As a fitness mom, have you ever felt like you were doing all the right things to hit your fitness and strength training goals, but not seeing the visible results you desperately desired? Same. Nutrition is number one for seeing results, but sometimes we need to evaluate what’s going on during our workouts.
Here are few things that you may not be placing as much emphasis on during your strength training sessions. Simply going to the gym doesn’t yield the best results. Let’s take a look at your strength training routine.
If you’re new here, I’m Carley a toddler mom and a full-time physical therapist. I was following along with a mid-20s fitness influencer realizing she was saying some good shit, but then I took a step back and thought her advice will yield the results we all desire, but for parents or what I cared more about, moms, this wasn’t the most realistic approach.
For me, I’m not new to the fitness world and it’s partially what I do for a living. I’m more highly educated than a personal trainer, but at work I look at the individual and all of their co-morbidities (aka other underlying diseases or conditions). That background combined with my love for strength training has helped me make the best adaptations for my own home gym and lifestyle as a fitness mom.
All of this to say that the advice I was reading was top notch, but I thought if I wasn’t already dedicated to most of these healthy habits, the changes that were being recommended would be next level impossible.
That’s why I started to add so much more fitness specific information for moms to my blog. It felt like it was an area that was lacking because I can’t tell you how many times, I see in online groups that I’m in about how moms are struggling to squeeze in a workout, or they aren’t sure what to do.
Let’s see if I can help! This article may not have as many beginner-friendly pointers, but I’m sure all levels could still benefit. For beginner friendly tips read here. I have compiled a list of 10 strength training tips to help you evaluate your workouts.
10 Strength Training Tips to Elevate Your Workouts
1. Schedule Your Workouts Ahead of Time
The busy mom life means you need to plan shit out right? Well, when you have fitness goals or any new habit for that matter, you need to schedule that out. Determine how many workouts are realistic to commit to and schedule them. Carving out the time is the most important if you plan on sticking this one out until the end.
2. Start Your Workout with a Plan
Write up your workout before you get into the gym or before you get started in your home gym. As moms, we are busy as fuck sooooo let’s not waste that precious scheduled time. Once you have determined how many workouts will be realistic to add to your week, you will be able to determine how you will draw up your workout plan.
This is going to be especially important if you are short on time or you’re new to the gym. You don’t want to head into the gym and just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. You’re much less likely to see the results you desperately desire. You also might consider taking a day to go sign up for the membership or return to the gym and see what they have, learn how to adjust the machines, and get the lay of the land. This will cut down on wasted time for your scheduled workouts. For me, this would be especially important because I do my workouts before work.
I also think knowing what to expect will help ease the anxiety of the gym. I know I used to think everyone knew what they were doing in there and felt like I didn’t belong on some of the machines. Now, I can sit back and laugh because those people didn’t know any more than I did, some that maybe looked like they knew what they were doing had poor form. I’m no expert, but whenever a patient tells me something hurts, their alignment is off. I can spot that shit from across the room.
There are many ways to break it down. It will be difficult for me to lay that all out in this blog post because it’s going to depend on the number of days you’re dedicating per week. I personally break my workout into 5 lifting days. I typically have 2 active rest days because I am always aiming to get my steps in.
I am currently doing a back and cardio day, full upper body day, a leg day with quad emphasis, a leg day with glutes/hamstrings emphasis, and a full body day that is more HIIT style. Another example of this would be to do a leg day, back day, chest day, and shoulder day. Figure out what works best for you and just do it on repeat!
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is probably not the beginner-friendly version if you were searching for a well-drawn up workout plan. This was a long-winded way to say, you just need to have a plan. Google will be very helpful in providing information for you to do this.
3. Lift Heavier
If you can do 15-20 repetitions super quickly without breaking a sweat, lift heavier girl! I promise you will find out what you’re truly made of. I have surprised the shit out of myself as I pushed to lift heavier. I bet it would be a major ego boost to hit up the gym for the first time in years to find out I’m lifting heavier than a lot of men in there. You can usually lift more than you think. You should be struggling to lift the final 1-2 repetitions. Now make sure you recognize the difference between I’m really underdoing it with the weight I selected and I’m trying to look like a badass, which then led to a preventable injury. For safety reasons, increase the weight slowly.
4. Use the Principle of Progressive Overload with your Strength Training Routine
In order to progressively overload, you need to be constantly increasing the repetitions, increasing the sets, and increasing the weight. Each time you’re doing the same exercise, increase something! Lately, I have been hearing a major emphasis on increasing the weight every time. Yes, you should be steadily increasing, but every week is probably not the safest. I typically start with repetitions, but if I’m struggling to increase repetitions on something I might switch my focus to adding an additional set of repetitions. You should be frequently increasing the weight you’re lifting for each exercise too! I will keep coming back to this because I learned it about myself, you will surprise yourself, you can usually always lift a little more!
Remember, there is a fine line between your ego and safety when it comes to adding weight. Staying at the same weight for weeks on end is not going to help with your progressive overload. Just start out slow, to avoid injury.
5. Don’t Let Gravity Do the Work for You
Basically, slow the fuck down. I also would like to say see above if you’re flipping your weights around like air. You might need to up your game babe. Time under tension matters, so sloooow down. This is probably my most repeated phrase at work as a physical therapist. Everyone wants to blaze through their reps and get them done, but at that point you might as well not fucking do it. Of course, I don’t tell them that, I just say slow down and don’t let gravity do the work for you.
6. Rest in Between Sets
Now this is something that can go both ways, don’t scroll on social media wasting your precious time, but also don’t rest for 3 seconds in between sets. Think 1-2 minutes. Your muscle fibers need time to recover. At the cellular level, a lot of things need to be replaced in order for you to give your next set of reps everything you have.
7. Avoid Strength Training for the Same Muscle Group Multiple Days in a Row
While you might really want to build your lats, training them every single day could prevent you from building them just as much as not training them. As stated above, you need to rest! Your muscles need time to repair themselves, but also if you’re sore af, will you still be lifting as heavy? Most likely not.
8. Write Down your Strength Training Stats from Each Exercise
This was a practice that I used to do many years ago and then I got out of the habit because I just tried to recall it. Well reflecting back, I’m sure I royally fucked up my chances at progressively overloading anything. I have now returned to keeping a list in my notes app on my phone for the weight, sets, and reps in order to allow myself to easily progressively overload. This is so easy to do to aid in your fitness progress and you can do it while you’re resting between your sets. Let’s face it mom brain is real and let’s just save the precious brain space for other things.
9. Stop Changing Your Strength Training Routine Every Week
Consistency is key. Cliche, I know, but the truest of them all. For one, it will be hard to track progress even if you are too stubborn to literally track it. Let’s face it, if you never continue to do a shoulder press each week, how the fuck will you know if it gets any easier? How will you grow your delts if you aren’t progressively overloading the same portions of the delts? Exactly. Stop jumping around and stick to the workouts you created. If you’re getting bored so easily, you need to find something you enjoy doing.
10. Take a Look at Your Technique
Are you lifting through the full range? Are you half-assing the final reps or final portion of the range of motion for the exercise? Set your ego aside and lift the appropriate weight. Yes, it does feel amazing to hit a PR, but you know what? Whoever you’re showing off to will probably notice how shitty it looks.
This is one thing that is nice about the gym is that they have mirrors for you to easily check your form. If you’re at home, maybe just put a mirror in the area that you do your strength training. Another way to reflect on how the exercise is being performed would be to assess if you feel like you’re working the correct muscles that the exercise is supposed to be targeting.
Hopefully, you found something in the past 10 tips to help you level up your strength training to help you get better results!
As always, reach out with any questions! Love to help out my fellow mamas with realistic fitness and nutrition tips!
