I played sports throughout high school and the first few weeks of the new season were killer. After graduating and being relatively sedentary the next few years in uni and going through a tremendous weight gain I started back up again with exercise but I have not been able to get back that feeling.

I guess I should be thankful I'm not hobbling around, but that tender feeling the next morning is actually a motivator. Without it I don't feel that sense of accomplishment. My SO who's a gym feen tells me I need to work harder, but I feel like I got a good workout when I'm there, I just don't feel anything the next day. I've also heard that some people just don't get sore, but that doesn't make much sense to me, especially since I have in the past.

Any ideas/advice would be much appreciated!

Also for background I work out 6 days a week. M/W/F I do 60 mins of cardio (spinning or running) with hardcore intervals on Wednesdays. Tu/Th I do maybe 15 mins of jogging to get my heart rate up and then weight training for another hour. Saturday I do a little bit of everything, but at an easier pace. I use it more as a day to get IN the gym because more than a day off I tend to lose focus.

wow, first congrats on losing 60 pounds!

It can be difficult to judge how hard you are working, when you are exercising and sweating and breathing hard. Some advice someone gave me, when I complained that I wasn't sore anymore after my usual workouts, was to truly, push yourself, past your comfort point, where you feel like you would do anything to get out of finishing

Want to get sore? Try not warming up AT ALL and just go for the heavy duty weight lifting until failure... lol. No, I don't recommend that. But for most of my resistance workouts, I build up the weight gradually using the BFL method and I'm hardly ever sore if I have warmed up properly. But I am seeing results and having strength gains. So there is something to be said for that.

If you really want to push yourself, I would suggest trying to find something completely different. Take a class or something maybe? If your gym has free classes.

Thank you! The last few pounds have been especially important to me because they officially brought me out of the obese range

Well that makes perfect sense and describes me to the letter. Thinking back, I definitely work much harder when it's disguised as something else. I've just never been an "exercise person" but I love playing sports, etc. I'll have to be more conscience of this and stop slacking.

BFL?

I just joined a new gym that offers an insane amount of classes at all different levels. My old gym didn't offer much variety and catered mostly to newcomers so it just wasn't challenging. I will definitely be looking into taking classes here- thanks!

Are you stretching well and drinking water after your workout? Both will help in not being sore.

No problem.
BFL is Body for Life, sorry! It is a program that has been around a while, I am sure you could find one of Bill Phillips' books at a used or half priced book store if you were interested. You might also want to check out New Rules of Lifting for Women, I've heard good things about that if you don't mind being a little confused by the fancy workout schedules at first

Well, if you're not getting sore, you're body is pretty well conditioned to the kind of activity you're doing.

You can push harder, but that might be difficult to do.

To get sore again (if you really want that :-)), you'll need to do things differently, or just different things.

With your weight training, what sort of set/rep schemes are you using? And what exercises are you doing?

Let me know, I'm sure I can give you some tips... I'm sore all the time ;-)

Soreness is not an indication of progress. I have done years of powerlifting and have gone many months without soreness.

morninggloria - I had the same realization when I started working out. I was not sore and hurting all over. I was so used to hurting after a hard workout. I played basketball in middle school and high school. I was used to feeling extremely sore at the start of a new season.

I thought I wasn't working out hard enough since I wasn't feeling that same pain. I have made progress, though, so I guess it's not the pain that matters. I have noticed if I do too many ab exercises I have pain the next day. I guess my point for posting is that I felt the same as you, but I have seen some results without being in pain the way I used to be. I guess the pain isn't an indication of a successful workout.

I use to not get sore or achey at all no matter how many workouts a day I threw at myself . Now I am doing a combination of Insanity and weightliftingand it has changed my body and makes me NOTICE I am working out again all in good ways!