Top 6 Mistakes Women Make When They Start Strength Training

Today we're gonna talk about the top six mistakes I see women making when they start strength training.

Top Mistakes Women Make When Strength Training

1. Switching Things Up Too Often

The first mistake I see women making when it comes to strength training is just switching things up too often. If you see a workout on social media or on Instagram, and you think, I'll do that workout today, that looks good. And then the next day you see another workout, you're like, that looks fun, I'll do that—that tends to not be a great idea. Because if you're switching things up too often, you're not going to have any structure or progression to what you're doing.

And when it comes to strength training, or resistance training, we want to make sure that we're following a plan that is smart, structured, and will allow you to progress over time. And if you're just doing random workouts throughout the week, if you're just going to the gym, maybe just going through different equipment and trying different things out, you're never going to be able to progress to the ability that you can.

With that being said, I would definitely make sure that you are having some plans going into the gym. Either follow a monthly plan or something that you can stick to for a period of time, and more specifically stick to exercises that you can actually track and progress over time. Because if you're continuously switching up exercises, you're not going to be able to see if you're excelling or progressing in those movements.

2. Doing Too Much

Thinking that doing more is going to lead to better results is another big mistake. And in most cases, that's actually not the case. That's a mistake that I made for a long time—thinking that if I was training three days a week, then I should train four days or five days, or even six days.

The reality is more is not better when it comes to resistance training and strength training, especially if you're newer to resistance training. You actually want to start with less and then work your way up. Because if you're completely new to training, you're actually going to get a lot of gains in the first six months to a year that you're training. And you don't need as much.

Use that runway and do less until you hit a plateau. And then maybe you add in a little bit more. And another thing to think about with this is that doing more is going to cause recovery to take a hit.

3. Not Prioritizing Recovery

This is another mistake that I personally made for a long time. It's a mistake that I see a lot of people making, especially women where we just want to go go and you know, do as much as we can. That is going to cause you to not be able to recover. And we know that when you're lifting weights, you're actually not building muscle. When you're doing that, you're breaking your muscles down—you build muscle when you're recovering.

Doing more tends to just be a recipe for disaster.

Find that happy medium of you know what works for you. What allows you to get enough volume throughout the week and allows you to progress and have fun with your workouts, but also allows you to incorporate rest days and make sure that you're recovering. Recovery is where the magic happens—it's not what you're doing in the gym. Yes, that's important. And the intensity behind that is important. But recovery is what a lot of people forget about. And we really, really need to make sure we're paying attention to that.

4. Chasing the Sweat

Sweating does not equal a good workout. And it might seem like the more you sweat, the harder you're working. And when it comes to resistance training, that's not necessarily the case.

Sometimes in my workouts and my lifts, I don't even sweat. And it doesn't matter whether you're sweating or not, because that's not going to lead to more gains or more muscle being built. If your goal is fat loss, sweating during the workout probably makes you think you're burning as many calories as possible. There literally is no correlation.

It's just your body precipitating, it could be because of the environment you're in. Chasing the sweat is one of the biggest mistakes I see. And this also comes back to your resistance training, and this will go back to the second mistake I said as well in terms of recovery.

But when you're, you know, lifting weights, and when you're recovering during your sets, you want to make sure that you're actually recovering and resting. If your main goal is to build muscle and to really focus on resistance training and getting stronger. You don't necessarily want to be like doing a set of squats and then in between those squats doing like 15 Jumping jacks—you actually want to just rest because that is going to allow you to lift heavy.

5. Not Getting Enough Protein

The next mistake I see is just in general, not eating enough, and not eating enough protein. If your main goal is to build muscle and get stronger, you need to make sure that you're eating enough food in general. If you are always dieting, if you're always restricting, if you're always in a calorie deficit, you're literally putting your body in a position to not optimize its muscle growth. So we need enough fuel coming in to support the building processes that occur in a body when you are breaking that muscle down to rebuild it, right.

As I mentioned earlier, when you're in the gym, you're breaking your muscles down. And when you're recovering, that's when you're building muscle. So if you want to build muscle, if you want to benefit from that, if you want to get stronger, you have to make sure that you're eating enough food, and then more specifically, making sure that you're getting enough protein.

Protein is very important for muscle growth protein, and protein is made of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of muscle. If you're not getting enough protein, you could be working really, really hard in the gym. And you wouldn't be getting as many benefits as if you did have enough protein in your diet throughout the day.

If you want to pay attention to your daily protein intake, I always typically say around one gram per pound of body weight is a good happy medium to start out at. You can iterate up and down depending on where you're at with your goals where you're out with your body composition, and, and all of that. So just make sure that you're eating enough. And also making sure that you're not in that dieting mindset so much. And I find this with females a lot that we tend to be in that restrictive mindset.

We always think that we need to restrict calories. But when the goal is to change your body composition, really the goal should be to build as much muscle as possible, because that is what's going to change your body composition. If you just focus on fat loss, and you have no muscle underneath that, when you lose the body fat, you're not going to have the body you want—you're not going to have that toned look. You're not going to look lean. You need to focus on fueling appropriately, getting enough calories, and getting enough protein to support that muscle growth.

6. Too Low Intensity

The fifth most common mistake I see is not enough intensity in the actual lifting session or when you're you know, lifting weights. So this is different from you know, chasing the sweat, you know, focusing on not recovering not resting enough during your sets. Intensity is more so like making sure that you are lifting heavy enough that you can stimulate that muscle growth. So there's a time and a place for you know, lower reps higher weight.

But if you're always doing lower reps, higher weight, your body's gonna adapt to that. And that's also going to turn more into like an endurance style workout versus if you're lifting at a moderate weight or high weight for lower to moderate reps, you're really going to be building strength, which is very, very important to make sure that you're building enough muscle in the long term.

So just make sure that your workouts have enough intensity in them in that regard. And also making sure that you're paying attention to your technique, your form, those are all going to be important to make sure that you're not injuring yourself and that you can optimize your muscle growth to the best ability. So those aren't necessarily the only mistakes I see but those are the top mistakes that I see women making especially when they're new to strength training or resistance training.

Want to avoid other rookie mistakes and optimize your strength training? Check out some of the other blog posts we have and podcast episodes to find exactly what you're looking for.