Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 29: How to get MORE out of your current gym sessions
Transcript
- Cameron Cummings: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. So in today's episode, I want to talk about how you can make more progress from your gym sessions. So rather than focus on just training more often, which look, there's gonna be an element here. If you're not training consistently enough, that's gonna impact your progress. There's no point of us beating around the bush with that one. If it's the case that you are missing half your sessions or more in a given month, you're not gonna make as much progress as you want. However, I do think that having clear direction with your sessions can help with that, right? It's much easier to be motivated when you actually feel like you're bloody well getting somewhere rather than kind of feeling like, ⁓ well, I've been training, but you're not getting much out of it, right? You're not seeing the benefit of it. So to touch on that a little bit, one of the things that I think can be really, really impactful and really, positive for your training is to go in with a plan. So if you do not have a training plan and you are just wandering into a busy commercial gym, and look, I was a in-person trainer for many, many years in a very, very busy gym in the centre of Edinburgh with a massive gym membership of like 6,500 members at points, I think it was, so a hugely busy gym. Now, in that environment, you can see quite clearly sometimes people just wandering about trying to look for something to jump on, and it must be so... Difficult because when you're wondering about there, you don't really know what you're doing that day. You're kind of making it up as you go. You never quite know when you've done enough. You don't know how many exercises you should be doing. You don't know how many exercises you should be doing for certain muscle groups and so on and so forth. And it's all just a bit random, right? And the problem is, is that you then do that session and a week later you come in and it looks completely different. So how do you know if you've made progress? Well, it's really hard to tell because If I want to change the shape I'm in, the problem with that is that takes time, right? The fat loss piece of things often can happen much quicker and create more impressive visual results in the short term, but your body shape change can be amazing from weight training in the longer term, but the problem is is you can train three times and you can train so hard and train so well and not that much changes, right? You're not gonna see any visual differences after three sessions. It is a longer term lagging measure to see visual change through training. That is the reality of it. There's no point in pretending otherwise. It takes time, months, not weeks, when it comes to weight training. Now the great thing is, is time passes real quick and the changes that you get tend to hang around pretty well, which is great. So that's another positive. But it's really, really important to remember that we need to be seeing progress from our training. So if you're doing random stuff, if you do a leg press one time and then you do a squat the next time and then you do a lunge the next time and it's months before you see a leg press again, how do you know if you've got any stronger? Because you've got no point in comparison. And this is point of comparison, I should say. But the point is this, is that if you have a training plan and you know, and I'm just gonna make the example of a leg press, I'll probably make that reference a few times, like in terms of simplicity and something that's probably familiar to most people, is that if you go in and you know. what setting you're on in the leg press, and you know what weight you lifted last time, and you know the amount of reps you did. did 100 for three sets of eight, cool. This time I'm gonna try and hit a set of nine, or maybe even 10 on that first set. Let's try that, oh I managed it, great. And then I managed an extra rep on the second set. You then go away from that leg press feeling like, oh I've made clear progress, which then means you feel motivated. And you also know that you're going to see changes in your body composition over time because you are progressing. you are continuing to, like sort of what we call progressive overload, you're continuing to progressively overload over time. So you are adding a little bit of weight, or you're adding reps, or indeed a mix of both. You are using the same settings, so the range of motion, the movement itself is the same each time. You're getting more controlled on it, your technique is getting better. All these things are happening. What we know comes from that is we know that we see body composition changes. You're going to get stronger, you're going to build a little bit of muscle or tone up, however you want to frame it. You're going to see those changes, but you can only see those changes and have that occur if you know you're progressing in the long term. Like yeah, absolutely, doing random workouts will probably get you a bit fitter and stronger in the first instance, but it's not particularly compelling. It's not particularly motivating. And sometimes what people like is if you've come from a background of doing lots of classes, sometimes people will say, but I really like variety, I like changing it up, and I get that. And there is a place for variety, but variety should look like doing something for eight to 10 weeks, or 10 to 12 weeks, and then changing it up. Now, there is an argument here where actually changing it up less often can sometimes be useful because if you're progressing on something anyway, why would you change it? Because you're getting the benefit of it. But sometimes psychologically people feel the need to change it up. I have clients that, like to change your training plan up every 16 to 20 weeks and have other clients that would prefer that we change it up a little bit more often and both are valid, right? It's just down to the person. I'm a boring, boring person when it comes to training. I wanna do the same stuff on repeat until I stop progressing with it, which often takes many, many, many months anyway. So what's really, really important here is if you have this structured training plan, if you know that you have reps to beat from last time, you're motivated. you feel like you've done a little bit more, you know the body composition changes are on their way, which is really positive. So that's really useful and that's the first place I'd start. And within that, there's a couple of little key points. One is, for goodness sakes, write down the settings you're on on the machine you're on. Like if you're on a setting five on the leg press, note it down so that you know every time you walk in the gym what you're doing. The other bit as well is noting down the reps and the weight that you do. You've got to, got to, got to give yourself a target to beat. It's really easy comparatively to motivate yourself to push on with your training if you actually have a target to hit. So if you know, well I managed three sets of eight last time, if I manage one set of nine and two sets of eight, that's me progressing. That is absolutely right it is. That's all it might be. Sometimes you'll be able to make bigger jumps of two or three reps. Sometimes it'll just be one rep at a time. all of those things are valid, it's still progress, right? And actually, there is a little argument in here where if you're jumping up by six reps every single session, all that tells me is you probably started at a weight that was a little bit too easy. And that's fine, it'll catch up and then you'll find that your progress slows, but it doesn't really slow down, it simply. that you maybe weren't pushing yourself as much before, you're now a little bit closer to the intensity you need to be, so you're still able to progress, but you're adding a rep or a couple reps each time we're in, and that's really normal, or you maybe nudge up one weight. If you're jumping up three weights in a session, it was just too light in the first place. So that's really, really, really helpful as well as write the settings down, write the reps and weight down. Even if you do those two things, you're probably gonna see better progress because you, A, are setting the machine up the same way every time so it feels familiar. it takes away bit of the overwhelm as well. You're not figuring things out or playing around, what did I do last time? There's none of that. You're also not playing about with the weights. ⁓ I need to, I think I was too heavy. ⁓ maybe that is what I did last time. I can't quite remember. That's not particularly motivational in the first place. And if the gym's busy and you're maybe still building your confidence in the gym, the last thing you want to be doing is faffing about, trying to figure out what way, what setting, all the rest of it on a machine every single time you're in because you never write anything down. So. That's one point I wanted to touch on. Another thing that I think can make people's gym sessions a lot more effective is you have that structured plan, but now what you're trying to do is you want to standardize your technique. And what I mean by that is, and it sounds fancy and it's not, is just try and do the same thing every single time. Now it may be that you're working over your technique on time or you film a set and you review it. Maybe see something online and you think, oh, actually, I maybe need to tweak my technique, and that's fine. Of course, it's gonna progress. But if you have the same technique each time, again, it gives you a platform to build from. If you are someone who's doing like a lat pull down, let's say, and you normally do it in the same sort of position with your back mostly upright with just a little bit of a lean back, which is probably where we should be, and then the next time you come in, you do it and you do a little back swing, because you saw someone else in the gym do it, the problem is, is that you might be able to... you move a bit more weight because of momentum, because of that backswing, which by the way isn't useful and is not gonna benefit you. But the problem is, is that you've now added in something that's different, so you don't really know whether you've progressed or not because the technique is different. So try and keep technique the same. That's a really simple thing and actually for most people it's less of an issue perhaps than the overall structure is. The writing down of settings, the actually writing down your reps and weight, it's probably less of a problem than that, but it's still something that comes up. But the third thing that I really wanted to talk about is challenge, right? It's getting enough challenge from the movement. If you do a leg press, again, we'll just revisit that one, and you could do four or five more reps when you finish, you are leaving so much in the locker that you are going to slow your progress down. You do not need to go to failure, which is the point where you can no longer do a rep. You can't do a rep at all. You don't need to go to failure every single time. You absolutely don't. However, pushing yourself is still important, right? If you get to the end of your gym session, you're like, ah, that was easy, but that's not a good thing, right? That's not a good thing. You want to be pushing, you want to be progressing. So this is really, really important as well as making sure, okay, we could look at the numbers and we're progressing and that's great. And like we've talked about, if you do that every single week, if I know I'm doing three sets of eight, 100, and I just build my way up weights and reps, I'm gonna reach a point that the weight's challenging enough eventually anyway. but you can get there quicker and you can make more progress if you do push yourself that little bit harder. Could you do an extra rep? Well maybe, try it, see what happens. On something like a leg press, on a leg extension, on a bicycle, all these movements, if you can't finish the rep, nothing happens, right? You don't go anywhere. Now if you had a barbell on your back or you were doing a barbell bench press, that might not make as much sense because of the. actual position of the bar, et cetera, unless you're quite confident in the gym, cetera, that wouldn't make a lot of sense. That's probably a little higher risk. But on something like a leg press, do you know what happens if you can't push it? You can't push it. Nothing happens. It doesn't move. Or you move it halfway through the rep and you can't move it any farther. And that's absolutely fine. But ask yourself that question, could I get one more? If you do think maybe, go for it. Absolutely go for it. And the other thing as well is don't be scared to try. It's absolutely fine to reach failure. You do a leg press, you're doing 10, you think you could get an 11th, you go for it. You get through the first little bit, your legs are shaking, ah, you can't get it, you come back down. Nothing happened, it was bad. All that's happened is you've tested yourself. And I think sometimes, and I'm gonna touch on this, because I think it's important, sometimes when people are new to the gym, what happens is they feel a bit self-conscious about that, like what if someone looks over? That is how people who know what they're doing train, right? They push themselves. to the point that they can't do any more reps, right? So please don't feel like, ⁓ someone's gonna see that I failed that rep and I didn't manage to press the leg press out. I do it every time I'm in the gym, every bloody time. So please do not worry about that. That is what proper training looks like, right? That's just one of those things. It's only a worry when you first go in and you don't know any better. And then over time you're like, ⁓ actually, yeah, that person who looks like they really train, they're doing the same thing. They're giving it a go and actually they didn't manage their last one. That's normal, right? Now you don't need to that in every set, you don't need to go to failure in every set, but try and get close to it. We shouldn't have four, five, six reps in the tank every time. When you finish, ⁓ I could have done six more of those. Then do more, test yourself, see what you can get, because if you push yourself more, you will get more from your training. And the thing is, when I often kind of frame it this way, it makes a little bit of sense to people, it's like, it doesn't take that much longer. I think this is a bit that's funny about it, it's like. It sounds like, ⁓ but that sounds like working so hard. You don't have to train like a lunatic. You might still be doing a 30 minute session. The only difference is rather than doing 10 leg presses, you try and do 11 on one of your sets. Or you're doing a lat pull down and you did eight last time and you're trying to do nine this time. And maybe you don't get it, but nothing bad happens. Like it doesn't change that much. Like the relative intensity of your session isn't gonna change drastically. You're not gonna feel like you're in some sort of god awful military boot camp. You're just giving it an extra go for maybe one or maybe two extra reps, yet those one or two extra reps are going to have a meaningful impact as the weeks and months go on to the progress you make in the gym. So that's a nice place to start with training is think about structure, write down the settings on your machine, write down the reps and weight you did, simple stuff. There's lots of free apps that will let you do that as well. So that can be quite useful if that's your starting point and you're just getting into the gym, write it all down, get the structure in place. Then make sure your technique's standardised, don't chop and change technique every single time. And then the third thing is just push yourself a little bit with it. Like a lot of the time, the reason people feel like they need to train a third and fourth or fifth time a week is because their training just isn't effective enough because it's not structured, they don't have a training plan, they don't go out their way to progress, they don't say, do you know what, maybe I could do an extra rep. So what happens is their training's a six out of 10 intensity. It's also a six out 10 challenge. It's also erratic and just, they kind of make it up as they go. And then they feel like they need to spend an extra two hours in the gym. And honestly, and I've said this to people before who are like, oh yeah, I need to, just need to train more. And I've kind of said to them, I'm like, talk a little bit about your training just to get a gauge of it. And then I've kind of said to them, I was like, I don't think that's your solution. I think that if you trained a bit more effectively, you'll probably make 20, 30, 40 more percent, percent more. sort of progress from your training, you'll feel stronger, you'll feel more, like it'll be more satisfying because you'll feel like you're progressing and you can save that time and not have to make it a chore because you have to go to the gym four times a week and that's a huge commitment and you try it for a few weeks and it falls apart because you're now spending all your time there and actually it's stressing you out a bit and then you end up stopping. It's much better to do two sessions a week that are really bloody effective and that make you great progress and that you enjoy. then it is making them an absolute chore because you feel like you need to do 101 things. So these things can be really, really, really useful. So if you start there, it can go such a long way. So if you are interested in one-to-one coaching and you'd like to know a little bit more and you want someone to write your training out for you, make a training plan, review your technique, and make sure you're getting the very, very most out of your training. because it is pretty in depth, right? There's all sorts of little tweaks that we can make to make sure you're getting the most out of your training, even in quite a limited sort of amount of time. I have loads of clients that only train for sort of 40 minutes, twice a week, right? And still make tons and tons of progress. So if you do want a bit of support with that, then the link is in the show notes for one-to-one coaching. But otherwise, I will speak to you in the next episode. And if you do have any suggestions for topics, anything you want to ask me about, please just pop me a message on Instagram. I always do. five to seven mini episodes a week. So if there's anything you want me to cover off, I'm more than happy to do so. Speak soon. ⁓