5 Frequently Asked Workout Questions Part 1
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How much should you be honoring your body with movement?! Let’s chat about it in this episode of the Embrace Your Real podcast.
With the growth of my Movement with Julie Tiktok and Instagram account, I have been getting a lot of questions in regards to the frequency of their workouts, so I have put together this episode to address the most frequently asked questions.
What I discussed:
How long should you workout for? 45 minutes is ideal, but anything less is still great. I wouldn’t exceed 60 minutes in fears of overtraining.
What’s the minimum days you should workout? 2 days a week ensuring you are hitting all the major muscle groups. So ideally doing one upper body and one lower body workout a week.
What’s the max days you should workout? Ideally 5, but 6 is okay if you aren’t overtraining your muscles. You could workout 5 days a week and do 2 days a week of active recovery.
What should your rest days look like? Whatever feels best for your body. For me, I like active recovery.
What happens if you skip a week of workouts? IF you have been super consistent with your workouts, then nothing will happen. Most likely you will benefit from the rest. Just ensure you are focusing on your nutrition that week.
If you want to get upper body and lower body workouts you can do weekly, or 30 minute variations of workouts if you’re short on time, or you have the time and you want 5 days a week of 45 minute workouts, check out my Movement with Julie app. It makes it super easy for you to train hard without over training as a carefully program each week of workouts to ensure you hitting every single muscle group the perfect amount so you see optimal results.
Link mentioned in this episode:
www.instagram.com/movementwithjulie
If you want more from me, be sure to check out:
Instagram: @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Transcript:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter. A podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I issue a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get hugs, girl.
Hello and welcome back to another episode on the Embrace Your podcast. So how much should you be honoring your body with movement? This is a question I get on a daily basis, and over the last calendar year the growth of movement with Julie has been insane and so amazing to just see so many women come together and really bond over their love of not only honoring their body with movement, but also dumbbell workouts and really just finding that they can not only love their workouts but also see crazy massive results just using a few pair of dumbbells in a small space. But with all of that growth, there has been a lot of frequently asked questions. And so I thought that I would put together kind of an episode to address the most frequently asked questions when it comes to workouts.
So in today's episode of Part one, we're going to be answering the following question. So if these questions spark something in you, if you're like, Yes, that's my question to tune into this. If you have a girlfriend or friend or someone that is also interested in this topic, I would encourage you to send them this podcast episode. You can copy the link and send it to them in a text message. You can also screenshot this and post it up on your story. But the following five questions that I'm going to be answering in today's podcast episode number one How long should you work out for? So like what's optimal when it comes to the length of your workout? Number two, what is the minimum days that you should work out if you want to see results? Number three What is the maximum days that you should see? Results number four, what should your rest days look like? And number five, what happens if you can't work out for a week or if you're skipping, you know, a week of workouts? What should I do in that case? So before
I answer those five questions I wanted to share this super short reveal comes from Ellen M.T. 2011. She gave a five star review and said, I finally found the podcast. Julie, you don't know how much you've helped me. I struggle with discipline and binge eating. Your podcast workouts and just your outlook on health, fitness and life in general has really been helping me overcome these obstacles. I feel like I'm not going to live the rest of my life in this misery, and I cannot thank you enough. I love this so much. Like the fact that these podcasts in any way, shape or form are helping you is that's my goal. That is my one prayer. Every single time I get on here to record a podcast, a film, a podcast, I just want to be helping you. I want to be giving you hope. I want to be giving you education. I want to empower you. And so I'm so grateful that you are finding that in this podcast. If you haven't already left rating interview on the podcast, what are you waiting for? This is the one ask I have of you is if any of these episodes, this podcast in general has helped you. I just ask that you share it out with a friend and if you could leave a rating interview on Apple Podcasts, every single iPhone has a podcast app. It's the Purple app. All you got to do is click on that type and embrace Serial Real. And once you're on that page, you can scroll all the way down and leave a reading interview. Also, if you love the episodes and you want them automatically downloaded to your phone, so whether you know you're going to be on a road trip or you're going somewhere that's not going to have phone service, but you want to have some preloaded episodes on there. You just have to subscribe to the podcast. It's completely 100% free, and then you'll get those podcasts downloaded every single Monday and Thursday when they drop. So thank you in advance for doing that. I know that it takes time out of your day, but I really, really, really do appreciate it.
Okay, so let's dove into the five frequently asked questions when it comes to workouts and honoring your body. Question number one How long should you work out for? So how long that you workout really depends on how much time you have. And I don't want you to let the lack of time stop you from honoring your body with movement. So if you only have 15 minutes, move your body for 15 minutes. But let's say time really isn't an issue if that's the case. You know, I recommend anywhere from 30 to 55 minutes. I typically on average, if I do the full workouts inside my app, they typically take me anywhere from 45 to 57 ish minutes. So kind of a general rule of thumb, and I've just found that that's the most sustainable for me. I've gone through periods of my life and in my workout journey where, you know, I was in the gym for an hour and a half every day and it just wasn't sustainable. It wasn't sustainable. I got burnt out. And not only that, my body really got burned down. And and that's key. This is so important that you find something that is sustainable for you. And that's truly why all of my workouts inside my app really do not go past around 55 to 57 minutes. You know, obviously, if you get interrupted or if you're really trying to to take the workout slow, I would say, Max, the workout should take you an hour and five, an hour and 10 minutes. But again, most of the time, the workouts will not take you even past an hour. And I know that many of you guys might be surprised by my answer, but I think it's because so many people think that they have to work out longer to see better results. And that's just not the case whatsoever. Like for the average woman who is not a professional athlete. Longer workouts will typically lead to overtraining and they'll see adverse effects, right? Not only that, but again, going back to like the sustainability of it, as you kind of go throughout your life, maybe you start working longer hours at work or maybe you know, your personal life gets busier, maybe you have kids, it's going to change. And so you have to find something that is sustainable for you. And this is honestly one of the biggest mistakes that I personally made for years of my journey. I thought that more was better. The more that I worked out, the more weight I would lose, the skinnier I'd become. And I just had such an unhealthy relationship with working out in general. And I was so wrong, like I was so wrong thinking that that was the way to go. Overtraining without adequate nutrition and recovery and strategy. This will break your muscles down and prevent muscle growth, which could cause warming hormonal balances and can even in some cases cause you to hold on to more weight because of those hormonal balances that you're struggling with just from overtraining in general. So working out too much is not healthy. And I want to stress that either I you know, I can't really stress that enough because, again, I feel like society kind of makes you believe it's just the lie of everything. Make the more, the better, right? The more money, the happier you'll be. The more time that you work out, the better results that you get. And that's just not always the case. So all in all, I would encourage you to aim for anywhere from 30 to 55 minutes again, depending on the time constraints that you have. If you have less time, that is totally fine. Ten, 15 minutes. That is so much better, in my opinion, than 0 minutes. And so that's why I always go into everything saying I'm going to do the best that I can with what I have and let that be enough. I'm not going to get stressed about it. I'm not going to feel guilty. I'm going to do what I can with what I have to give each day. And that's going to vary from day to day.
Question number two What's the minimum days that you should work out each week if you want to see results? Right? So if you want to see results in your workouts, you have to really ensure that you're working out each muscle group enough to ignite results. So if you do one leg day a week and then skip it for two weeks in a row and then do another leg day and skip it for another two weeks, that really means that you're doing two leg days in the span of a month. Well, if you're doing two leg days in the span of a month, it's likely that you're not going to see much change in the growth of, you know, your legs, whether that's toning, building muscle, all of those things. Again, nutrition plays a key role in this, but we're not really talking about the nutritional aspect in this episode. So with that being said, I do suggest that you do kind of a minimum of two days a week where you're consistently hitting major muscle groups. And again, this really does go back to what you have time to do. And you have to remember that if you only have, you know, for example, two days a week to work out, be effective in those two days a week. But just know that that's probably not going to be the season of life where you're going to see massive results in your physical physique. Right. And if you were doing like absolute bare minimum, like, let's say two days a week, I would encourage you to do one upper body day and one lower body day. Even better if you could commit to three days a week. I always encourage people to do upper body, lower body and full body. So out of the five workouts that I offer in my movement with Julia, when people say, Well, I only have three days to work out which workout should I do? I always say upper body, lower body and full body. And those are really going to give you the most bang for your buck, especially if you only have a few workouts to do per week. I always recommend resistance training because that truly is going to give you the most bang for your buck. But with that being said, you can absolutely. If you love running or if you love cycling, totally fine. If you are, you know, I would recommend if you want to implement one of those workouts being a cardio workout and you only have, let's say, for example, three days a week to work out, I would do a full upper body, I would do a full lower body, and then I would do your third day, as, you know, your cardio workout. So whether that's a hit workout, which I always recommend doing hit workouts versus like long runs just because again, similar to resistance training, you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of hit, which is high intense interval training. So you're you're going all out you're really maxing out your heart rate for a short period of time. Typically, you know, anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and then you're giving your body time to recover. Whether that is matching the amount of time kind of Tabata rate 1 to 1 ratio where you're doing a minute all out and then a minute recovery or you're doing a 1 to 2 ratio, which, you know, would be all out, you know, 30 seconds. And then if you want higher recovery, it would be a minute recovery. There's so many different types of workouts that you can do in terms of cardio, but if you really want to see kind of body composition change and reshaping of your body, I always suggest starting with resistance training and really prioritizing that. Again, cardio is a great supplement, especially if you love to do it. But just know if you don't love doing. Cardio. You absolutely do not have to do cardio to see results.
Question number three What's the max days that you should work out each week? So I always recommend 5 to 6 days a week. I personally believe that five days a week is really adequate for a sustainable lifestyle, as well as seeing results in your health and fitness, but not having that take over your entire life. If you want to be strategic with your programing and not overworking your muscles, six days a week can be okay. But whatever you do, please do not workout hard. Seven days a week. Your body needs time to recover, and without that recovery, you're just going to halt your results. I think many of us think that in our workouts is when we're building muscle, but in fact, it's during our recovery when our muscles are built right during our workouts and we're recruiting muscle fibers to help us lift the weights. But when we recruit them, we're actually ripping them. So after our workouts, when our muscle fibers are able to repair themselves and build more muscle fibers, that's when they're better prepared for the next time that they're place under similar stress. So essentially kind of like a one on one on resistance training. If you never give your muscles and your muscle fiber time to rest and recover and build, you're really not going to actually get stronger and build more defined muscle. And I get this a lot. Like women wonder why they don't look differently when they're working so hard every single day, like they have that no day's off mentality. But in reality, you have to give yourself time to rest. I understand it. I get this mentality, though, where on the rest days you're like, I don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I'm fidgeting, I feel like I'm stressed. And this is really where I think it gives us an opportunity to grow, grow mentally. It gives us opportunity to ask ourselves, like, why are we stressed? Do we have any sort of unhealthy relationship with exercise to the point where we can't take time off because just like anything, right? It's just like anything that I talk about. I think moderation is so important in moderation in your workouts is absolute necessity. If you want to have a healthy and sustainable relationship with working out and with moving your body and just know that when you give yourself time to rest and recover, you are going to come back feeling so much stronger you're able to push yourself. And so instead of just, you know, constantly going day after day after day and then getting to the end of your workout and being like, Man, that was a subpar workout. It's like, Well, yeah, it's likely because you're not giving yourself time and you're not giving your muscles time to rest and recover. Personally, what I have found works best for me is I am my sixth day, so I personally follow for the majority of the weeks. Follow Monday through Friday are my resistance training movement, which usually workouts that I follow. And then on the sixth day is my active recovery day. So that could be doing something that I normally don't do. So it's typically not a resistance training workout. It's either a cardio session on my peloton, it's going out on a hike with my boys. It's going out on a long walk. It's it's doing something that I normally don't do throughout the week. And it also like that allows me to have fun in my movement. And, you know, whether that's hiking outside with friends and family or it's taking a Peloton class that I've been wanting to take all week, I just take that day and I typically, you know, give a max amount of time of like, you know, 60 minutes. Sometimes it's an hour and 30 minutes if we're going on a hike. But when it comes to like a peloton hit class, I'll typically do no longer than like a 30 minute hit class on Saturdays and then on Sundays, I take it, as a complete rest day. So Saturdays, the six day is an active recovery. Seven day is complete rest for me. And when I say complete rest, I genuinely do mean complete rest. I would say I do still walk my dogs. I walk my dog seven days a week. So we do still walk our dogs for about 30 to 45 minutes. It's a very light, slow walk. And so I'm getting, you know, getting some steps in, but I'm not vigorously putting myself through a killer workout. Sometimes I'll clean on Sundays, but for the majority of Sunday, I try to take it as much rest as I can because I know that I want to come into Monday, which is lower body in our workouts strong and I want to feel strong. I want to be able to push myself and I can't do that if I'm not giving my body rest. So that's personally what I do and that's what I would encourage you to do. But again, I would recommend no more than six days a week, max with really pushing yourself. Question number four is, what are your rest days look like? I kind of just talked about that. But again, it's really doing something that is very, very light. You are not maxing your heart rate by any means you are going for it could be yoga, could be Pilates, it could be stretching, it could be walking, all of those things. And again, what I say is my active recovery days, sometimes I do push myself right. I do a Peloton class where I'm pushing my body, but on Sundays I never do any type of movement that is like that. It's very, very leisurely. It's a leisurely bike ride. It's a brisk. Walk like all of those things. And again, I know it seems like an oxymoron, but really moving your muscles more is extremely beneficial to get rid of those sore muscles. So if you're feeling sore from the week, I don't want you to just take Sunday to completely sit on the couch for, you know, ten, 12 hours and not really move at all. I do want you to move your body, just not pushing your body. And let me kind of explain that. I think people sometimes get confused. They say, like, what if I'm sorry and you're telling me to move? Isn't that just going to make my body more sore? Well, not really. Lactic acid is really a big reason why people feel sore after their workouts. You know, when you're working out super hard, you can barely breathe while your body actually needs oxygen to break blood sugar down into usable energy. Right. And so when you don't have enough oxygen, your body produces lactic acid to help the process, which is great. But the downside is that your body produces lactic acid way faster than you're able to burn it off. And so essentially the leftovers get stored into your muscles, which is really what causes that unwanted post-workout soreness. And this soreness can make you want to sit on the couch all day and recover, but getting in some sort of very low, intense activity can be way more beneficial. And it can really help to break up any of the built up lactic acid and cleared away again. Do what you want and what's best for you and what's right for you on a rest day. But I personally have just found, you know, still moving my body, still going for that walk on Sundays with my dogs for 30 minutes. That has been really beneficial for me. But then the majority of the rest of Sunday's are very sedentary for me so that I can get into my workout on Monday feeling strong and feeling like I can really push myself in. Question number five, what happens if you skip a week of workouts? Well, here's the truth. A large majority of our workouts are coming from nutrition choices, right? You hear that all the time. Like you could be training all day every day, which just talked about how that's not optimal for your results. But if your nutrition is not on point or if you're not prioritizing your nutrition, you're not going to see results. And on top of that, did you know that it actually takes about three weeks of complete inactivity before you begin to lose muscle? Not a week. So here's the thing. If you are consistent with your workouts and the key here is consistency. This really only applies to someone who is staying consistent. Taking a week off truly isn't going to ruin your results. Now, if you're someone who works out two weeks and then skips a week, this really doesn't apply to you because I wouldn't really consider that. You know, if you're doing on a consistent basis, you're not really staying consistent. Now, if you're someone who works out, you know, two weeks and then skips a week and then works out one week and then skips two weeks, this really does not apply to you. I'm talking about the person that is by and large staying consistent for a long period of time. So whether that's eight weeks, that's ten weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks. For example, if you're going on vacation and you're worried about not getting your workouts in, do not stress about that, right? If you are by and large staying consistent, you're not going to see a huge drop in strength by skipping a week. In fact, sometimes I have found by taking a week off after I've, you know, just gone through a season of like 3 to 4 months of consistently training. It's awesome. And my body's like, Heck yeah. And then when I get back after my vacation, my body is ready to go. And if I'm feeling strong, I'm feeling focused and I'm loving my workouts. So again, let's say, for example, you're going on vacation. I want you to go into this with a mentality of not trying to make gains, not trying to make progress, but instead focus on maintaining. Right. You don't need to make time each day to go crash in absolute PR of a workout. Instead, just focus on maintaining, focus on being consistent. So whether that is consistency in getting your steps in on vacation consistency and making sure that you're optimizing your water intake, your protein intake, those three things alone is really going to help you in terms of just maintaining on your vacation. And I think when you go into vacation and you have this mindset of like, okay, I'm not going to go into vacation thinking that I'm going to make, you know, so much progress this week. Instead, I want to challenge myself and say, like, I've been consistent for the last X amount of weeks and I want to challenge myself now to be able to maintain it. Because to me that's the most impressive thing, is when someone is really working hard, working hard, and they've been consistent in that when they're able to maintain that long term and when when they're able to sustain it, that's what's most impressive to me, right? Anybody can go through three months of like vigorous workouts, but what's going to happen the rest of, you know, the nine months, like what is going to happen with that person? And oftentimes people fall off track. And so if you're going into vacation, whether this is over Thanksgiving break or over Christmas break, please just go into it with a mentality of like, I am just going to try to honor my body with movement. I'm going to honor my body by. Prioritizing my water intake, my protein intake, and I'm going to have fun. I think that's another key piece that is so important with vacations is if you're constantly stressing about working out and about staying consistent and you are completely missing out on the memories with the people that you love the most, you're going to regret that whether that's the week after you get back from the vacation, you're going to be like, Man, I really wish I was more in the moment or a year later or five years later or ten years later, you will regret being so consumed and worried about trying to make gains and progress in your physical aspect. And I don't want that for you. I want you to have fun, and I want you to be able to challenge yourself in a different way. And so my last piece of advice really is, again, just focusing on your nutrition when it comes to your vacations and just knowing, again, that it's not you crushing your macros on vacation, like because, you know, getting within 1 to 5 grams of each macro. Absolutely not. I personally approach vacations differently from time to time, depending on the vacation, on the vacation that I'm like, you know, I don't want to worry about this. I prioritize protein. I try to get enough protein in. So for me, that's around 120 grams of protein per day. But the rest of the time, I'm just mindfully eating. I'm intuitively eating. And it's because I have taught myself that. It's because I have educated myself on how it feels as well as educating myself on how much I need to drink in terms of hydration. And that does play a key role in you, you know, curbing cravings and not overeating constantly. And so just, again, focus on maintaining and really allowing that to be the challenge that you overcome on vacation is like, how can I challenge myself to have fun, live in the moment and maintain during this time instead of completely going off the rocker or on the other end of the spectrum being completely obsessive? Okay. So there you have it. Let me quickly recap how long should you work out for? I mentioned 45 minutes to 55 minutes is ideal if you have time. If not, 30 minutes is great. If you are very low on time, 1015 minutes is optimal for you. If you're low on time, 10 to 15 minutes is better than zero. Just try to remember that every single day is going to be different and do what you can with what you have to to give that day and let that be enough. Right. I personally do not exceed, you know, an hour, an hour and 10 minutes. I just feel like that is not sustainable for me. And so I always just recommend saying, you know, within that 45 to 50 minute range per day, if you have an adequate amount of time. Number two, what's the minimum days that you should work out? I talked about two days a week, really ensuring that you're hitting the major muscle groups. So if you're doing two days a week doing one upper body, one lower body, if you have three days a week doing a lower body, upper body and full body. But make sure that you are hitting those major muscle groups. Number three, what's the max days that you should work out? Ideally, personally, I found that five is most sustainable when it comes to like resistance training workouts, but six is okay if you aren't overtraining your muscle groups, you could do, you know, like I mentioned, five days a week workouts and then do one day of active recovery and one day of kind of rest day. Or if you are one of those people that just, you know, forgets two days of active recovery, but just make sure that you are doing low, steady cardio for at least one of those two active recovery days just to really give your body time to rest.
Number four, what should your rest days look like? Whatever feels best for you. For me, I personally like active recovery. Like I mentioned on my active recovery days, which is typically Saturdays. I do peloton classes, whether that's, you know, a 30 minute hit or I'll go on a long hike with my boys or friends or things like that. Sometimes I'll go on a long bike ride and then on my complete rest days, you know, like I said, just really being intentional about resting. But I typically do, you know, anywhere from a 30 to 40 minute walk with my dogs very, very slow, very conversational.
And number five, what happens if you skip a week of workouts? If you are super consistent and you've been consistent with your workouts, truly nothing will happen. In fact, if anything, I have found that my body can benefit from that. And also I feel like I grow and I challenge myself to go into that vacation maintaining and not only just maintaining in my body, but also really making time to make memories with my friends and family that I'll have for a lifetime. So if you are looking for workouts that you can do, whether it's a 30 minute variation or it's a 45 to 55 minute workout, check out my Julia app. I do have a workout app that gives you five training workouts every single week. All you need is a small space, a few pair of dumbbells and your phone. Very, very simple, easy to use. And this is going to ensure that you. Are following an effective program that will be hitting every single muscle group so that you can see optimal results as well as guiding you through this so that you're not confused, you're not wasting time. If you want to learn more and join, you can head over to sale. That's sale.movementwithjulie.com or you can find the link in the show notes.
Your first month as a new subscriber is 50% off and like I said, you get five brainy workouts every single day Monday through Friday, but feel free to do them whenever you want. Brainy workouts come out and release in the app on Saturdays at 12 p.m. Mountain Standard. Time and again, we have women that, you know, do the next week's workout starting that Saturday. Maybe they do Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and take off the rest of the week. It's really totally up to you. These workouts are for you. There's two workouts each day. So depending on your time constraints, we have a 30 minute workout or we have a full workout which typically takes women anywhere from 45 to 55 minutes to complete. Again, if you want to learn more, head over to sale that's Sally Dot manly juliet com. I also do have tons of reviews and tons of what people are saying on my Instagram page. So if you just head over to Instagram and type in movement with Julie, you will see that I have tons of highlight bubbles there that you can check out with people leaving reviews and just kind of what they've gained from being inside this program. I cannot wait to see you inside the app. I personally do all of these workouts alongside of you. It is so fun. It is so amazing. And if you have questions, feel free to shoot me a direct message over on my @movementwithjulie Instagram. I monitor that on a daily basis, and if you're not already following that account, be sure to follow that account because I do post every single day. That is all that I have for today's episode. I love you so dang much. I hope that this answered your question. If you have more questions, please, please, please send in a direct message to movement with Julie and type in question in all caps. And then if you could direct message your question, I will be sure to add it to the Frequently Asked Questions episode series that we're doing over here on the podcast. I love you so much and I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye bye. All right, sister. That's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie. A lot better. Yes, it's with an A in the middle for that Daily Post workout. Real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember, that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.