What you should focus on during a workout… 🏋🏻
There’s a common misconception that you can only get a ‘good’ workout if your heart rate peaks at its highest ever, that you are sweating tonnes, or if you are burning as many calories as possible. Many people focus on these as indicators or whether their workout was good or bad.
However none of these correlate with how effective a workout actually is. They also don’t correlate with how much fat you’re burning either. Hitting a higher heart rate doesn’t mean you’re burning more body fat. Sweating doesn’t either – it just means you’re cooling your body down or it could relate to your level of hydration, hormones, etc.
Most importantly your calorie burn doesn’t necessarily reflect the effectiveness of your workout. It’s highly inaccurate – no device can accurately count how many calories you’re burning. It’s also irrelevant. It may take you 45 mins to burn 500 calories but you can consume those calories in 4 mins (or less!). You can never out exercise what you’re eating (and I’ve written about this in other posts). Unless you’re working out for 10 hours a day it’s impossible to use exercise to lose fat (Note – working out for that long is most definitely not a suggestion!). It’s your diet that determines the fat loss.
So exercise should be focused on increasing and improving performance. Separate it from the calorie side of things. Instead focus on lifting more weight, doing more reps, improving your 5k time, improving your range of motion and technique etc. Don’t put your energy and effort into things that ultimately don’t matter and will just cause you more stress. Chasing higher heart rates and higher calorie burns isn’t sustainable or enjoyable. Don’t chase a feeling – chase results – getting stronger, doing more push ups, managing that burpee, lifting more
weight etc.
🤗
Xx
Every Step Fitness 