns and tissue outside of the gym, have a huge impact on the results you see inside of the gym.
Results Need an Active Listener
Listening to your body is all about tuning into the signals that your body is sending you instead of ignoring them. If you are under a lot of stress, are not eating healthy foods or enough foods, or not prioritizing your sleep, it will all show up when you start to lift those weights.
While every exercise has its own risks, you can see the results you are looking for when it comes to strength training, but only if you are giving your body what it needs to succeed. Listening to your body, fueling it the right way, managing your stress to recovery ratio, and improving your movement patterns are the ways to help you achieve the results you are looking for in a healthy and safe way.
Which one of these common mistakes rang the most true for you? Share your thoughts with me in the comments on the episode page.
In This Episode
- The number one most common mistake I see over and over again when strength training (4:52)
- Why not eating enough creates the perfect storm to decrease your motivation to move (7:55)
- General ways to improve the way you think about food and get on track to make sure you are not under eating (12:08)
- How an inadequate amount of recovery time and your overall stress ratio can impact your results (16:12)
- The role of chronic injury when reducing the results you see from strength training (23:21)
Quotes
"If you are making this mistake, nobody is here to blame you. This isn't something to feel bad about, this isn't something to feel shameful for, it's a piece of information to take and tuck into your back pocket and be more mindful and aware of what you are doing in your daily life." (4:38)
"There is oftentimes a lot of negative self-talk or feeling like you are broken, or wrong, or bad, for your body physiologically responding in the way that it does. And a lot of that can be staved off by eating enough food and eating more consistently and introducing what I would call more of a relative balance of macronutrients." (15:45)
"What is to be aware of is, if you are not getting the results from your strength training that you want, is to take a look at how much other, especially higher intensity movements or exercise, relative to all of the other stress that is going on in your life." (20:05)
"If you are dealing with injuries or you are dealing with the effects of 'life-ing' and moving through life with these movement patterns, it is really important that you become aware of that and you work on them, and you start to become more tuned in to the signals your body is sending you." (31:08)
"If you are a woman who wants to get stronger and is lifting weights, you want your energy to increase, and you want to see performance in the gym, I am going to be here to help you do that." (33:21)
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