If ever you’ve wondered exactly what upping the amount of weight training you do could do for your body, let Canadian YouTuber Makari Espe’s story give you an idea. Already accustomed to 20-minute strength sessions twice a week, she committed to five 30-minute workouts every week for four weeks. The aim? To become “harder, better, faster, and stronger.”
To put her results to the test, she recorded her strength before and after the challenge, from how long she could hold a plank to how many chin-ups and push-ups she could do. Along the way, she also documented the reality of training five days a week on her YouTube channel. By the end of those 28 days, she wasn’t just feeling stronger—she could perform more reps, hold exercises for longer, and lift heavier weights. Here’s what happened.
Her workout routine
“My current weightlifting routine is 20 minutes a day, two times per week, but I want to be harder, better, faster, and stronger. So, for the next month, I'm going to lift weights five times a week for 30 minutes.”
“Basically, the idea is to do two big muscle groups per workout so that each muscle group is rested by the time you work it out again and we're not all out here hating our lives. For example, it’s 7:00 in the morning and today we're going to be doing back and biceps. Tomorrow I'll be doing legs and shoulders, and then day three is a rest day.”
“I didn't come up with this routine by myself, by the way. I'm not a personal trainer and I'm very lazy when it comes to planning my own workouts. I wish this was a sponsor, but it's not. I'm just here to tell you that I'm getting all of my workouts from the Peloton app. Woo! This week I'll be doing the beginner 5-day program, and for the next 3 weeks I'll be doing these intermediate programs.”
6 things that happened to her body
She got measurably stronger
Espe performed a baseline strength test at the start of her 28-day challenge and the same test at the end of the 28 days. She recorded the following results:
Before:
1:30 plank / 1-minute wall sit / 2 chin-ups / 10 push-ups / 25 × 10-lb shoulder presses.
After four weeks:
2-minute plank / 2-minute wall sit / 4 chin-ups / 15 push-ups / 25 × 15-lb shoulder presses.
She struggled with soreness and fatigue
As Espe’s body got used to the change in training frequency, she noticed her soreness increased. That post-workout pain has a name: delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), the stiffness and tenderness that can kick in a day or two after a challenging or unfamiliar session as your muscles repair and adapt.
By week two, she said, “My triceps are killing me more so than any other muscle group this whole challenge so far, my body is sore in many places and I'm very tired.” She added that her hamstrings were “so sore” and her “legs hurt so bad.” By week three, she said, “The place where it hurts right now is my shoulder blades; it feels like somebody hit me with a hammer.”
But active recovery helped
The DOMS might have intensified, but she did work out an effective salve: active recovery. For Espe, that meant gentle cycling, swimming, and stretching, which helped increase blood flow to the sore areas and to ease the stiffness without adding to her training load.
She said: “It's 7:30 a.m. and I just went for a bike ride and now I'm going to go for a swim. I've been wanting to do that every day this week and I finally did it, and it was glorious. Best morning ever. And now I'm going to go stretch. The swim was amazing for many reasons, but the main one was it was so nice on my sore muscles.”
The biggest change wasn't how her body looked, but how strong she felt
She didn’t set out with aesthetic goals, and it was her performance that really improved. On week three, she said: “I've crossed the threshold and I’ve found the joy in weightlifting again. I'm doing it because I know I can and I'm super strong. I just feel really strong and that's awesome.” A week later, by week four, she added, “I actually feel even stronger than I did as a teenager.”
Paying attention to her nutrition boosted her energy
As her fatigue increased in those initial weeks, by week three, she decided to take stock of what she was putting into her body—and her energy soared: “I'm putting so much more good fuel into my body which is giving me more energy to perform in the gym,” she said.
She felt mentally stronger, too
As the challenge came to an end, she noticed that her mindset had improved as well as her physical strength. “This is going to sound really cheesy, but it's because not only do I feel physically stronger, but I feel stronger in my brain. Like, I feel like I'm more resilient for having been able to push through all of the self-doubt,” she said.
“I will say that roughly 3 and 1/2 hours every week is a lot of free time to be able to put towards working out, but ultimately it makes me feel so much better outside of the gym, and that's kind of why I do all this.”
“So if you decide to do a challenge like this, absolutely take pride in your physical accomplishments, but please be sure to notice the benefits outside of the gym too.”
As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director and a qualified Pilates and yoga instructor, Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism.
After earning a first-class degree in journalism and NCTJ accreditation, she secured her first role at Look Magazine, where she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!
Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red. Today, she oversees all fitness content across Women's Health online and in print, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, which showcases the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise.
She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how. Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.