Are You Working Out Hard?

Are you working out hard?

Of course not.

Your intensity sucks!!!

I’m not even you, and I’m embarrassed by it. If you had any modicum of shame, then it’d cause you embarrassment too.¹

Oh, but you max out the abductor machine?

And then during the 15-minute rest periods for you to recover from the taxing work of opening your legs, you scroll social media looking at pics of people you might quite possibly open your legs for at a future date?

Phew, what a workout!

…too bad you weren’t really working out!

Because your time on earth is limited, you might want to make better use of it than going to the gym and wasting it by doing lord knows what when that time could’ve been spent doing lord knows what else.

So how do you get the most out of going to the gym?

By doing some of these things!

To see results, you have to work out with moderate to vigorous intensity. The simplest way to gauge whether you’re reaching either level is by how you feel in the 24 hours after a workout.

Soreness, especially the debilitating kind, isn’t an indicator of muscle growth. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t feel anything, though. What you should feel is slight tightness in the area that was worked, particularly when flexing. If you don’t, then you didn’t do enough to stimulate the muscles.

So step it the fuck up!²

Another way to determine moderate and vigorous intensity by feel is via the rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scale, which runs from 1 to 10.

If you find yourself breathing heavily but just short of being out of breath and can carry on a conversation but have difficulty butchering the lyrics to the songs on your playlist as you sing along, then you’d score the difficulty a 4 or 5. That means your activity level is moderate.

Vigorous activity is when your breathing is deep and rapid and you have to pause every few words to take breaths. That would place the RPE anywhere from 6 to 8.

Yeah, you definitely aren’t working out hard enough to fit in either intensity level, and it shows in your body.

So step it the fuck up!

Human beings, a species you’re a member of, are terrible at assessing intensity levels.³ A more objective manner of assessing intensity, especially during cardio, is by exercising in a target heart rate zone, with moderate intensity at 60-70 percent of your MHR and vigorous intensity at 70-85 percent. To find out your target heart rate zone, you first have to calculate your maximum heart rate (MHR). One formula is: 206.9 – (0.67 × age). Once you know your MHR, multiply it by your chosen percentage to arrive at the desired heart rate zone.

EXAMPLE:
If you’re 33 years old and want to do a moderate intensity cardio bout, then your MHR is 185 and your target heart rate should be anywhere from 111 to 130 beats per minute.⁴

To make sure that you’re exercising in the intended zone, all you have to do is periodically take your pulse during your workout, which you do by

• placing your index and third finger on your neck or thumb side of your wrist

• counting the number of beats for 15 seconds, and

• then multiplying that number by 4 to calculate the beats per minute.

If your pulse is below 111, as in the example, then you need to step it the fuck up!⁵

If you don’t feel like doing the advanced math of finding your MHR and target heart rate zone and then having to take your pulse, you can save yourself the labor and buy a heart rate monitor, running watch, or any other kind of fitness tracker.

Too broke to afford a Fitbit or Apple Watch and too busy to do all the calculations yourself?

Then just do the subjective shit!

All of that now said, working out hard extends beyond looking and sounding like you’re working out hard.

When people hear the word “intensity”, they think of pushing yourself hard to the point of collapse by either increasing volume or moving superhuman weight like a big, yucky bodybuilder.

As demonstrated above, intensity is more than that. But that’s not enough, because there’s also more to it.

What else is there?, you say.

Well, there’s also the mindset.

Intensity, working out hard, is as much a vibe you give off as you show. It’s something others feel as much as they see.

Intensity happens before you even step foot inside the gym, and it’s much like how you prepare yourself for another day of wage slavery. However, instead of sitting in your car in the burger joint’s parking lot getting your mind right to deal with your asshole coworkers like you do every morning, intensity is you visualizing yourself going through the workout by imagining how the weight feels, picturing how hard you’re pushing, recalling how the weight felt last time, running down the order of the exercises you’re going to perform, etc.

And then when you enter the gym and step inside the weight room, intensity is you tuning out the stress and chaos of your mess of a life and directing all your attention to such trivial things as completing the task at hand, your workout. It’s you having an internal conversation with yourself as you lift:

• are you contracting the correct muscle(s) to move the weight?

• are you squeezing as hard as possible?

• are you as explosive as you can be on the concentric and exhibiting control on the eccentric?

• is your breathing right?

• are your body parts moving through space the way they’re supposed to?

• is the lifting tempo too fast or too slow?

Intensity is you thinking about all that and more during the set and immediately after in anticipation of the next one.

It’s not you thinking about the movie selection for Netflix and chill. Or worrying how you’re on the verge of getting fired at work for your gross incompetence.⁶ Or thinking about what you’re going to eat for dinner to negate your having even worked out. Or running excuses through your head that sound legitimate enough to weasel your way out of a commitment you were stupid enough to make.⁷

Intensity is not you thinking about anything taking place outside of the gym.

Neither is it you treating the gym like a social club and chatting it up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, or Dawn, Britt, and Mary.

Nor is it treating the gym as a flesh emporium, with your head on a swivel turning here and there to look at every hot piece of ass walking by and crop dusting the gym.

And it’s definitely not treating the gym as another shooting location to get footage for “likes” from strangers who by no means improve the quality of your life, especially if you’re not on social media for business and marketing reasons! You know, doing a dumbbell curl with one hand and using the other hand to take a workout selfie in the gym mirror instead of, I don’t know, using it to do curls!

Intensity is you basically treating the gym as nothing but a workplace, with everyone around you knowing that you’re there to take care of business and nothing else, at least until after your work is completed.

That’s intensity.

That’s what working out hard is.

Now, once again, how hard are you working out?

Glossary: bodybuilder, cardio, dumbbell, exercise, gym, gym mirror, intensity, muscle, muscle soreness, reps, RPE, results, weight room, work out, workout

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

Are You Working Out Hard?

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