I’m often asked how you know if you are working hard enough…especially since I tell people who being sore or feeling destroyed after a workout isn’t the best indicator of whether or not you had a great workout.

My answer, “Well it depends on your goals and/or the purpose of the workout!”

Not every workout needs to make you sore for days or leave you feeling like you are going to barf or die.

Working “hard enough” truly means challenging yourself so you can move forward toward your goals.

But if your workouts have no purpose and your goals aren’t clearly outlined, you can never really know if you are working hard enough unless of course you destroy yourself each and every time.

However, destroying yourself doesn’t mean you will necessarily be moving forward toward your goals. Because moving forward means working out SMART.

Because working SMART and working HARD are not the same thing.

You can work hard and get nowhere….

So maybe we shouldn’t be worrying about working hard enough so much as working smart…Which as I said above means having a purpose for your workouts and clearly outlined goals.

It also means TRACKING what you are doing so you can see improvements and progress toward your goals.

For instance, if you want to strengthen your glutes you want to challenge yourself to lift more each and every time. However, if you constantly are doing different exercises, you don’t really know if you are lifting more because each move will require different loads.

And just because you are sore after each glute workout doesn’t mean you are getting stronger.

So in order to really see if you are getting stronger, you need to have a move you can compare – a move you can add a little more weight to each week.

Notice I said a LITTLE MORE. You don’t want to make drastic changes each week because you also need to do a workout that doesn’t make you so sore you can’t do the other workouts you have scheduled for the week.

Basically you need to workout SMART.

It isn’t about pushing your limits every time. It is about creating CHANGE. Because destruction doesn’t guarantee results…Smart progress and change does!

Don’t just throw together workouts that make you work hard! PLAN OUT workouts that make you PROGRESS.

One of my favorite workouts to prove that feeling destroyed at the end isn’t the only measure of how hard you worked is the POWER WORKOUT.

The point of the power workout is to make you more explosive and improve your mind-body connection. Workouts like this make you stronger and help you recruit more muscle fibers faster and more efficiently.

A Power Workout leaves you feeling like you could do more at the end. You work for like 8-12 seconds and then you rest for about 5 times the length of time you worked.

When you rest, you should feel completely ready to go again. And you may even feel ready to go before you start. But you need the rest so you can be just as explosive each round as you were the first time.

Because a Power Workout isn’t about going to failure. It is about being super explosive each and every time. Which means you need to REST.

At the end of the workout, you shouldn’t feel destroyed. But doing this type of workout will create change and help you progress toward your goals.

Because working “hard enough” with a power workout doesn’t mean making yourself barf. It means being as explosive and powerful as you can for the short burst and then completely recovering.

Because working “hard enough” doesn’t really matter in the end if you aren’t moving toward your goals.

Focus on working out SMART.

Focus on creating a PLAN that leads to progress and RESULTS.

So stop asking if you are working out hard enough and focus on working toward your goals!