Sweating vs. not sweating during your workout
Sweating vs. not sweating during your workout
There is a lingering misconception about a good workout vs. a bad workout, and which side sweating during exercise falls on. Too often, the misconception of a good workout comes from how much you sweat and is associated with the challenging nature of your exercise routine. Whether or not sweating during your exercise session constitutes a good workout ultimately depends on one’s goals.
Let me explain …
Suppose your exercise goal is to improve internal temperature regulators. In that case, your exercise routine should seek to increase your internal body temperature through high-energy exercise, resulting in a sweaty Betty situation. Exercising to maximize your core temperature mechanisms comes at the cost of immense sweat buildup. This could be a specific goal to work toward if the intention is to build a tolerance to training in warmer environments.
Differently, a good workout doesn’t always have to leave you in a mess of sweat to mean you have achieved something for the day. Sweat is a complementing element of your training session, but not a requirement. A good workout should incorporate basic exercise fundamentals such as increasing Intensity or repetitions and exercise progressions that make functional movement more challenging and get you closer to your goals.
Combining our understanding of a good workout and what sweating means during exercise will make for much more strategic gains.
As your body is heating up during exercise, the appearance of sweat on the exterior glistens, demonstrating the excretion of body water.
Sweating is the process of cooling yourself down during exercise (not fat-crying). This is important because exercise occurs at the expense of energy; thus, sweating is a natural mechanism that regulates our body temperature. This prevents the possibility of heat-related effects from energy expenditure unraveling in the gym, ultimately keeping our body temperature in a safe zone of 98 to 103 degrees. Sweating is an important cooling adaptation, allowing your body to acclimate to the challenging exercise of increasing intensity.
Now that we know what sweating means, let’s put another myth to bed. The more you sweat, the more calories you burn.
Energy-demanding exercises will lead to some sweat build-up, but this does not correlate with calorie expenditure. To be clear, you continue to burn calories as you sweat, but the amount of body water lost does not tell us anything about how many calories have been expended. It is often assumed that the more you sweat, the more calories you burn, but again, excreting body water is our natural cooling process. The two being unrelated brings up the case of not sweating but still experiencing fatigue during exercise.
But wait ? If I’m not sweating, that means I’m not working hard enough, right?
It is common to not sweat during exercise, primarily due to the lack of body water, better known as dehydration. Dehydration can be detrimental to performance. For example, when completing a high-intensity exercise on a day when you have neglected H20, performance decreases by as much as 45%. Displaying that water is highly significant before exercise and recovery between sets. In this case, staying hydrated would promote improved performance and the ability to regulate core temperatures, allowing for tremendous success. Remember that not sweating during exercise doesn’t mean you’re not exerting yourself; ensure that you stay hydrated throughout the day to improve your cooling body temperature mechanism for the long run.
As personal trainers, we have the responsibility of meeting the demands of our clients, challenging them in ways that they cannot on their own. Challenges stem from various training variables and are set among the journey of each client’s process. Reaching new heights in your training abilities is often measured through an exercise progression and increased intensity or volume. Based on the challenges, this ultimately determines how good of a workout you are getting. Keep this in mind the next time you’re in the gym. Hard work isn’t measured at the end by assessing how much sweat your clothes have absorbed; that’s only good for aesthetic purposes. The hard work you’re after occurs set to set, sweat or no sweat.