EP 94: Why Changing Your Workouts Is Slowing Your Results After 40

0:00Hello and welcome back to Becoming Her, Fitter, Better, and Stronger over 40. I'm your host and coach, Shauna. I'm 47, a wife, a boy mom, and a fitness and nutrition coach, helping women over 40 become their best. Welcome or welcome back. If you're over 40 and you are in the gym, you are putting in the effort, but you're not seeing your body get more sculpted or defined. You're not seeing the results that you want to. It might not mean that you need to do more in the gym. In fact, you might need to do less and take a different approach. Because if your goal is to look lean, more defined, more sculpted, that means you have to have more muscle and less body fat.

0:33Now fat loss is going to be controlled with nutrition. I did a whole episode on that. I will leave a link below and I will walk you through the three phases of nutrition that will help you transform your body. The other piece here is building muscle and that's what we want to use the gym for. The gym is where we build and the kitchen is where we reveal. And building muscle takes more than just sweating, feeling sore, or burning a ton of calories. It requires strategy and structure. They don't grow because a workout felt hard. They grow when you give them that stimulus to adapt. Creating that stimulus to adapt requires structure, the right kind of intensity, progression, and most of all, time.

1:09So if you're constantly taking different classes, trying different workouts, jumping from one program to the next, trying to keep your body guessing, you might be making it harder to build the muscle that's going to give you the definition that you want. And this is a place I found myself in for a long time. I was always in the gym, trying my best, working hard, but not seeing the changes that I wanted to. And it wasn't until I made the changes that I'm going to talk to you about today that everything started to come together. And this is exactly what I teach my clients and how I help them achieve their physique goals.

1:39So if you are tired of showing up in the gym and not seeing the results that you want to, stick around because this is going to help. Today I'm going to show you why constantly changing your workouts will actually slow down your results, why repeating exercises can actually make them more effective, and the three-step approach that I use with myself and my clients to create amazing physique transformations. because if you want to look lean, create more shape, and finally start seeing your workouts change your body in the best of ways, doing less can actually get you better results. When I say less, I don't mean less effort.

2:08I mean less variety, less randomness, and less guessing, and instead following a plan that's optimized to help you build your goal body. So let's dive right in. Now you have likely heard things like you have to keep your body guessing or you need to confuse your muscles so they don't get used to your workouts. A new workout usually feels harder, A new exercise might make you feel more sore. And because it feels different and challenging, it's easy to assume it must be doing something. Plus, repeating the same program for weeks can start to feel a little bit boring. But here's what I want you to understand and what I wish I knew much sooner.

2:39Your muscles don't need confusion. They need to be progressively challenged. And those are two very different things. A workout that feels challenging because it's new is not the same thing as giving your muscles the type of challenge they need to grow. You can leave a workout exhausted, be drenched in sweat, burn a ton of calories, wake up sore the next morning, but none of those things mean that you create enough muscle-building stimulus. Remember, we're trying to give the muscle a reason to adapt. And in order to do that, we need to be able to challenge that muscle effectively and then gradually increase the challenge over time.

3:10Constantly switching exercises makes that a lot harder to do. The first reason is that you never really get a chance to master that movement. Think about the first few times that you perform an exercise. You're still learning it. You're figuring out your setup, your positioning, your balance, your range of motion, how much weight you should use, and even where you're supposed to feel the exercise. A good example is with like the Romanian deadlift. The first time you ever did that exercise, you were likely thinking things like, how much do I bend my knees? How far do I push back my hips? Where should I hold the dumbbells?

3:39Am I feeling it where I'm supposed to? There's a lot happening. And that's normal when you're learning something new. But then you repeat that same movement week after week, and your setup starts to feel natural. Your technique gets better. You understand how the movement should feel. And now instead of using most of your energy just trying to perform the exercise correctly, you can actually start putting more effort into challenging the muscle, using appropriate loads, and getting close to failure. That's how you create the stimulus to build muscle. And that's an important shift because the better you get at an exercise, the better you're going to be able to train the muscle that the exercise was intended for.

4:10When you constantly replace exercises before you've had a chance to become good at them, you're restarting that learning process over and over again. And that brings me to the second problem. You have no clear way to know if in fact you are progressing. Let's say week one, you do a goblet squat and then you do a sumo squat. Then you find another squat variation and try that. You might be working hard, you're sweating, you're getting a little sore. But how do you know if in fact you're getting stronger? How do you know your performance has improved? You don't. And this matters because one of the biggest drivers of muscle growth is something called progressive overload.

4:42I'm going to do an entire video on progressive overload next because I think it's one of the most important concepts to understand if you are lifting weights and actually want to see your body change. But very simply, progressive overload means that we are asking more of our muscles over time. That might come from adding more reps, adding weight, improving your range of motion, having better control, better technique, getting closer to failure. There's multiple ways to progress in exercise. It doesn't always mean you have to add weight every week, but you do need some way of showing that your body is getting better with these exercises over time.

5:14And you can't really measure that if you're constantly changing everything that you're doing. This is also where I think a lot of us get the whole idea of repetition backwards. We think an exercise might become less effective because we've been doing it for weeks on end, but in a lot of ways it's becoming more effective because we are finally getting good at that exercise. Our technique is better. We're more confident. We understand how the movement should feel, what weight is appropriate to use. Now you can push yourself because you're not spending the entire set thinking about what you're supposed to be doing.

5:41And this is where I want to talk about that three-step approach to keep your training simple and effective. First up, we have repeat. And this means choosing a program and then sticking with it long enough, repeating it long enough, so you give it a chance to actually be effective. Generally, this will be about six to 12 weeks, sometimes a little bit more, but you want to give your body time to progress with these exercises and with this program. And you don't need hundreds of different exercises within a program. You need a handful of really solid movements that train the muscles you're trying to develop and then give yourself time to get better with them and stronger with them.

6:13In my own training, I keep many of the same core movements for months at a time. And that's been a huge part of what has helped me build the physique that I have now at age 47. And this is also what I do for my clients. I'm not changing their workouts every single week. Instead, we're keeping movements in long enough so that they can master them, challenge themselves, and make measurable progress. Which brings us to step number two, which is to track. And this is one of the simplest things that you can do to make sure that you are progressing in the right ways with your workouts. You want to track all of your exercises, the weight that you use, the reps that you performed, how many sets you did.

6:46You can write it in a notebook or you can use an app. That way you can go back to it next week, see where you left off, and try to improve from there. But if you're not tracking, you'll have no clear way to know what weight you used, how many reps you did last week, how can you improve this week, and that leaves you guessing when it comes to your goals. And I want you knowing that you're making progress, not guessing. There's a big difference between going to the gym and completing workouts versus training towards a result. Tracking gives you that information that you need to make sure that you are working towards your goals.

7:14Now when you go to the gym to do your workouts, you'll be able to check your log, see what weight you used last week, how many reps you got, and see if you can improve on some of those things this week. Which brings us to our final point, which is progression. This means looking for small ways to improve over time. Maybe that means you're doing one more rep than you did last week. Maybe that means you're improving your range of motion. Maybe that means you're controlling the weight a little bit better this week. Or maybe that means that you are adding a little bit of weight. Those little improvements might not feel exciting in the moment, but when you stack them week after week, that's what's going to help your body change.

7:47And again, progressive overload does not mean you need to add weight every single workout. Sometimes you're going to be using the same weight for several weeks while you're working on increasing your reps. And sometimes progression just means you are getting better execution with the exercise. Sometimes you're going to have an off week and you might not progress at all, but we're looking for trends over time. Let me give you a really simple example. Let's say you're doing a dumbbell Romanian deadlift. So week one, you're using 35 pound dumbbells and you get eight reps. Week two, you use those same 35-pound dumbbells, and now you get 10 reps.

8:16Week three, you get 12 reps, and now you've reached the top of your rep range, so you might move up to 40-pound dumbbells. Then you start building those reps back up again. That's real progression, and that's what creates real results. You'll be able to look back and see that you are stronger than you were four weeks ago. Now compare that with doing RDLs one week, good mornings the next week, kettlebell swings the week after that, and then some new glute exercise that you might have seen on Instagram. Maybe all of those workouts felt hard. Maybe all four exercises were good exercises, but were you working close to failure?

8:47Did you stimulate muscle growth? Did you progress? You don't really know. That's the difference between exercising to sweat and training to build. Training is how you start building a body that reflects the work that you're putting in. And that's just the cherry on top. The real win is a better metabolism, longevity, and all of the health benefits you're going to gain from having more muscle. So if you've been slaving away in the gym and your body is not reflecting the efforts, You're not seeing the changes that you want to. I invite you to lean away from exercising to burn calories and training to build.

9:16That's what's going to create your dream physique and all the health benefits we just talked about. Building your best body over 40 is not about doing more. It's about doing better. If you're ready to put all of this into practice and you want a program that's going to help you do just that, I invite you to join me in my new six-week challenge coming up September 14th called Sculpted Season. You'll have the structure, you'll have the workout program, and you'll have the progression built in, plus an app where you can track everything. There will be options for both home and gym versions, so you can choose the one that works for you.

9:47You'll also have access to the community where I'll be inside answering questions, helping you with your training, and supporting you throughout the challenge. It's a one-time purchase with lifelong access, so when the six weeks is over, you're not done, you can go back through the program as many times as you want to, continue progressing with your lifts, and keep building what you've already created. I will leave all the information below. I can't wait to see you inside. And make sure you subscribe because next week we're taking this one step further and breaking down progressive overload very simply so that you can bring it into your training sessions and make the progress that you want to.

10:18Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I genuinely hope you found it helpful. If you did, please leave a rating or a review. I would be so appreciative. And until next week, keep getting stronger and I will see you in the next episode.