Sweat Is Not Related To Fitness Results
Takeaway Points:
In most situations, sweat isn’t well correlated with the quality of your workouts or the results you’re getting.
In fact, in many cases, chasing excessive sweating could result in decreased results, if you were trying to optimize for sweat alone.
I feel like this one should not have to be addressed, but here goes: is how much you sweat related to your results in the gym?
The short answer is no, and the long answer is “maybe”.
In general, when it comes to results, results are driven by a combination of training volume and training intensity over time. The more work you can accomplish in terms of pounds lifted, distance traveled, etc. is what determines the kind of adaptations you’re going to get, and your results of course are up- and down-regulated by factors like your genetics, natty status, diet, recovery/rest, stress management, workout structure, and so on.
But so long as you’re doing more work over time, this generally means that you’re provoking a greater and greater stimulus over time, and this is resulting in more and more adaptation, often albeit very slowly.
So what does sweat have to do with things?
One conception is that sweating is a good sign of how hard you’re working. We generally know that workouts have to be (reasonably) hard in order to drive adaptation - maximum challenge is obviously potentially detrimental as it can be both psychologically and physically difficult to recover from, but anything that isn’t challenging enough, won’t drive further adaptation.
But sweat really isn’t correlated with intensity of effort at all, because different activities tax the body in different ways.
Sweating is a mechanism your body uses for dispersing excess heat. When you become overheated, you sweat to reduce your core body temperature and avoid the risk of heat-related conditions.
One of the main reasons you sweat from activity, is that when you burn a lot of energy, a lot of excess heat is produced, and all that heat needs to go somewhere.
Different activities stress different systems in the body.
A maximum intensity stretch, for example, can be very painful, but does not involve a lot of movement, so it does not actually burn a lot of calories. Accordingly, it doesn’t generate a lot of heat, and you don’t sweat much.
When you lift weights, you rely primarily on fast-acting anaerobic energy production systems which are good at rapidly generating a lot of energy without much oxygen, but more inefficient in the long run. This means that you can certainly huff and puff and use up a lot of energy quickly, but you’ll likely be tired out (and need to stop) before you really push it for long enough that you start to build up excess heat and need to sweat.
The only activity where you CAN sweat a lot - is cardio. This is because when you’re doing low intensity activities like cardio or high repetition lifting with light weights, you’re relying primarily on slower-burning energy systems, and you’re keeping them running nonstop. The stress of these activities is more about taxing your energy generation systems (and by extension, your body’s ability to intake oxygen to fuel this energy generation) than it is about the muscles themselves. As a result, heat will eventually begin to accumulate and you will start to sweat.
So, you can see why, if you’re specifically talking about cardio, you might think that sweat is a good correlation for how much effort you’re expending.
BUT! At the same time - here are some reasons that even then, sweating is not necessarily correlated, because there are other ways to mess with this relationship.
When you train cardiovascular activities, a big part of the reason that you do this, is that you want to get better at them. When you get better at them, this means that you become more efficient at managing and distributing energy throughout the body. This means that the more you run, for example, the easier it is to run a certain distance, or a certain duration, or at a certain pace, without getting as winded and sweaty.
So, the more you train, the less sweaty you get. Certainly, you might push yourself harder to offset this - running longer or faster - but any particular intensity will get easier. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a “bad workout” just because you had a slightly easier time doing it than you performed previously.
Another major one is simply ambient temperature. It’s no surprise to say that obviously, the hotter your environment is, the more you’ll sweat.
I’ve performed many even very basic lifting workouts where I sweat profusely due to the heat in the summer, or gone for a short run in the summer only to get drenched in sweat. Worse, the heat taxes your body in different ways, resulting in a decrease in your ability to perform well in your workout, and potentially impacting long term results. Back when I primarily was a runner, I often needed to go for runs indoors or at night in the summer, simply to be able to get in a good workout.
Now I should also note that, depending on your training goals, you may NEED to workout outside. Competition that requires you to compete outside (for example, distance running) will also require you to become acclimatized to the kind of climate and conditions you’re going to perform in, or you’ll see your performance suffer when you attempt to actually compete. So, for some, training outside in the summer may be a necessary evil, even if it inhibits your performance a bit compared to more ideal training conditions.
But obviously, sweating from external heat alone is not going to magically train your body to be better at running or lifting, or any other physical activity - it just helps you (slowly, over time) to get acclimatized to external heat, which is entirely separate.
Another point that often gets brought up, is the idea that sweating is correlated to weight loss. The reason for this is pretty easy to understand - when you sweat a lot, you’re losing a lot of water weight. I personally remember workouts where I would do a lot of intense cardio for a couple hours, and I would often lose 5-10lbs in water weight in that one training session, weighing myself before and after on the gym scale.
But this has nothing to do with true weight loss, because true weight loss occurs as a result of changes in tissue due to energy balance, not due to fluctuations in water weight which are generally temporary. Specifically, your body simply starts doing what it can to retain water after a while, and then the instant you go drink some water after your workout, your body uses this to replenish your water stores, and you rapidly regain that weight, for no net change.
Still, the idea that sweat means that you are “burning a lot of calories” or “sweating out toxins” or whatever tends to lead people to believe that sweat alone is correlated with weight loss. It can be, if you’re doing a lot of cardio and managing your calories in conjunction, but this won’t always be the case.
This is why we see concepts like “hot yoga” - performing yoga in a hot room specifically to make you sweat a lot, on the premise that this maybe has some other health benefits, or helps you burn more calories. Likewise, sauna is an enjoyable activity for many, but sweating it out in a hot room doesn’t really do much for your health or fitness on its own.
In some situations, mainly cardio in a reasonably cool environment, sweat can be a reasonable indicator of how hard you’re working, and thus how good your workout is. But in most other situations (hotter or colder temperatures, lifting weights, stretching, exercise for purposes of weight loss, etc.), it will not mean much.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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