my problem with hypertrophy
Hypertophy training is a type of training that focuses on building muscle size and aesthetics by ‘progressive overload’ - increasing how challenging an exercise is over time. This is usually done by adding weight, reps, resistance, or time under tension.
Your body is talking. Are you listening?
Picture this: you've just wrestled your best friend to the ground, landed badly, and hurt your shoulder. A normal person would rest. I kept going to the gym to lift as heavy as I possibly could.
I have been lifting weights for twelve years, and I should have known better.
The injury wasn't even from lifting — it was just bad luck. But everything that came after was on me. My mobility routine was nonexistent, I didn’t rehab or rest. I was not listening to the messages my body was screaming at me. I went into weights sessions with my body completely cold, unprepared to lift heavy things, and trying to follow what everyone said – lift as heavy as possible. The result was dystrophy in my shoulder, which is still weaker than the other side to this day. At its worst, I couldn't type or move a mouse around for work.
Does any of that sound familiar? Maybe it's not a shoulder for you. Maybe it's a dodgy knee you just work around, or back pain you've decided is part of life.
Here's what was really going on for me: I was obsessed with hypertrophy at the expense of absolutely everything else. No mobility work. No proper warm-up. No rest. And as one of the only women in the gym, I was trying to hold my own, lifting as heavy as possible because that's what the gym girlies on the gram were doing.
The number that wasn't mine
A few years later, I set myself a goal of a 200kg hip thrust for 12 reps. Have you ever heard the saying that “the universe will keep giving you lessons until you learn them”? Well, I guess I hadn’t learned the first time.
That number came from someone else's personal best, someone who was considerably bigger than me. I'm under five feet tall — 200kg would have been four times my own bodyweight. But I'd decided it was my goal, and I was going for it.
I got very close - around 170 kilograms - then started getting back problems. And bruises (despite using a pad). And after a while I experienced some gynaecological symptoms my doctor attributed to me thrusting almost four times by bodyweight twice a week.
Could better programming have helped? Yes, probably. A bench at the right height, a proper mobility practice, exercises to balance the movement. But the real issue was that I was aiming for a goal that was someone else’s. It just sounded impressive. I thought about how much I could brag to people that as a 4”11 woman, I was lifting that heavy. It was pure ego lifting — I wanted big glutes, I wanted the clout of lifting heavy — that I completely ignored what my body was telling me.
I couldn't actually progress because I was in pain all the time. And a body that is constantly trying to recover won't act or look the way you want it to.
What I know now
Exercise shouldn't hurt like that. Pain is your body trying to tell you something is wrong, and it kept giving me that message until I finally had to stop.
These days I don't expect to progress every single week. I deload when my body tells me to, not just when the internet says I should. I still love making things harder over time — for myself and for my clients. But not at the expense of my health or my happiness.
If you're training right now and something hurts, ask yourself: is this productive discomfort, or is this actually pain? Whose goal are you chasing? And why?
Learning to listen to your body isn't a woo-woo gimmick. It's the thing that will actually get you the results you're after — because your body cannot perform the way you want it to when it's constantly in survival mode.
You'll get better results., you'll enjoy it more, and you'll learn so much about yourself in the process.
This is exactly the kind of work I do with my clients — building something ambitious and joyful that's actually built around you and your body. If any of this resonated, I'd love to hear from you.