If I Could Audit Your Workout Routine:
What I Actually Look at When a Woman Says Her Training Isn't Working
(From a Coach with a Master's in Exercise Science)
I've been coaching women for ten years and the most common thing I hear from women who have been training consistently and aren't seeing the results they expected is some version of "I don't know why it's not working."
Almost every time — it comes down to one of these five things.
This isn't a beginner guide. This is for the woman who already shows up, already trains consistently, who is already doing the work, and is frustrated that the results don't match the effort.
Grab a coffee, audit yourself honestly, and resist the urge to start over before you've identified what actually needs to change.
Question 1: When you say you "eat pretty well" — what does that actually mean?
This is always my follow up question here because "I eat pretty well" means something completely different to every woman who says it.
I've heard "eating pretty well" mean:
→ not snacking after 8pm
→ eating under 1200 calories
→ going a week without sweets
→ cutting carbs
→ avoiding processed food
→ eating clean Monday through Friday
None of those things are a nutrition strategy and most of them are actively working against your training results without you realizing it.
The definition of eating well that actually supports the body you're building looks a lot more like: hitting your protein target consistently, eating enough calories to fuel your training and recover from it, and leaving room for the things you enjoy without calling them cheats.
Most women who come to me and say they eat pretty well are hitting 60-80g of protein when they need 120-150g. They're eating clean but they're undereating and their training is reflecting it — in the exhaustion, the stalled results, the weights that won't move, the constant hunger they've been calling discipline.
Before you change anything about your training — track your actual food intake for one week. Not to restrict, but to get an honest picture of where you actually land versus where you think you land.
Most women are surprised by the gap.
Question 2: What have you been doing for the last 2 months? And is that different from the 2 months before that?
I'm not just asking about the program. I'm asking what happened when life showed up inside it.
Did a hard week turn into a written-off week? Did one missed session quietly become two weeks off? Did the plan have any answer for the travel, the chaos, the day where everything went sideways — or did it just break?
And when it broke — did you find a new program?
Most women I talk to have been cycling through programs for years. Not because they lack discipline, because every program they've followed had zero flex for real life and when it broke with no protocol for what to do next — starting over felt like the only option.
This is the most expensive mistake in fitness. Starting over every few months means nothing ever gets to compound.
Progressive overload takes time. Glute development takes months and years. The results that look dramatic online are almost always the product of one approach held for a really long time. Not the most optimized program. Just the one that survived real life long enough to compound.
The question isn't just which program is best. It's which one has enough flex that it survives your actual life without falling apart.
Question 3: If you only have 30 minutes — what's your go-to?
Specifically: do you skip the lift and assume a treadmill walk is a better use of the time?
The 30-minute session is not a compromised session. It's a prioritized one.
If you understand movement patterns, you always know what to prioritize— a squat, a lunge, an extension, a hip abduction. One exercise per pattern, full effort, progressive overload applied. That's a complete lower body session in 30 minutes with no elaborate setup and no perfect conditions required.
The women seeing results aren't always “doing more” than you, they just might make better use of their time. They know what each session actually needs to accomplish — and they can strip it back to the essentials without feeling like they've failed the workout.
The treadmill isn't the right choice if strength training is your goal. It's just an easier decision.
Easy decisions compound the same way hard ones do — just in a different direction.
If your default when time is short is to skip the lift — you've never been taught what a 20-minute session actually needs to look like to be worth it.
That's not a discipline problem, that's a coaching gap.
Knowing how to strip a session back to its essentials — the patterns that matter most, the exercises that give you the most stimulus in the least time, the order that makes 20 minutes feel complete instead of like a compromise — that's a skill. And it's one most programs never teach you because most programs were built for perfect conditions, not real ones.
When you have a coach and a system built around movement patterns, 20 minutes stops being a reason to skip and starts being a version of the session that still counts because you know exactly what to prioritize and why.
Question 4: Do you actually know when to increase your weight or switch up your reps?
Not "when it starts feeling easier." An actual system.
Because "when it feels easier" means you're going weeks — sometimes months — at the same stimulus without the muscle having any reason to change. And then you wonder why nothing is changing.
Progressive overload is the mechanism behind every result you've ever seen on someone else and wondered how they got there. It's not optional. It's the whole thing.
Here's a simple framework to make it intentional:
If you can complete all your reps with 2-3 reps left in the tank — add weight next session. Even small increments. 2.5lbs is still more than last week.
If you've been at the same weight for 3 or more weeks — something needs to change. Different reps, better range of motion, slower tempo, more control, maybe a different variation of the movement pattern. The muscle needs a reason to grow. The same stimulus every week is not a reason.
Look at your execution- Are you pausing at the top of your hip thrust? Are you controlling the eccentric on your RDL? Are you hitting full depth on your squat? Execution improvements are a form of progressive overload that most women completely ignore.
Track what you're lifting, even just in your phone notes. You cannot apply progressive overload to numbers you can't remember.
Question 5: What Do You Do When the Equipment You Need Isn't Available — Or When You'd Rather Do a Home Workout — Or When You Mentally Simply Cannot Attempt a Heavy Deadlift That Day?
Because the answer to all three of those tells me everything about whether your program is going to survive your real life.
If the squat rack is taken and the answer is "I freak out" — the program has no flex built in.
If you're having a busy work week and the answer is "I skip it" — the program has no home version.
If it's one of those days where heavy just isn't happening mentally or physically and the answer is "I write off the whole session" — the program has no modified version.
Real life shows up constantly. The squat rack gets taken. The gym isn't accessible. The body needs a lighter day. Those aren't failures. Those are Tuesdays.
A system has an answer for all of them. The swap that trains the same pattern with different equipment. The home version that still moves the needle. The lighter day that still counts — because showing up in some form is always better than not showing up at all.
The session looks different. It still compounds.
What to Do With Your Answers:
If you answered honestly and one or more of these hit — you now know what to fix. And the answer is probably not a new program.
It's eating enough to actually support the training. It's applying progressive overload with intention. It's having a swap for when the plan doesn't cooperate. It's building a system flexible enough that you never feel like you failed for adjusting.
Most women don't have a discipline problem. They have a design problem.
The effort is usually there. The system just needs to match it.
And that's exactly what I build.
I've spent ten years coaching women through every version of this. The starting over. The programs that broke. The training that felt hard because the nutrition wasn't there. The weights that never moved because nobody taught you how to make them move.
What I do differently is build a system around the person doing the work — not the ideal version of her life. A system with swaps for when the gym is packed, a protocol for the weeks that fall apart, progressive overload built in so the weights always have somewhere to go, and nutrition that includes the chocolate.
You've been doing the work. You just needed a system built around the person doing it.
If you want to talk through your personal audit
or you're ready to work together
🤍
