Evaluate Your Training Success with These 3 Essential Questions

In the initial phase of diet and exercise, we often gather information from extreme sources. For example, when looking to build muscles, we may look at bodybuilders. Similarly, for diets, we may follow those who adhere to them with 100% accuracy.

While this information can be useful, it can also be confusing for the majority of people due to conflicting advice, especially when professionals disagree. Some discussions are valid, but others are just attempts to prove one method superior

With the rise of fitness professionals online and offline, there's an overwhelming amount of information on muscle building, sports performance, pain management, and weight management. It can make you feel like you need to fit into a specific category to achieve your health and fitness goals.

Regardless of your training method or trainer, ask yourself: Are you truly training or just exercising? Is your trainer providing structured training or just a series of cool exercises from YouTube?

To know you are getting benefit from training, you will need to ask yourself,

1.) Is your range of movement improving?

2.) Are you getting stronger?  

3.) Are you improving or maintaining your muscle mass?

Understanding Exercise, Workout and Training

For me, exercise, workout and training have different meanings.  They are just words, and I do realize that it doesn’t make any difference how we utilize it.  At the same time, having a understanding towards each term may help understand what I am sharing.

Training is a big picture to help us improve what we could not do before.  This may mean ability to squat, ability to lift heavier objects, ability to move for 60 minutes, and so forth.  I usually use the analogy of learning new language.  However, before going into training, you will need to learn how to exercise, which in language is same as learning new words or vocabulary. 

Initially, people need to spend time learning the exercises like, planks, push up, pull ups, squats, deadlift, and so on, just like you learn new words including it's meaning and pronunciation.  If you cannot perform those exercises due to weakness or pain, there are accessory exercises to help you able to perform those exercises. 

After several months (3-6 months), you want to start using those exercises to create workout.  Workout in my mind is series of exercises to challenge your performance.  For example, randomly select 2-4 exercises to see if you can perform those exercises back-to-back with short amount of rest.  This is like practicing creating sentences in new language. 

Once you get comfortable in creating workout, then you can move on to what I call training.  Training for me is workout with definite purpose.  Purpose could be to improve physique, improve endurance and strength to complete hike, improve soccer performance, improve metabolic conditioning to be able to use fat and carbs as energy sources.  This list can go on and on. This is same as learning grammar and being able to tell jokes in new language.

Majority of times people are stuck at work out phase and do not move on to training phase mainly because they are just their to work out.  However, this is the primary reason why trainees and trainers don’t see results. I'm not talking about feeling better type of results but talking about physical change in both looks and performance.

Whether the training program is working for you or not, check on the following questions. If you are seeing results in all 3, great, you are doing well so keep going. If you are not seeing results in any of them, see what you can do to improve it.

1. Is Your Range of Movement Improving?

Ability to move without limitation or at least to strive for it is very important.  Pain management and corrective exercise are great but from my experience it takes long time to see any progress. When you focus on improving your movement through improving basic exercise, you can get stronger on improving your range of movement more efficiently.

What I typically do for me and my client is to spend first 10-15 minutes of training session for mobility and body control as part of warm up.  Depending on their goal for the session, choice of exercises may vary, however, we can get the joints moving, challenge their mobility and get their body warm for the main segment of the training.

Even during the main segment, you should strive for full range of movement with all of your exercise. Then you can start adding weights to it.

2. Are You Getting Stronger?

To get stronger, we need to load our body.  This is not just for muscles but also for bones as well.  When adding a load or resistance to your exercise, this should be done in progressive matter.  Priority always goes to technique of the exercise. Building strength with poor technique is like building castle on a poor foundation. It will eventually fall.

Apply load is to challenge your technique with a load.  For example, if you are performing squats, first you need to learn the proper technique so your body can perform exercise efficiently.  Then you can use dumbbells, kettlebells or barbells to challenge your technique with a load.  Therefore, the load should not be too heavy where the technique is being compromised.

3. Are You Improving or Maintain Your Muscle Mass?

If you are working on 1 and 2 you should see some improvement in muscle definition and muscle size. To compliment your training, you should also consider managing your nutrition especially after your training.

Consider having some type of carbohydrate and protein for post training meal. This may be blending protein shake with banana, chicken and rice, salad with walnut and fruits and so on. Carbohydrate after the training will help replenish glycogen that is needed for muscles and also help bring protein into your muscles. This option may vary with your current health condition, however, should work for majority of the population. If you are on weight loss, you can minimize your carbohydrate intake on other meals.

One more consideration is hydration. Muscle is made of 75% water. That means to grow and maintain muscles you will need water. Try drinking water as often as you can throughout the day.

In Nutshell

You are going to the gym, hiring the trainer for results not just for good workout. Have purpose on what you are spending your resource for. If you are not seeing any of the 3 that I shared above through your training, consider revising. If you are seeing results, then you are doing great, keep going!

Kota Shimada