Is sweating an indication of a good workout?
Do you judge the success of your workout based on how much you sweat? And do you wonder if you worked hard enough because you’re not sweating as much as others? Olivia Park explores whether sweating really is an indication of a good workout.

In short, no.
Perhaps you wonder if you worked hard enough because you’re not sweating as much as the other women in the class or you didn’t sweat as much as your last workout?
Maybe you even feel cheated if you don’t finish your workout dripping – what a waste of time!
Have you seen the memes 'sweat is your fat crying'? Not only are these messages deeply rooted in fat phobia and diet culture, they’re just not true. But it’s confusing when you’re overloaded with these messages telling you that your sweat is a badge of honour.
How much you sweat is literally your ability to sweat. It has nothing to do with a workout being beneficial or not.
Sweat is to do with your genetics, your core temperature, how much hair you have on your body – there is not a single thing that correlates sweating with losing weight, getting fitter, getting stronger or changing your body.
Here are a few facts for you:
- To prevent your body from overheating, your body sends blood outward from your core to your skin in order to cool down. This leaves a layer of moisture on your skin to act as a cooling agent.
- You may find that you sweat more or less in different phases of your menstrual cycle. Your internal temperature is constantly fluctuating with the changes in estrogen and progesterone. In the high-hormone phase (the luteal – see this article for more information about training with your menstrual cycle), skin temperature and blood flow are lower making it harder to cool our internal environment. With menopause, cooling is more challenging but an increase in aerobic fitness can be helpful.
- If you’re dehydrated, you’ll most likely sweat less because you have less water in your body to act as a cooling agent.
- Your environmental factors can affect your skin temperature. When you have hot skin, there’s less cooling available to return to the body. This means the water in your body is lower and will impact your ability to sweat and offload heat. (This is not a good thing as you may fatigue quicker and not be able to perform as well in a workout.)
- Performance: increasing load, volume, capacity, progressing with an exercise
- Feeling more energised
- More mental clarity
- Less stress
- Feeling proud
- Being focussed
- Following through on something you said you were going to do
- Building resilience
- Joy
- Fulfillment
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