It’s Monday. You pop your new gym set on and you’re ready to start the week as you mean to go on. But when you get to the gym, you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, try to hide your disappointment and crack on with your workout. That niggling feeling is back. Your body hasn't changed in months, despite spending hours a week in the gym. It's frustrating and, honestly, pretty demotivating. So let's look at why this might be happening. And you'll be pleased to hear, the problem probably isn't the amount of time you're spending in the gym.
Instead, two things I see regularly are:
- You're doing random workouts and gym classes without following a structured programme.
- You're not challenging your muscles enough to create a reason for them to adapt.
Your workouts need more structure
I KNOW you adore BodyPump. You have a girl crush on the instructor and you can't give up your weekly Pilates class. Good news: you don't have to. But if you want to build muscle and change the shape of your body, you need some structured strength training alongside the classes you love. For most women, that might mean 2–3 purposeful strength sessions per week, depending on their goals, experience and what else they're doing. And it's not just about what you do in each individual workout. Consistency matters.
Instead of picking a random workout off TikTok one day and another saved workout from Instagram the next, follow a programme that you can progressively build on. I like working in 6–8 week blocks, where you're repeating key movements and exercises long enough to actually get stronger at them. Because that's the bit random workouts make difficult. If you're doing a completely different workout every time you walk into the gym, it's much harder to track whether you're actually progressing.
So what does a good strength workout look like?
Great question.
A well-rounded full-body session will generally include a mixture of movement patterns, such as:
- Push - chest or shoulders
- Pull - back
- Squat - squats, split squats or similar
- Hinge - Romanian deadlifts, deadlifts or hip thrusts
- Arms and/or core - depending on your goals
I also like my clients to alternate upper and lower-body exercises where appropriate, so one muscle group can recover while you're working another.
But there's another piece of the puzzle...
You're probably not lifting heavy enough
So, you're following a programme, but you're still not seeing results. ARGH. It's okay babes, I got you. One of the biggest mistakes I see women (and men, tbf) making in the gym is stopping at 12 reps when their 12th rep looks exactly like their first. You're not married to the number 12. If your programme says 8–12 reps, that doesn't mean you should automatically stop when you reach 12. If you could have done another five reps, the weight probably (definitely) wasn't challenging enough for that particular set.
Instead of obsessing over hitting a specific number, think about how hard the set actually feels. If you're aiming for a set of 8–12 and you finish your 12th rep thinking, "I could easily have done another five," that's useful information and next time, you can increase the weight.
The goal isn't to lift the heaviest weight possible with terrible form. The goal is to challenge your muscles while maintaining good technique. For many exercises, you should finish a working set feeling like you didn’t have any good reps left in the tank. And occasionally, depending on the exercise and your programme, you might push a set even closer to failure by attempting a rep and failing it.
Pretty faces don't build muscles.
Progressive overload does.
That means gradually asking your body to do more over time, whether that's more weight, more reps, better technique or another form of progression. So if you're going to the gym but your body still looks the same as it did when you took out your membership, don't automatically assume you need to spend more time there.
First, look at what you're actually doing with that time.
Are you following a structured programme?
Are you repeating key exercises long enough to get better at them?
Are you progressively increasing the challenge?
And, if your goal is changing your body composition, are your nutrition and recovery supporting the training you're doing?
Because more gym sessions aren't automatically better.
A focused, progressive strength programme that you can consistently follow is far more useful than spending five or six days a week doing random workouts without a plan. I promise you're stronger than you think you are. And you might be surprised what happens when you actually start training like it.
Want help figuring out what's holding you back?
If this sounds like you, you're training consistently but your body isn't changing in the way you want it to, book a free 30-minute Lifestyle Audit with me.
We'll look at your training, nutrition, lifestyle and goals and work out where the missing piece might be.
[BOOK YOUR FREE LIFESTYLE AUDIT]
Written by Alice Butler
Alice Butler is an online strength and fitness coach based in Leeds, helping busy women build strength, improve their fitness and feel confident in their bodies without following restrictive diets or all-or-nothing plans.