Is Your Workout Actually Strength Training? A 5-Question Checklist
Is Your Workout Actually Strength Training? A 5-Question Checklist for Women Over 40
There's something most women in midlife don't realize about their workouts. They think they're strength training when they're really just exercising with weights. And there's a big difference.
I should know. I spent years in BodyPump classes three times a week, doing free YouTube workouts at home, sweating, feeling the burn, watching my muscle tone disappear anyway. The workouts felt hard. I was burning calories. My muscles burned during every session. So I assumed I was building muscle.
I wasn't.
Once I figured out what was actually happening, everything about my body in midlife changed. And the first step is being able to look at your own workout honestly and ask: is this actually strength training?
That's what the 5 questions below are for.
The Difference Between Exercising and Training
Exercising is moving your body. Burning calories. Getting your heart rate up. It feels good, and it's certainly better than not moving.
Training is something else entirely. Training is when you're applying a systematic stimulus to your body that forces it to adapt. You're not just doing the work. You're progressively asking your body to do more than it did last week. More weight. More reps. More challenge.
Strength training in particular requires:
A structured program (not random workouts strung together)
Tracking (so you can see your progress)
Progressive overload (consistently increasing the challenge)
Working close to failure (the last rep should actually be the last rep you could do with good form)
Most workout classes, follow-along videos, and free YouTube routines fail at least one of these. Often all of them.
Here's how to find out if yours does.
5 Questions to Diagnose Your Workout
1. Are You Doing the Same Exercises Week After Week?
If your routine hasn't changed in months, your body has already adapted. No new stimulus means no new growth.
A real strength program varies on purpose. You stay with the same exercises for a block of 4 to 8 weeks while you progressively add weight or reps, then strategically swap exercises to keep the body adapting.
If you've been doing the exact same workout for a year, your body has long since stopped responding to it.
2. Are You Tracking What You Lift?
Tracking is what separates a workout from a training session. If you're not writing down the weight, the reps, and the sets, you literally cannot apply progressive overload. You're guessing.
This is the most overlooked piece of strength training for women over 40. We're trained to just "show up and do the work." But strength is built from data. Track every session, every exercise, every set. Then look back next week and beat last week.
3. Why Did You Stop Your Last Set?
This is the most clarifying question on the list. Think about the last time you finished a set of an exercise. Why did you stop?
Because the song ended? That's cardio.
Because the timer went off? That's cardio.
Because you "felt the burn"? That's endurance.
Because you literally couldn't have done another rep with good form? NOW you're strength training.
Real strength training requires you to work close to muscular failure. If you're stopping for any other reason, your muscles haven't been challenged enough to grow.
4. Are You Actually Getting Stronger Over Time?
Pull up your numbers from a year ago. (You did keep records, right? See question 2.)
Are you lifting heavier weights for the same exercises now? Doing more reps with the same weight? If a year has gone by and your strength numbers look the same, your training isn't working.
A year is a long time. You should be visibly stronger after a year of real strength training.
5. Have You Outgrown Your Dumbbells?
If you train at home, this is the simplest test on the list.
When I work with women new to lifting, I tell them to start with whatever dumbbells they have. And then I tell them: you're going to need heavier ones, probably within the first month.
That's because real progressive overload requires you to keep adding load. If you've had the same 10-lb dumbbells for a year and they're still your heaviest set, you're not training. You're maintaining a habit.
What to Do If You Failed the Checklist
First, you're in good company. This is where most women in midlife are.
The good news is that the fix is straightforward. You don't need a gym membership, a coach, or hours a week. You need a structured program with progressive overload, two to three sessions a week, and the discipline to track.
If you want to feel the difference between proper strength training and what you've been doing, my Lift-IT! 10-day intro is built for exactly this moment. $27, 10 days, you'll know within a week if what you've been calling strength training was actually doing the job.
For the full story of why your workouts stop working in midlife and what's actually going on in your body when this happens, the episode this checklist came from is here:
POD167: My Workouts Stopped Working at 49. Here's How I Fixed It.
