Once you get into the groove of working out, it’s way too easy to get comfortable. The more comfortable you are with your workout, the less improvement you’re going to see in your body. You constantly need to challenge your body, and you simply can’t do that by going to the gym every day.

So, if you’ve hit a plateau in your workout routine and find that your body’s become stale and stagnant lately, then it’s a sign you need to switch things up. You’ll know you’re at a plateau if you don’t hit all of the criteria listed below anymore. An excellent workout should be all of these!

1. You’re Sleeping Better at Night

Have you ever come home from a particularly long day just ready to pass out for the next few hours? Isn’t the sleep you get so deep and oh, so satisfying? Well, you can recreate that by having an intense, excellent workout that really puts your body through the grinder!

Exercise is known to make sleeping patterns better. It controls your hormones, which affects your quality of sleep. Exercise also tires your muscles out, which makes your body sleep a little bit deeper to recharge. In fact, many people who exercise say that exercise helped improve their sleeping habits by a mile.

You can sleep better at night knowing that you did a lot of health and wealth for your body. Wake up tomorrow ready for a new day of being the healthiest person you can be!

2. Your Muscles are Sore

Working out causes microtears in your muscles. You need microtears because then your body will repair those microtears to be stronger than ever. When you get microtears, the muscles become inflamed, which causes the soreness you feel after a good workout.

So, if you’re feeling like your muscles are now angry at you for putting them through so much work, congratulations! You just put them through an intense, excellent workout that’ll make them so much stronger. Now, you just got to make sure you’re eating lots of protein to help your body repair those muscles.

But remember, too much soreness is also bad. It’s a sign that maybe you’re pushing your body past its capabilities. If everything hurts too much, consider starting slower until your body adapts. A good workout is built, not suddenly thrust upon.

3. Your Muscles Look Bigger

When you work out hard (especially if you’re weight training), blood swiftly moves to the muscles you’re working out. This causes them to swell up and become bigger. So, if you look in the mirror right after you’re done with your reps and you see bigger and thicker muscles, then you just did an awesome job working those muscles!

4. You Feel Hungry Afterward

When you’re working out, your body uses up a lot of its glycogen stores to fuel it, and this glycogen mostly comes from carbohydrates and fats. To replenish your glycogen stores and help repair muscles in the body, your body needs to replace them with more carbohydrates and protein. This is why you should always eat after an intense workout.

If you don’t eat immediately after a workout, you feel very fatigued. You’ll suffer from low blood sugar and your head will feel like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Your body will also lack the energy to repair microtears in your muscles. So, we highly encourage eating something with healthy carbohydrates and protein afterward.

5. You Feel More Energetic

It might seem ironic, but you do feel more energized after an excellent workout. You feel immensely happy and proud that you just finished the whole thing, and you might even feel motivated to do it all over again! That’s why some people prefer working out in the mornings even with a whole day of work ahead of them—exercising leaves them energized and ready to take on everything that comes.

That doesn’t mean you should only work out in the mornings. You should work out whenever it’s convenient for you. If your only available time slot is after work, then that’s okay too. From my experience working out at night, the energy I get moves over to the next day when I wake up refreshed and ready for the new day.

6. Your Muscles are Tired and Fatigued

Exercise isn’t meant to be easy. Well, it could, but that’s more for maintenance than anything else. If you want to build muscles or lose fat, however, you need to be uncomfortable with your exercise. You need to feel as if your muscles are straining to finish your entire exercise routine because that’s when your body needs to adapt to the stress.

This is why many trainers suggest switching up your routines once in a while. Your body naturally adapts to things within a few weeks. The YouTube video you’re following is going to stop being effective within one or two months, and eventually, the 1-hour cardio you’re doing is going to have to become 1.5 or 2 hours to be as effective again.

Mix things up by doing cardio sometimes, and weight training other times. Don’t get comfortable doing the same things over and over—always refresh!