Here are 5 signs that you aren’t training hard enough:
(1) Lifting the same weight for months:
If you want to build muscle, you need to practice progressive overload which is the act of putting your muscles under great stress to build.
This means ditching your light weights and pushing yourself to lift heavier.
(2) Changing your workouts daily:
If you change your workouts everyday, you never give yourself the time to grow your muscles using progressive overload.
Throw out the old idea of “muscle confusion”. We need to be following a structured lifting routine AT LEAST 4 weeks in a row. The longer, the better.
(3) Doing 15+ reps of every exercise:
If you can do 15 reps or more of an exercise, you need to increase your weight and drop your reps to achieve hypertrophy (ie. muscle growth). Aim for a 10-12 range and push yourself to failure.
(4) Performing 8 or more exercises per workout:
You do not need to be doing 20 exercises each time you workout. I recommend 4 at the most. You can get a fully effective workout doing 3 exercises per day if you are properly implementing points 1 and 3 discussed above.
* For muscle growth, reduce the number of exercises while increasing the intensity of each exercise performed.
(5) No rest days:
If your goal is to build muscle, you need a combination of intense lifting days and adequate rest days.
Muscles grow on rest day. So if you are exercising 7 days a week, you are not giving your body the time it needs to rest, recover and grow. You must rest 2 days per week MINIMUM.
