Five Reasons You're Not Seeing Results From Exercise
If you've been training consistently but still not seeing results from exercise, there’s something you can do.
Here are the most common training mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Not Incorporating Progressions
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Progression is the most important part of getting the results you want from your training.
At its core, training is about stressing your body more than it’s used to so it adapts by getting stronger, faster, increasing endurance, getting more efficient at burning fat, and all the other amazing benefits of exercise.
Your body doesn’t really want to adapt, you have to force it to do so by continuously exposing it to more and more stress.
When you first started your program, your body would have adapted to the new stress it was under. If you kept doing the same number of sets and reps with the same weight session after session, your body would have quickly reached the point where it could handle that amount of stress, and had no reason to adapt anymore.
What Should You Do If You're Not Seeing Results?
If you want to change your body, you have to use the single most important principle of training: progressive overload. Progressive overload means gradually increasing the difficulty of your workouts over time. You can do that in many ways.
Here’s one that I find particularly effective:
Choose a repetition range (8-12 reps, for example) and figure out the weight for each exercise that makes it very challenging to finish the bottom number of repetitions in that range (8, in this example).
Try to do one more repetition with that weight in at least one set in each session. When you can do the top number of repetitions in that range (12, in this case) for all your sets, increase the weight and start working your way up from the bottom of the rep range again.
You can use a similar system for improving your cardio performance. Let’s use running as an example.
Start by running for as long as you can and then walking until you’re ready to run again. Repeat until you’ve done a total of 20 minutes.
Record how long you ran and walked for each time. Aim to increase your running time and decrease your walking time by 30 seconds in each session. Work your way up to being able to run for 20 continuous minutes.
From there, you can try to improve your pace over 20 minutes in each run, or continue increasing your time in each session.
Not Lifting Heavy Enough
I see people lifting weights that are too light for them all the time. I also see a lot of people stopping their sets too soon, before they start to challenge themselves. These are mistakes. Taking your resistance training too easy is a common reason why you might not be seeing results from your training.
Your muscles will only grow when you challenge them with weights (or with challenging bodyweight exercises) that are heavy enough to set off the muscle growth process. If you lift weights that are too light, you won’t get the strength or muscle growth you’re looking for.
Learning to choose the right weights takes practice, and it requires the ability to push yourself.
What Should You Do If You're Not Seeing Results?
This doesn’t mean you have to start throwing around 100 lb dumbbells – “heavy” is relative to you. When you’re first starting out, 5 lb dumbbells might be heavy enough for you on certain exercises.
This is probably too heavy...
The key is effort. Use a simple 1-10 effort scale to gauge how heavy your weights feel. By the end of your set, you should feel like you’re working at least at an 8 or 9 out of 10.
Another way to think about it is that the last 2-3 reps of each set should feel very challenging, and you shouldn’t feel like you could do one more with good form.
If you get to the end of your set and feel like you could easily keep going, the weight is too light.
If you’re just getting started with resistance training, focus on getting your form right before you worry about increasing resistance. Once your form is solid, use the instructions in this article to determine which weights to use for each exercise.
Also, please always lift weights that are safe for you. You should never lift a weight that you can't handle.
Start slowly and progress gradually, but remember that if you want to increase your strength or muscle size, you’ll eventually need to lift weights that challenge you.
Changing Exercises Too Often
There’s a lot of talk about exercise variety in the fitness industry.
A lot of programs change up the exercises all the time (for “muscle confusion”, which is total nonsense, by the way). Trainers get clients by advertising that “no two workouts will ever be the same!”.
Some people jump from program to program or look for new and different exercises to do in each workout.
If you're exercising to get all the incredible physical and mental health benefits of exercise (which is a perfectly good reason to exercise), that’s fine.
But if you're expecting to see physical results, you’ll be making a mistake by switching programs too often, following a program that constantly changes exercises, or hiring a trainer that completely changes your workout every time.
Your body adapts in the specific way that you force it to. In the case of strength training, you have to put your muscles under stress in every repetition, over many workouts, so those muscles will respond by getting bigger and stronger.
Part of that process is teaching your brain how to coordinate the movement pattern for each exercise, so all your muscles work together as efficiently as possible. It often takes several weeks of consistent practice before your brain and nervous system learn the right pattern.
In fact, when you start strength training, your strength gains in the first 6-8 weeks come from better movement patterns, not because your muscles change (Gabriel et al., 2006). Once your nervous system is good at controlling the movement, then your muscles can get the stress they need to grow.
If you change your exercises all the time, you won’t get better at any of them. That means your body won’t get the chance to improve.
What Should You Do If You're Not Seeing Results?
This can be a tricky point to get across. I’m definitely not suggesting that you do the same workout in every session.
What you should do is keep your main exercises consistent and perform them at least once or twice a week. Those are your foundational movements: push, pull, squat, hinge, and core activation.
Get your variety in other ways, not by changing the exercises themselves. You can change the number of sets and reps, the workout style (straight sets, supersets, circuits, ladder sets), rest times between exercises, and even add accessory exercises which you can change from workout to workout if you want.
If you really find a certain type of exercise so boring or unpleasant that you just can’t bring yourself to do it, there are plenty of different exercises out there. Find some that you do enjoy and can stick with consistently.
Skipping The Basics
The fitness industry has a tendency to overcomplicate things. So many people think they need complex programs, advanced exercises, or specialized equipment to get results, and they jump into training they’re not ready for instead of taking the time to learn the basics.
This is never a good idea...
Just like a builder needs to lay a foundation so they can build a house on it, you need to build a foundation of quality movement so you can build strength or muscle on it.
Similarly, you need to build a foundation of cardio fitness that you can then improve with advanced methods like high intensity interval training.
What Should You Do If You're Not Seeing Results?
Build a strong foundation by learning to do the basic movements (push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and core activation) consistently with good form.
To do that, start with an easy version of each movement and slowly increase the difficulty as you get stronger.
I recommend training bodyweight movements at first and adding extra weight only when you really feel like you “own” each movement. That means you can do the full movement slowly and smoothly, and you feel comfortable and confident in each rep.
For cardio exercise, work your way up to 20-30 minutes of continuous cardio. Start where you are and add just a minute or two more in each session. Once you’re comfortable doing at least 20 minutes straight, you can work on increasing your pace or start interval training.
Not Finding Out What Works For You
There is no “best” program or exercise. The best program is the one that works for you, that you enjoy and that you can stick to, consistently, for the long-term.
Everyone is different, and each person will respond to exercise differently. Just because your friend lost 10 pounds on a certain program doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same results.
Also, each person’s response to training will change over time. What works for you when you first start training may not get you results after 6 months or a year.
If you want real results from your training, you have to find out what works for you and learn to make adjustments to your program based on how you feel and how you’re progressing.
What Should You Do If You're Not Seeing Results?
To find your own best program, there are a few things you should think about:
Your goals:
If you want to get stronger or build muscle, you should do heavy strength training. To increase your endurance or become a better runner, you should do cardio. If you want to improve your overall health, a mix of resistance training and cardio will do the job.
Make sure your program specifically addresses your goals.
Your lifestyle:
Don’t try to overhaul your lifestyle, make your program fit within it. Assess your current time commitments, access to equipment, and other barriers to exercise, and find ways to make your program fit into your weekly routine.
Your preferences:
There are a lot of ways to be active, and if you can find ways to exercise that you actually enjoy it will make your training much more effective.
Try different types of strength training, like power lifting, Olympic lifting, bodyweight, or circuit training. For cardio, try running, cycling, swimming, hiking, paddleboarding, or team sports.
Your physiology:
There are guidelines for how to get results from different types of exercise.
We know which exercises work certain muscles, how many sets and reps most people should do for a specific goal, the average heart rate to aim for to increase cardio fitness, and a lot more about how most people should be training.
We know all of that from decades of research. But research deals in averages and statistics. It doesn’t usually look at the differences between individuals.
So while research can point us in directions that will probably work for most people, there will always be people who respond differently. Unfortunately, you can’t predict what’s going to work for you. Trial and error is the best way to figure out your ideal program.
Stick with your program consistently for at least 3-6 months. If you're still not seeing results, change it up and give it another 3-6 months.
If You Need Help
Here's a FREE resource to get you started on your strength training journey:
My Strength Training 101 eBook, which has guidance for putting together an effective strength training program, plus sample workouts.
If you want a more comprehensive program that you can start today, check out my Strength Training For Anxiety Program. It's a 12-week workout program, guided by an app so you can do the workouts anytime, anywhere. It has strategies to get the best results for your physical strength, like built-in progressions. It also has unique features you won't find in other programs, like video lessons and worksheets specifically designed to help you manage anxiety.