Here are the five things I wish I knew before starting strength training!

1. Diet matters more than you think - and eating enough is part of the plan

One of the biggest misconceptions I had when I started was that eating less would help me get results faster. I thought under-eating would help me tone up and for me weight loss wasn’t the goal but feeling better in my body was. But not eating didn’t help me like I thought it would.  It left me running on empty, training harder than my body could handle and wondering why I wasn't progressing.  It seems silly now looking back that I could possibly think that a lack of food would help me lift heavy weights and do it safely but that is where the experience has helped me learn so much.  

The truth is - food is fuel. Strength training demands energy, and without enough of it your body can't perform, recover or grow stronger. Getting your nutrition right isn't a separate thing from training. It's part of it.

2. Every lift is a skill - even the "simple" ones

I remember watching someone deadlift and thinking it looked straightforward. Just pick the bar up, right?

Wrong.

A deadlift has so many small components - your foot position, your grip, your hip hinge, your core engagement, your breathing. And I often would tell my PT that he could have some of these but not everything because it felt overwhelming.  But I let myself off the hook and realised that it was a process, remember some, try a lift, correct movements and repeat.  I knew I would get there.  

My PT explained it to me in what felt like a hundred different ways before it finally clicked, luckily his patience and creativity helped me to finally understand what I needed to do.  Thank goodness patience was something he was willing to put in for me. And the Romanian deadlift (RDL)? That took even longer.

The point is - don't rush. The skill comes before the weight. Taking your time to learn the movement properly isn't weakness, it's exactly what you should be doing.  Getting guidance from someone can really support the process, as well as having someone who can demonstrate and give cues is essential for beginners.

3. Progress is a process, not a quick fix

We live in a world of before and after photos and 12 week transformations. The reality of strength training is slower, quieter and far more meaningful than that.  

I had to learn to trust the process. To show up even when I couldn't see results yet. To believe that the work I was doing was building something - even on the days it didn't feel like it.

And it was. It always was.  

As a beginner, I needed to put in the extra steps in learning the moves, pacing myself to reduce the risk of injury and not allowing frustrations to take over.  The amount of times in sessions, we would ‘go to failure’ and this was a mental battle every time.  This process also gave me lasting results and a discipline that I would have missed out on if I had rushed through at the start.

4. The gym became my escape - and I wasn't expecting that

This one surprised me more than anything else.

I started strength training during one of the harder periods of my life. I was recovering from anxiety, navigating high stress with family and carrying a lot. Those couple of hours a week in the gym became something I hadn't expected - a space that was entirely mine.

No facade. No performing. No matter how I was feeling - happy, sad, somewhere in between - I could just be me. I could focus on something that was purely for myself, and leave everything else at the door.  For me at this time, it was one of the only places where I didn’t have to pretend to be okay or something that I wasn’t.  I wasn’t a teacher, daughter, sister, aunt - just me!

I didn't go to the gym to escape my problems forever. I went to remember that I was more than them.

If you're going through something difficult right now - I'm not promising the gym will fix it. But I am saying it might give you somewhere to put it down for a while. And sometimes that's everything.

5. You are allowed to take up space

Walk in. Pause if you need to. Don't feel rushed to jump straight into things or to get off equipment before you're ready.

You are allowed to be there.

It took me an incredibly long time to feel confident in the gym and to trust myself.  I felt like if the piece of equipment I needed was being used that I would not be able to complete the workout and everyone would realise that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  Not only did I not think I belonged there but there were times in the early days of training solo I didn't always remember how to do things. So I asked. And people helped - happily, without judgement. The gym can feel intimidating from the outside, but most people in there are just focused on their own session. Nobody is watching you as closely as you think.

Have a plan. Know what you're going in to do. And if you don't - ask someone. Ask a PT. Ask another member. You don't have to figure it out alone.

Strength training gave me more than I expected - physically, mentally and emotionally. If you're curious about starting your own journey, I'd love to be part of it.