Month: August 2022

Every person who works out has gone through this question at some point, that is of course the question of, how often should you change your workout routine .

Whether you are pretty new to lifting and still trying to figure things out, or whether you have been exercising for a while yet realized you don’t know the answer to this question.

The answer is actually quite important because it can make or break your progress in your workouts.

I am going to outline piece by piece the answer to this question here in this article, so if you were looking for an in depth answer, you have come to the right place.

If you were looking for some quick, bullsh*t answer, with not much context or education behind it, then this may not be the place for you *insert emoji of me shrugging my shoulders here*.

Yet I know you want an in depth answer, otherwise, you wouldn’t be ready to read every single word of this article without skimming over any of it….

Right? 😉

Perfect then, let’s get into it, shall we?

How Often Should You Change Your Workout Routine?

Why Should You Change Your Workout Routine?

Ever heard of the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”?

Well, kind of. In regards to how often should you change your workout routine, I would say this saying doesn’t necessarily hold as much weight (ha! Get it?!).

Some people think you can do the same workout program over and over for YEARS and get results.

While have some people done that and seen results?

Sure, but people also used to send messages with f*cking note cards taped to birds, or use to get around with solely horseback instead of cars.

Just because some people saw progress doing something one way, doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t a more productive and efficient way.

Hence, us evolving as a society of humans always looking to innovate and improve.

I digress, the point being is, yes you should be changing up the workouts you do.

For various different reasons, in fact, let’s go over some of the main ones right now so that you can be educated.

I am a firm believer that the more educated you are on a topic, the likelihood of you succeeding at said topic is much greater.

Thus, let’s get to learning, Jack.

1. Overuse Injury

Whenever someone asks me “how often should you change your workout routine” one of my first answers as to WHY they should change always goes to overuse injuries.

Think about it for a second.

When you are repetitively doing a specific exercise, your

• joints
• tendons
• ligaments
• connective tissue
• and muscles

are all taking the same force week after week after week, right?

It’s the same movement pattern, challenging in the same ranges of motion, and repeating over and over the same stress.

No matter if your form is in fact good with the exercise, the fact remains, you are still hammering that same movement pattern over and over.

Eventually, what can happen is, your body can basically break down and develop an overuse injury.

Because you have done the same movement pattern over and over for so long, it just becomes a bit too much for your body to handle for various different reasons.

This is where you get these “little aches and pains”.. Sore elbows here… Cranky knees there.. Overly tight hips here..

These start off as “little” aches and pains, yet over time since you are not switching your workouts up, these little aches and pains turn into bigger, more serious injuries.

I will give you two quick examples.

Let’s say someone is doing a sumo deadlift, you know, like this right here.

Now, I know not everyone can have as beautiful of a lifting face as I do here, but stick with me.

Doing sumo deadlifts inevitably are going to place some stress and pressure on your hip joint due to the wider stance you get.

So, over time, if you ONLY do sumo deadlifts, and you NEVER switch up…

You are asking for some sort of overwork / overuse injury on your hips. They simply are getting taxed and stressed at a high level week after week and if you don’t give them a chance to lessen up a bit by changing up your workouts, they can surely scream back at you via injuries.

Now someone might say “Well I do conventional deadlift so it isn’t as bad!”.

You’re missing the point.

Cool, you don’t do sumo deadlifts. Conventional deadlift inevitably puts a bit more pressure on your spine and hamstrings.

Therefore overtime, your hamstring and spine can develop an overuse injury to them as opposed to your hips.

It’s not one specific move, it is any move that is done too frequently over a period of time.

Or let’s take a chin up for example.

I see a lot of people try to get better at doing chin ups so they have a chin up party at the gym week after week after week.

Which, if you are doing something like the Grease The Groove Method (A low intensity, high frequency method for improving a specific lift) then that’s one thing.

But doing them with high intensity and effort week after week, I have seen really tend to f*ck up people’s elbows, wrists, and or shoulders.

Again, simply just due to the fact that you are repeating this same plane of motion movement pattern for a bit too long.

So while there is merit to keeping the same workouts for a certain period of time (we will talk about how long a bit later), if you do it for too long too frequently, it can surely backfire.

This is one reason why it is important to change your workout routine.

2. Challenging The Muscle From Different Angles

A second reason to change up your workout routines is due to you wanting to challenge the muscle from different angles.

I will use your back (more specifically mid / upper back ie traps, rhomboids, rear delts), biceps, and hamstrings as an example.

If we are talking about training your mid back muscles, these are big muscles that have various different functions in the body.

Therefore, to only train it from one angle would just quite simply make no sense.

For example, let’s say you are doing a 1 am dumbbell bent over row to work your mid back (like this here below).

That is a horizontal pulling movement.

Awesome, but you are missing a key component of training from a vertical pulling movement.

Throwing in something like a wide grip lat pulldown would be a great work your upper back in a vertical pulling pattern.

BUT WAIT!

You can also do a close grip lat pulldown to once again work your mid back muscles from a different angle of pull and resistance.

BUT WAIT!

You can also hit your mid back by doing a seated cable row variation instead of a dumbbell bent over row variation!

I could go on, but the point being is, you can only fit so much in a weeks worth of a workout routine.

For you to be able to hit your back muscles from various different angles, you are more than likely going to have to change up your workout routine from time to time to focus on these different angles.

Let’s take your biceps as an example as well.

You can work your biceps in the shortened position (this is typically when your arm is out in front of you doing a bicep curl, we will touch more on this in the next section).

Something like a preacher curl you can see here below.

Okay, so you can hit your bicep in the shortened position using a preacher curl, sweet. That is with the resistance (the weight) coming from down below you.

BUT, you can also hit your bicep in the shortened position from above doing something like a 1 arm high cable curl, like you see here.

Cool, but you can ALSO hit your bicep in the shorten position hitting something like a crouching cable curl where the weight is actually coming from in weight of you, here as you can see below.

Again, as you can see, you can work the bicep with just one angle.. Sure. yet inevitably you are under training that muscle for both maximizing strength and developing the muscle for aesthetics purposes.

Finally, we can touch on hamstrings.

You can hit your hamstrings from something like an RDL, as you can see here below.

You can hit your hamstrings from something like a bridge or thrust, as you can see below.

Or, you can hit your hamstrings from something like a curl, as you can see below.

Within even these variations, there are multiple variations you can choose from as well.

Again, point being, for you to get a fully developed muscle, you will need to hit the muscle from all angles.

If you ONLY do one or two exercises, there is really just no way to make that happen.

3. Challenge Muscle From Different Ranges Of Motion

Whenever we talk about how often should you change your workout routine, we have to mention this one as well.

I spoke on this in the previous section, but your muscles can be challenged in different areas of the range of motion.

It can be more challenging at the bottom, at the top, in the mid range.

Let’s take again biceps and glutes this time.

When talking about biceps, you can work your bicep in a shortened position or a lengthen position.

Something like a crouching cable curl like I showed you above, that is working your bicep in the shortened position because your arm is out in front of you.

But, you can also work your bicep in a lengthened position.

This is when your arms and shoulders are extended behind you and when your bicep is fully stretched, that is when it is challenged the most. Something like this 2x arm face away curl right here.

You can also challenge the muscle in the mid range by something like a regular dumbbell bicep curl.

This means it has the most resistance and the most challenging around the middle part of the rep as you curl up.

Then again, as you saw from above, even with these variations there are different angles you can hit the muscle from.

To get a fully developed bicep muscle (or ANY muscle) you need to be hitting it from different angles.

Simply just doing ONE or TWO exercises over and over more than likely will not cut it.

You will need to have some variation to your workouts.

We can take your glutes for example as well.

You can do something like a hip thrust, which is going to challenge your muscle in the shortened position (at the top when you are squeezing your glutes).

Or, you could something like an RDL, which is challenging your glutes in the lengthened to mid range position.

Or, you could do some sort of split squat variation, which is challenging again in that lengthen to mid range position.

Without going TOO much more in depth, you can see again, there are many different exercises that can make sure you challenge the muscles in these different ranges of motions.

Yet again, if you only do the same exercises over and over, never changing up your workouts, you won’t be able to have this happen.

4. Different Goals

When talking about why you would change up your workout routine, you can (and should!) also change up based on different goals.

For example, I run something called my Clubhouse. This is where I create new workout programs every single month for the people inside.

I am writing this in 2022, beginning of September.

Thus Far in the Clubhouse our workouts have focused on..

January – March = Strength focused

April – June = Hypertrophy focused (more muscle building)

July – September = Powerbuilding ( a hybrid between powerlifting and “bodybuilding”

.

For each of those “focuses” that we had, there were different workouts!

From the rep ranges, to the exercises, to the amount of exercises per workout, to the amount of sets per workout.

For example, when we are focusing a lot on strength, we are going to incorporate more work in the lower rep ranges (1-5) than we would if we are focusing on muscle building, which may be more in that 6-12 rep range.

Or, if we are primarily focusing on muscle building, we maybe won’t pick exercises like a deadlift from the floor.

This is because a deadlift from the floor isn’t a GREAT muscle building exercise, therefore while we focus on building more muscle, we take that movement out. We may swap it for say some sort of Romanian Deadlift variation to focus more on glute and hamstring hypertrophy.

When we are focusing on power building, we focus on some lower rep strength work, but not so much that it takes away from our overall muscle building component. We don’t go so hard on the strength side that we can’t do our isolation “muscle building” exercises at the end like lateral raises, bicep curls, leg extensions, etc.

We might also do something called “top sets and back off sets”, I can link a video on that here below.

Therefore when talking about how often should you change your workout routine, I think taking the current goals into consideration also plays a role.

We wouldn’t keep the same exercises, reps, rest times, etc for different goals. That would just be plain silly!

Also, yes, you should be going through some phases like this because the strength work will bleed into the hypertrophy phase. The hypertrophy phase bleeds into the powerbuilding phase, etc.

This is why following a real strength training program is so important.

5. Enjoyment

Another reason to change up your workout routines is simply for more enjoyment!

I have coached people for over 6.5 years now as I type this.

All of my clients, whether they are inside the Clubhouse or the people we work with 1:1, everytime they get their new workout program they are STOKED!

It’s like Christmas all over again!

There are new exercises, new reps, new sets.

New angles to hit the muscle from, new challenges to take on.

Changing up your workouts can give you that “new” stimulus, which for a lot of people, they enjoy that!

Unless you are like just so dialed into bodybuilding and this is your entire life, most people can’t do the exact same workout program over and over to truly enjoy it.

You may say you do.. But I know it’s just because you don’t feel like switching your workouts, or because you don’t know how to change your workouts.

Getting that “new” stimulus and almost a “new” dopamine hit can be advantageous because what happens when you enjoy your training more?

You push harder with it.

What happens when you push harder with it?

You see more results.

What happens when you see more results?

You wanna keep going with it. Ain’t nothing more motivating than seeing results, right?

That is why changing up your workouts can actually help your results continue to flourish.

How Often Should You Change Your Workout Routine

So.. How Often Though?

Phew, alright, I just covered 5 main reasons above on why I believe you should be changing up your workout routine.

Honestly, I could go on and give you more reasons why, but I will cap it there for now. This doesn’t need to turn into a dissertation.

I hope you got the point that yes, you should be changing your workout routines up.

Now, how often should this be taking place? Let’s talk about it.

My Recommendation

My recommendation for how often you should change your workout routine is typically every 4-8 weeks.

Let’s talk about why that number in particular.

First off, this allows you enough time to have something called progressive overload.

Progressive overload is a topic worthy of an article in of itself (actually, I did write an article about progressive overload, you can read it HERE when you are done this one!) so I won’t go super in depth.

Yet think of pogressive overload as simply the “thing” that causes you to change your physique, build muscle, get stronger, the whole 9.

It’s by far the coolest kid in school.

If you don’t have progressive overload, you are missing out on optimizing and potentially even seeing any progress at all what so ever.

Think of progressive overload is simply just “doing more”.

I am going to put a picture here of one of my 1:1 online coaching clients workouts.

Notice how from week 1 to week 4, in basically every single exercise, they improved?

They did more weight or more reps, right?

That is progressive overload. They did more!

This is what you need to make changes to your body and see results.

Therefore, if you are changing your workouts every 4-8 weeks, that is ample time to have this progressive overload.

Now, if you are changing your workouts every WEEK, no, that is not ample time to have progressive overload.

You can’t even progressive overload if you are doing something new each week. If you did goblet squats one week, then a split squat the next, then a barbell back squat the next, how can you get better at any of that over time?

You can’t. You’re just doing “exercise” at that point, not following a program.

Also, week 1 and 2 you really are just getting used to the movement, let alone being able to do more with it.

So usually at least 4 weeks on one program is what I recommend to allow for this progressive overload to happen.

We also talked about earlier being able to avoid overuse injury.

Typically speaking a 4-8 week span is a great time to allow for progressive overload, but then still not get overuse injuries from specific movements.

Also talking about hitting the muscles from different angles and ranges of motion, if you take your glutes for example, 4-8 weeks is a great period of time to work in certain exercises.. Progressive overload with them… crush it..

Then bam, swap it out for a new set of exercises to challenge the muscles from different ways.

As well as speaking from anecdotal coaching experience, usually around that 4 ish week mark, MOST people start to get a bit burnt out from doing the specific exercises and are “ready” for a change by that point.

Therefore again, keeping intensity high by keeping enjoyment high and exciting can lead to better progress over time.

Last but not least, this is a great period of time to allow for potential different goals to be worked in.

If let’s say you change your workouts up every 4 weeks.

You can have 2-3 4 week blocks with a hypertrophy phase, 1-2 blocks with a strength phase, and on and on.

Giving an ample amount of time to smash the goal, while still being able to include all that we talked about above.

How Often Should You Change Your Workouts Secret Hint : Deload Weeks

Another reason I like switching up after every 4-8 weeks is due to something called a deload week.

If you want to listen to an in depth podcast I’ve done on deload weeks, I can link that HERE .

Essentially what a deload week is, you are slightly decreasing your intensity and volume for a week.

Intensity is how heavy you are lifting / how close you are lifting to failure.

Volume is the amount of sets and reps you are doing.

Let’s say on a regular week, you are doing 3×8 reps with 50lbs.

On a deload week, you are lifting say 3×6 reps with 40lbs.

Why would you do this?

Well, when we workout we accumulate stress and fatigue.

If we just keep accumulating that stress and fatigue to never let it come back down, that is where people either stall out on their progress or get injured.

You can’t just keep linearly progressing with your workouts forever and ever or else we’d all be lifting cars above our heads by now.

Therefore with changing your workout every 4-8 weeks combining with a deload week…

You can crush workouts for say 3-4 weeks, get after it hard, accumulate stress and fatigue…

Then take that deload week to let the fatigue and stress come back down, your body will have a “supercompensation” effect, you will be able to recover better..

Then bam, be ready to push hard again for 3-4 weeks.

This is a great way to make “linear” progress over time.

The reason I brought up deload weeks is because the way I program deload weeks, whenever a client gets a new program, the first week is a deload week.

Why?

Well because again the first week of a new program you are going to learn the new moves, get the new routine down, etc.

This is a great time to take a deload week, then be able to push hard for 3-4 weeks after that, increase weight, increase reps, etc…

Then bam, take your deload week, switch programs, and keep on repeating.

Not Only How Often Should You Change Your Workouts.. But WHAT To Change In Your Workouts

I know this is question you may have and unfortunately, for all the information I have given you for free in this article, this is a question I can’t specifically answer for you.

Not because I am “holding out”, I mean f*ck I just wrote this entire article for free.

Simply because the answer to that question is one big fat “it depends”.

You may change exercises, reps, sets, days per week, rest time, there are so many variables to tweak.

Here’s the advice I can give you with what I do in the programs I write for people either in the Clubhouse or our 1:1 clients.

Typically speaking every 4-8 weeks I change the..

• Exercises / Exercise Variation (going from maybe a reverse lunge to a bulgarian split squat, or a dumbbell bicep curl to a cable bicep curl from what we talked about above)
• Reps ( maybe we are shooting for 6-8 reps in the first 4 weeks on squats, then to focus more on strength we focus on 3-5 reps in the next 4 weeks)
• Sets ( if we are trying to bias a muscle group for more growth or focus, maybe we do 10 weekly sets per week to 15 weekly sets per week )
• Tempo ( maybe we change going from 3 seconds on the way down in a squat and a 2 second pause, to only going 2 seconds on the way down and no pause to work on more explosive strength )

The list could go on as it would really just depend on the program you are doing.

I cannot truthfully tell you without writing a program for you, but hopefully the information from this article gives you at least an idea of what to do.

I can also link an article I wrote HERE on how to potentially structure your workout programs that may help as well.

How Often Should You Change Your Workout Routine : Final Word

Well, there you have it. I am hoping that was at least one of the most in depth answers to how often should you should change your workout routine you will find across the interweb.

If you enjoyed this article, feel free to share it with a friend.

Furthermore, if you are interested in getting some programming done for you to take out all of the guesswork and planning in your workouts,

Feel free to check out my Clubhouse HERE where I write new workout programs each month.

Or, if you were more interested in 1:1 coaching, you can fill out the form HERE To potentially work with our team.

Hope this helps and look to chat soon.

-E

The one question everyone asks themselves when diving into a weight loss journey, “Can you drink alcohol and lose weight”.

I get it. Alcohol is sometimes a part of culture and societal norms (which we may challenge later on in this article).

As well as I know sometimes you may just thoroughly enjoy a drink or two… or 8. Cough.

Therefore if you are embarking on a weight loss journey, it would only make sense to ask the question “Can you drink alcohol and lose weight”.

You may ask this question and get a multitude of different answers. I am going to make sure you leave this article knowing the ins and outs of alcohol and weight loss.

Just be sure to not glance over it or skim it (yea, I know you were either already thinking about it or doing it!) because you may miss something.

I don’t want you to miss anything. I want you to leave here knowing every single thing you need to know to reach your goals.

Cool?

Cheers!

Can You Drink Alcohol And Lose Weight

Background On Weight Loss & Alcohol

Now if you have followed me for any amount of time, you may know the next few sentences of what I am about to say.

But maybe this is your first time stumbling across one of my articles, which in that case, let’s first lay out how weight loss occurs in the first place.

I won’t go super in depth on this because I actually have already done that in this article HERE or this video HERE.

Yet the only way you are going to lose weight is by creating a calorie deficit.

A calorie deficit is simply eating less calories than your body burns on a daily / weekly basis.

Energy in vs energy out. Calories in vs calories out.

As long as the calories coming in are less than the calories going out, you my friend will have yourself a weight loss equation.

This is the over the top most important factor. If you are in a calorie deficit you will lose body fat. Bottom line.

This is important because obviously alcohol plays a role in this calorie balance equation due to the fact alcohol has calories.

Let’s dive a bit more in depth into alcohol and calories respectively now.

Calories, Macros, and Alcohol

Briefly, let’s cover a few things about can you drink alcohol and lose weight.

You have your overall calories, then you have the macronutrients that make up your calories.

Protein – 4 calories per 1 gram

Carbs – 4 calories per 1 gram

Fat – 9 calories per 1 gram

Usually, people know these 3 macronutrients that make up our calories.

Enter alcohol.

Alcohol is in fact it’s own macronutrient.

It has 7 calories per gram.

Yep, people usually don’t know alcohol is it’s own macro. They usually chalk it up to a carb or sugar, which it very well could have some of those depending on the drink you are consuming.

This is important to know because people will pick the “lower sugar” or “lower carb” drinks, which could very well save you calories..

Yet this could simply mean instead of drinking 1000 calories in alcohol you are drinking 500 calories.

Which again if you are looking to be in a calorie deficit these calories count. Not only do they count, they can add up rather quickly if you are not careful.

Let’s take a real life example.

Let’s say you are going out with your friends and planning on having 3 8oz vodka and tonic drinks around 8pm.

This would be roughly 200 cals per drink, leading to about 600 calories coming from alcohol for that day.

Let’s then say your overall calories you are trying to hit is 1600 calories for that day (if you don’t know how many calories you are supposed to be eating for fat loss, check out THIS ARTICLE HERE after you finish reading this one).

This would mean the rest of the day you are going to need to figure out a way to only eating 1000 calories from say 8am to 8pm.

This is how you can keep the overall calorie deficit we talked about above.

Not to say it’s impossible, but you may have already been thinking “.. only 1000 calories!”.

Yep, you can lose fat and drink alcohol, yet it does in fact make it harder for this exact reason.

Let’s also talk about something you may have heard before which is the “empty calories” from alcohol.

Empty Calories From Alcohol

You may have heard your annoying cousin, bodybuilder friend, or Keto Karen aunt talk about how alcohol is “empty calories”.

Now, while those 3 people above don’t seem very enchanting, they do have some validity behind their claims.

They probably don’t know why, they more than likely just regurgitated info they heard someone else say out of a magazine.

Yet nonetheless, let’s talk about why this is true.

Let’s take a look at the one 8oz vodka and tonic drink for 200 calories.

Those 200 calories essentially do nothing for you.

They don’t fill you up or keep you satisfied. Which, when talking about a calorie deficit, you are trying to optimize your calories.

You are trying to keep your calories low and your satiety (how full you are) high because inherently eating less calories than you burn is going to leave you a bit hungry, proving to be challenging to stay in a caloric deficit.

Take 200 calories coming from say a chicken breast. That 200 calories and protein coming from a chicken breast is going to keep you full because protein is the most satiating macronutrient.

Ingesting 200 calories of alcohol essentially does not help keep you full or satisfied, leading it to be harder to stick to your calorie deficit because you are “wasting calories” in a sense.

Nor does alcohol provide any real nutrients, vitamins, or minerals to you from a health standpoint.

Take 200 calories from chia seeds for example.

It would provide some good nutrients like fiber which can help give you energy and keep you satisfied (again, helping out a calorie deficit).

As well as providing some omega 3 fatty acids which can help with the anti inflammatory process in your body.

Whereas alcohol is usually going to cause inflammation inside your body.

Let’s also talk about something people don’t understand with alcohol.

It makes me laugh sometimes people will smash 4, 5, 6 beers without blinking an eye, but white rice is apparently a direct spawn of Satan.

Let’s take 200 calories from rice compared to 200 calories from alcohol.

You may think “well what does rice do!? It’s just carbs!”.

Yep, carbs that your body is going to soak right up to use for energy for your workouts. There is something called glycogen. Think of glycogen as just fuel for your muscles.

Eating 200 calories of rice is going to get stored as muscle glycogen so that when you go and do your workouts, you will be able to push harder.

Lift more weights, do more reps, have more endurance, stamina, etc.

If you do this you are going to change your body more because your workout performance is heightened.

As opposed to alcohol where not only will it not store as muscle glycogen, it is actually going to impair the muscle protein synthesis in your body, which helps you recover from workouts, in turn changing your body.

So, it actually hinders your progress.

Not to mention if you wake up after a night of 3 4 5 drinks and try to go get a solid workout.. Don’t lie to me, that workout is going to take a hit. That is if you are lucky enough to even get a workout in.

Needless to say, that’s why alcohol is considered “empty calories”.

It really does nothing positive for you, your fitness journey, or body.

Now it may be sounding like I am a bit biased, and while yes I personally don’t drink alcohol, I am not saying this to say you shouldn’t drink.

I am purely just stating the facts and providing you with the information.

So while the answer to the question of “can you drink alcohol and lose weight” may technically be yes as long as you are in a calorie deficit.

It is going to make it substantially harder for you just from those reasons above.

Yet we aren’t done yet.. Let’s dive into some more facts about alcohol and weight loss.

Can You Drink Alcohol And Lose Weight? Things To Think About..

Sleep

Let’s bring up the topics of sleep, alcohol, and fat loss.

Again, as we mentioned earlier, you are going to lose weight so as long as you are in a calorie deficit.

Yet, just knowing that often doesn’t provide contextual information to real life situations.

Let’s play it out.

Let’s say you have one night where you do have a few drinks. Maybe you don’t even get completely wasted but you have enough drinks to impair your sleep for that night.

Do you know what happens when you are “sleep deprived”?

There are two hormones in your body called Leptin and Ghrelin.

Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain “I am good, I am NOT hungry”.

Ghrelin is the hormone that tells your body “I am NOT good, I AM hungry, let’s eatttt sucka”.

Even if you aren’t actually hungry.. This hormone will tell your brain you are.

When you are sleep deprived your Leptin decreases and your Ghrelin increases.

This means, even if you are not “actually” hungry for more food, you are going to be hungry for more food solely because your sleep got impaired due to the alcohol consumption.

Once again, can you still lose weight even though this is apparent?

Yep, for sure. Yet once again it makes it substantially harder because now you will be hungry due to being in a calorie deficit on top of your Ghrelin being increased.

This fat loss game is hard enough as it is and this is just making it that much harder.

Why put yourself behind the 8 ball and stack the chips against you that much more if you don’t have to?

Overall Activity

We just talked about the hunger that comes with having impaired sleep, let’s now talk about the activity changes it affects.

Remember, for you to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. This means you are eating less calories than you burn.

Now while I don’t usually encourage you to focus on doing tons and tons of cardio to lose weight because that is a game you will never win..

You can’t out train a bad diet.

I am not even talking about doing “cardio” per say. In this section I am going to be referring to just simply MOVING throughout your day.

There is something called your NEAT, Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

This plays a critical role in your metabolism and your overall calories burned that day.

Think of NEAT as just all the extraneous movements throughout your day. All of your steps, all of your fidgeting, chasing your kids around, walking to the mailbox, everything.

When you are drinking alcohol.. Staying out late.. Having impaired sleep.. Are you heading into that next day like the Energizer Bunny?

I think not. A whole lot of laying out, netflix, and chips (we will touch on the food part here shortly).

Your NEAT is massively going to decrease that day and the next day after, which is going to decrease your calories burned, which is going to negatively affect your calorie deficit & weight loss.

Again, making it harder for you to stay in that calorie deficit to lose weight.

Can you? Sure. Is it making it harder? Yep.

Workouts

When it comes to answering the question of can you drink alcohol and lose weight, your workouts have to be mentioned.

We spoke earlier about you will have worse workout performance because alcohol is “empty calories”.

I also want you to think about it from this perspective.

If the day or two after drinking you are kind of dragging a** and not really able to push yourself as hard in your workouts, inevitably you are going to burn less calories.

Again, I am not a believer that you should be focusing your workouts on how many calories you are burning during your workouts. I believe your workouts should be focused on getting stronger, hitting new PR’s, doing more reps, etc.

Yet when we talk about weight loss and the overall energy balance equation of calories in vs calories out, it has to noted that if you aren’t able to push as hard in the gym you don’t burn as many calories.

Your muscles don’t contract as hard so you don’t expend as much energy. You’re not able to lift as heavy which doesn’t expend as many calories. You don’t have as much stamina or energy so you can’t extend the sets as long so you burn less calories.

Again, point being, you are making it harder on yourself as a direct result of drinking alcohol.

It’s not just the 3 drinks and the calories from them… There are a million little ripple effects that come from those 3 drinks that you may not have even have connected together until right now.

Speaking of the calories from drinks, let’s be a bit more honest about that.

Can You Drink Alcohol And Lose Weight : Food Consumption Too…

Okay let’s face it.

When you drink, what the hell are you snacking on while you are drinking?

Pickles, celery, carrots, and romaine lettuce?

Yea, you aren’t fooling me (or your body).

Chips, nachos, burgers, pizza, etc. All foods that are higher in calories.

While again, can you eat all of those foods and still lose weight 100% yes… It makes it harder inherently because they are higher in calories.

Let’s take our example from the beginning, you have to eat 1600 calories to lose weight.

You are going out and going to have 3 drinks which is 600 calories then have a few slices of cheese pizza for roughly about 500 calories.

Cool, that’s 1100 calories for that specific time slot… That would mean the rest of the day you would need to eat 500 calories in order to stay in your deficit.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Not… Not likely.

Therefore you need to take into account the fact it isn’t just the alcohol calories coming in, it is usually going to be some food calories as well.

Those foods tend to be higher in calories per serving compared to something like eggs, oatmeal, salads, chicken, etc.

Again, making this journey a bit more difficult for you to lose weight..

Now, you may say “ERIC! HOW DARE YOU! I ABSOLUTELY WILL STAY STRONG…”.

Okay, lemme hit you with this.

Inhibition

In my opinion maybe the most important point of the answer of can you drink alcohol and lose weight comes down to this one word.

Inhibition.

If you are unaware of what inhibition is – for the topic of this article -it is essentially your ability to say no to things.

Your judgment, willpower, and control. That is “inhibition”. It just kind of gets kicked to the curb when you drink alcohol.

It is proven that when you drink alcohol your inhibition lowers. This is the exact reason why it isn’t a great idea to drink and drive, amongst others like delayed reaction time.

Therefore if your inhibition lowers, you are much more likely to to say “F*ck it, yea, I’ll have another drink!”.

Okay well another 1, 2, 400 calories later you are out of your calorie deficit.

You are more likely to to say “F*ck it, yea, let’s get that pizza and wings!”.

1500 calories later from wings and pizza you blew your calorie deficit out of the water for that night.

In general you are just more likely to not care about your goals or calorie deficit because your inhibition is lowered, which I can assume you know how that would end up.

Does Alcohol Stop Fat Loss While In Your System?

One thing you may have heard is that while alcohol is in your system, it’s stops fat loss and muscle growth.

The answer to that question is yes, this is true to a degree.

If you are having ONE drink, I would not worry about it.

Yet, if you are drinking enough to get pretty tipsy or drunk, yes, the physiological processes of muscle building and fat loss stop in the short term.

I say the short term because alcohol is a toxin after all.

When the toxin is found in your body in high quantities, your bodies main job is to get that toxin out first before it can continue with it’s processes of changing your body.

Therefore for a brief period of time muscle gain and fat loss stop, yes, but again as long as you are in your overall calorie deficit you will still lose body fat in the long term.

But again… do you see a common theme of alcohol and weight loss?

Can You Drink Alcohol And Lose Weight? The Final Answer

The final answer to can you drink alcohol and lose weight is in simple terms : YES.

As long as you remain within your calorie deficit you will be able to still lose body fat, for sure.

I am not telling you NOT to drink. You are a grown adult, you can make your own decisions for yourself. Who the hell is some rando on the internet to tell you otherwise?

Now, does it make it exponentially harder due to all the reasons we just went over?

Abso-freaking-lutely yes.

You are going to make something that is already hard (losing weight) even harder.

Now that you have the information you can make an adult decision of what you choose to do moving forward.

My personal suggestion is if you are very serious about losing weight would be to limit your alcohol intake to 1-3 drinks per week.

Yes, you read that right, per week.

Again, you don’t have to listen to me, but I would just strongly encourage you to decide what it is that you really want.

Does alcohol really serve you that big of a purpose? Or do you want to reach your overall bigger goals?

The beautiful part about life is you get to decide.

Hope it helped and if you were interested in getting some extra guidance, help, and accountability during your journey, you can fill out this form HERE to potentially work with one of our coaches.

Wish you well and chat soon,

-E

Should I work out while sore ? – Asked everyone who has ever worked out in their life.

This question has irked gym goers and home workout warriors for decades and decades.

Today, we are going to put a screeching halt to it – solely because we are going to solve this mystery right here, right now.

Just be sure to keep your eyes peeled to the entire article solely because I am going to lay every single thing for you in depth.

If you stick around, you will leave this article having zero doubts of the answer to should I work out while sore.

Let’s get into it.

Should I Work Out While Sore ?

Well.. What Causes Muscle Soreness?

EIMD (Exercise Induced Muscle Damage) is usually what causes muscle soreness.

When you workout you create micro tears inside your muscle fibers (I know, crazy right?!).

People think you change your body inside the workouts. No, you actually break your body down during your workouts.

The stress and tension of lifting weights / exercising in general is what creates this damage.

When you recover from those workouts is when you actually change your body!

Even crazier, right?!

Nonetheless, this breakdown and “damage” of the muscles creates inflammation inside the muscle and causes the “soreness” effect.

EIMD is most apparent when you FIRST start working out or FIRST start a new workout program you just changed to.

That’s why when you first start lifting weights or when you come back after a long period of time off… Oh mama, you better be ready to hold onto something when you sit down on the toilet.

Or for example, all of our 1:1 clients or Clubhouse members get a new workout program every 4-5 weeks. Usually, the first week of this program, people are the MOST sore.

Yet after that first week, the soreness typically wears off because EIMD becomes less and less apparent as your body gets more used to the movements and exercises.

This is due to something called “the repeated bout effect”.

Essentially, when you continuously workout your body gets “used to” the stress you are putting on it.

Whether it is because you are doing the same exercise for 4-5 weeks (like you should be doing following a real strength training program!).

Or whether it is because just in general your body is getting used to handling and dealing with higher amounts of stress in this fashion.

As you repeatedly put your body through the stress, it is very smart, and it adapts to the stress.

This is actually how you change your body, get stronger, and build muscle!

You put a stress on your body (exercise), you recover from that stress, then you adapt to that stress.

I talk about this more in my progressive overload article HERE if you want to check it out.

This is important because I know so many people who just start working out get incredibly sore and it really deters them from continuing on in their workouts.

Please just know, if you stay consistent and keep pushing, the soreness will subside as it goes on.

If it is that bad, keep reading below to find out what I recommend doing.

This also then begs the question…

Do You NEED To Be Sore To See Progress?

I think when answering the question of should I work out while sore ties into the same question of do you need to be sore.

The answer is yes and no.

No because as long as you are having progressive overload over time, that is what matters.

If you are getting stronger, lifting more weight, doing more reps.. That determines progress over time.

Also, TOO MUCH soreness can actually be detrimental to your progress.

If you have too much EIMD (aka soreness) that can actually hinder muscle repair progress as well as performance in the gym.

Your muscles have something called muscle protein synthesis. When you try to train your muscle again when it is already incredibly sore, you are messing up this muscle protein synthesis process.

So now you aren’t recovering as well on top of the fact your performance in the gym has tanked.

(Remember from earlier, the way you change your body is by recovering from workouts. If you don’t recover, you don’t change).

Thus, less recovery and worse performance in the gym, that is NOT a very good equation for seeing results my fellow weight lifting friend.

Now, on the other hand, SOME soreness helps us indicate that we did in fact create enough tension inside of the local muscle we are trying to work in order to see some change to it.

For example, if you *think* you absolutely SMASHED your glutes or your chest.. Yet your glutes or chest aren’t sore even in the slightest.. Then we may need to rethink that “smashing”.

(Not like that, get your mind out of the gutter).

You don’t need, nor should you be debilitatingly sore after a workout, yet some soreness can be a good sign.

Alright, What Does All Of This Mean!?

Okay, let’s first sum up some information about soreness.

Soreness Takeaways

• Muscle soreness comes from EIMD ( Exercise Induced Muscle Damage ) – this comes from exercising and putting your body under stress.
• It is most apparent when first ever start a training program, when you have taken a long break from working out , or when you switch your workout program and start a new one
• It will get less and less the more consistent you become, the longer you stick to a program and the more advanced you become through the “repeated bout effect”
• You don’t NEED to be sore in order to change your body or see progress, yet SOME soreness is a good indicator you are creating enough stress & tension inside the muscle you are trying to work
• Too much soreness is actually a negative thing and can cause diminishing results

Now that we laid out some key takeaways about muscle soreness, let’s dive into some frequently asked questions in regards to soreness and should I work out while sore.

Should I Work Out While Sore : FAQ About Soreness.

How Much Is Being “Too Sore”?

Great question.

Generally speaking if you are sore for more than 72 hours in a specific muscle, that usually is a sign you did too much or didn’t recover enough.

For example if you trained your chest on Monday and by the time Thursday rolls around if you are still debilitating sore, that is not something you want to routinely happen for reasons mentioned above.

What If You ARE “Too Sore” Consistently?

When talking about the topic of should I work out while sore – the fear of being “too sore” often pops up.

Well again, if you are a complete beginner, I would first remind you that you are going to be sore for the first few weeks until that “repeated bout effect” we talked about sets in.

Beyond that, if you are seeing your muscles are sore 72+ hours after you workout, you either need to..

• Do less volume and intensity in your workouts
• Recover better

Volume essentially means the amount of reps and sets you are doing.

If you are too sore, you should probably back off the sets and reps.

Intensity in this instance is something I am referring to as how close you are pushing to failure.

If you are too sore, you should probably back off and not push as close to failure as you are doing right now.

Or as mentioned, you need to recover better. How do you recover better? Well, you can..

• Sleep more
• Eat more calories
• Eat more protein
• Make sure you are getting proper electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium)
• Work in specific actions to promote recovery (massage, foam roll, read, meditate)

To name a few.

What If You Are NOT Getting Sore At All?

As mentioned above, you don’t NEED to be sore to see progress, but a little soreness generally means you are working the right intended muscle.

Again, it will be more apparent the earlier on in a program and less apparent the later on in a program.

With that being said, if you aren’t even getting the slightest bit sore, you probably need to either

• Do more hard working sets to failure (If you don’t know what a working set vs a warm up set is, check out this podcast I did HERE).
• Lift heavier weight in a lower rep range – stop only lifting in the 12-20 rep range
• Fix your form and execution of the movement. If your form is off, you will not be working the right muscles which means you won’t be getting sore (at least, sore in the right places!)

On a scale of 1-10, after the first week, I’d maybe aim to be about a 3-4 level of soreness after workouts to let yourself know you worked that muscle properly.

What Are The Negative Side Effects To Working Out While Sore?

Well, as mentioned earlier briefly, if you have too much EIMD it is going to impair the recovery process for one.

It is also going to cause worse workout performance.

Therefore if you can’t push as hard in the gym and you impair the recovery process needed to build muscle and strength, your results inherently suffer.

Potentially even go backwards.

You could also risk injury if your muscles are so sore they can’t contract and fire properly. Your form will get too compromised and increase risk of injury.

Whew.. now that we know all of that.. It’s time for the real question.

Should I Work Out While Sore?

I am going to break this down into two categories.

Beginner and intermediate / advanced.

First, beginner.

Beginner

Really quickly, I am labeling you as a beginner if you are in the first 1-2 months of following a real workout program for the topic of this particular subject.

Establishing that, if you are a beginner, yes you absolutely can and should workout while you are sore.

Remember the repeated bout effect, you need to be able to consistently put the stress on your body so that it can adapt to it to allow you to overcome that soreness.

Therefore if you workout for a week, then stop for a week because you are sore, you will never allow your body to truly adapt via the repeated bout effect.

You will “start over” each time after you take a week off because you are sore.

Therefore, I strongly encourage you to keep pushing through to allow yourself to get to that 3, 4, 5 week mark of consistently working out in a row.

This will allow your body to get used to the working out and the stress / damage that comes along with it – meaning you will be less sore as time goes on.

If you are someone who really cannot bear the soreness, just do what we talked about above, which is do a little bit less volume and intensity when you workout for right now.

If you are doing 3×8 with 50lbs for squats, do 2×6 with 30lbs.

Or if you are doing bodyweight lunges for 3×10 reps, do 2×5 reps.

Decrease your intensity and volume for right now, which will allow you to be less sore, stay consistent, and benefit from the repeated bout effect.

Intermediate / Advanced

Here is where the question of should I work out while sore becomes a bit more technical.

When you are past that beginner stage the answer is going to depend on a few things.

First is if you have given your muscles at least 72 hours to recover.

For example, if you are training glutes on Monday, and you can barely sit down on the toilet, yet you are supposed to train glutes on Wednesday…

No, I personally would not train glutes on that day.

You will more than likely not be able to train with enough intensity to produce results.

As well as you are not going to allow your body to go through the full recovery process necessary to grow stronger and adapt to the previous workouts stress.

Now, here is where context matters.

I just said I wouldn’t train glutes on Wednesday if your glutes are like 9/10 on the soreness scale.

Yet let’s say your glutes are only a 3/10 on the soreness scale.. You can feel them, they’re a little sore for sure, but it isn’t like you are crying going up stairs…

In this instance, I think yes, you could be able to train glutes on Wednesday.

There is not as much damage created (EIMD) therefore you won’t be impeding the muscle protein synthesis process nearly as much.

In some cases it could even potentially help the soreness because you are getting new blood flow to the area.

When you are sore you have inflammation inside the muscle. In order to recover you need to get this old blood out and push new blood in. Doing a workout while you are slightly sore can help do just that.

Key Takeaway

You can in fact workout while you are sore, if it is has been at least 72 hours or if your soreness is very mild.

But, if it has not been 72 hours and you are debilitating sore, I would hold off on working out for all reasons mentioned above.

Should I Work Out While Sore : Final Call

Welp, I hope this article helped you understand now only the question of “should i workout while sore” but also soreness as a whole in general.
If you enjoyed the article, feel free to share it with a friend.

As well as if you were interested in coaching with our team, I can link that HERE.

Look to chat soon,

-E