How Hard Should I Really Be Working out?

“Am I working out hard enough?”

Turns out this is a great question. People ask it sometimes because they aren’t sore after a workout. Sometimes they ask it because they didn’t leave the gym completely exhausted. Other times it’s because they look around and see someone else lifting more weight or moving faster and wonder if they’re doing enough.

But before you can answer it, you have to ask another one:

Hard enough for what?

The intensity of your workout should always match the goal of your workout. And if you’re unsure, this applies to you.

Not Every Workout Should Feel the Same

If you spend enough time on Instagram, you’ll see that people say that you should have emptied the tank in the workout, and this workout should leave you wrecked. Other people will post about how I was on the floor for 20 minutes after.

Truth is, that’s simply not how good training works. At least not all the time.

Sometimes, yes, you need to lay it all out there, and you need to have nothing left. Other times, consider this…

If I asked you to sprint 100m, you’d go all out, or at least you should. But if I asked you to run for 30 minutes, you wouldn’t sprint the first minute and then try to hang on for the rest of it. You’d settle into a pace you thought you could maintain.

The same idea applies in the gym for CrossFit workouts, for lifting weights, you name it.

Short workouts demand higher intensity.

Heavy strength training calls for focus, good mechanics, and quality effort—not necessarily a personal record every session.

…And if you know anything about real legitimate programming as it relates to developing strength, you know that you’re not gonna aim for a personal record more than once a year, maybe twice a year if even that.

The point is that intensity isn’t one fixed gear. It changes depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Working Hard Doesn’t Mean Maxing Out

I recently had a conversation with one of my online coaching clients who had unknowingly fallen into a common trap: nearly every strength session had become a max effort session, and it wasn’t intentional. It’s just how it worked out.

She wasn’t trying to set a personal record every workout. It just kept happening.

At first, that can feel productive. You’re lifting heavy, you’re challenging yourself, and you’re proving that you can do it.

What you’ll realize eventually is that things will probably start moving in the wrong direction, and here’s what I mean:

• You won’t recover as well
• You will feel more fatigued
• Little aches and pains will tend to stick around
• Progress tends to slow and sometimes even moves in the opposite direction.

The reason?
Your body only has so much capacity to recover from maximal effort things. If every workout demands everything you’ve got, there’s nothing left in the tank for tomorrow’s workout or tomorrow’s responsibilities, and even today’s.

Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is stop one or two reps before failure. You still challenge your body enough to stimulate progress, but you also leave yourself in a position to recover and come back stronger tomorrow.

Busy Parents Have a Different Goal

This is where context matters.

If you’re training for an elite-level competition, your approach may look very different.

But if your goal is to become a healthier, stronger parent who has the energy to keep up with your family, then your workouts should support that life—not compete with it.

If you leave the gym so exhausted that you have no energy for your kids later that afternoon, you probably missed the mark.

You are looking to show up better at work, at home, and with your family. That’s the point.

This doesn’t mean your workout should be easy, far from it. Your workout should challenge you. It should require your focus and a lot of effort, and there will absolutely be moments when you have to push through extreme discomfort.

But there’s a difference between productive effort and unnecessary suffering.

Train Hard Enough to Create Change

Something I consistently remind people is that your body doesn’t change because you completely destroy yourself in the gym. It changes because you consistently give it a reason to adapt.

Sometimes that means sprinting.
Sometimes it means lifting heavy.
Sometimes it means moving steadily for 30 minutes without letting your pace fall apart.

And it turns out that the common thread is doing this all at an appropriate intensity for what you’re doing.

You’re working hard enough to challenge your body while still leaving room to recover, improve, and do it again tomorrow.

The Bottom Line

So how hard should you really be working out? You need to work out hard enough that your body has a reason to change, but not so hard that every workout becomes a recovery project.

Yes, there are days when the workout is to prove to yourself how tough you are when you step into that gym. Most of the time, though, your goal is to train with purpose.

You need to work as hard as the workout requires, maybe a little more, but not a maximum effort every single time.

The best training plans are the ones that you can come back to over and over again to help you become stronger, healthier, and more capable for everything outside of the gym that actually matters.

Have questions on training intensity or anything else? You can email me at [email protected] with your questions.