5 Mistakes Women Make When Trying to Get Strong (and What to Do Instead)
You Are Putting in the Work. So Why Does Strong Still Feel Out of Reach?
Getting stronger is one of the most common goals women bring to their fitness routines. Not necessarily bigger, not necessarily leaner, but genuinely, noticeably stronger. The kind of strong that shows up in how you move, how you feel, and how your body handles the demands of daily life.
And yet for so many women, it stays just out of reach. They work consistently. They try hard. But the strength they are after does not quite materialise. Or it starts to, then stalls. Or they burn out before it has a chance to build.
The reason is almost never effort. The reason is almost always approach. Specifically, one of five very common mistakes that are easy to make, rarely talked about honestly, and entirely fixable once you know what to look for.
Here is what they are, why they happen, and exactly how Soul Sync Body is built to solve each one.
Mistake 1
Choosing Pilates or Weights Instead of Combining Both
This might be the most universal mistake in women's fitness. Somewhere along the way, women were divided into two camps: those who do Pilates for the long, lean look, and those who lift weights for strength and muscle. The assumption is that you pick one and commit.
The problem is that neither approach is complete on its own.
Pilates builds exceptional core strength, deep stabiliser function, postural alignment, and the kind of controlled muscle activation that makes every other form of training more effective and safer. What it has less of, particularly in mat-based practice, is the progressive external load that drives significant muscle hypertrophy and metabolic strength gains.
Strength training builds muscle mass, increases bone density, drives metabolic change, and creates the kind of physical power that Pilates alone cannot fully replicate. What it often lacks is the stability, mobility, and movement quality that Pilates develops. Without that foundation, strength training carries a higher injury risk and tends to create imbalances over time.
Together, they are one of the most complete combinations available for women who want to get genuinely strong in a way that is also sustainable, functional, and injury-resistant.
Read Pilates vs Strength Training: Which Is Better for Your Goals? for the full breakdown of how these two methods complement each other.
How Soul Sync Body Solves This
The Soul Sync Body app is built on the premise that these two approaches belong together. Programmes like the 30-Day Signature Programme, the 30-Day Power Pilates Programme, and Strength & Shred all integrate Pilates and strength training into a single, progressive structure. You do not have to choose. You get both, designed to work together by people who understand how each method supports the other. Browse what is available on our Movement page or try a free workout to experience the combined approach today.
Mistake 2
Eating Less to Shrink Instead of Fuelling to Build
This one is deeply embedded in the way women have been taught to think about food and fitness. The dominant message for decades has been: eat less, move more, get smaller. It is so pervasive that many women apply it even when their goal is strength rather than weight loss, without realising the two approaches are in direct conflict.
Building muscle requires a caloric environment that supports it. It requires adequate protein to provide the amino acids muscles need to repair and grow. It requires enough carbohydrate to fuel the sessions that create the stimulus for that growth. And it requires enough overall energy that the body is not in a conservation state where muscle building is deprioritised in favour of basic function.
A woman who is training hard and eating too little will feel constantly tired, struggle to recover between sessions, plateau early, and often lose the muscle tone she was working to build as the body breaks down muscle tissue for energy. She will feel like the programme is failing her. In reality, her nutrition is working against her training.
This does not mean eating without thought or ignoring body composition goals. It means understanding that fuelling for strength looks genuinely different from fuelling for weight loss, and that the two require different nutritional strategies.
Read The Best Pre- and Post-Pilates Nutrition: What to Eat for Energy, Performance and Recovery for a practical guide to eating in a way that actually supports the strength you are working for.
How Soul Sync Body Solves This
The nutrition inside Soul Sync Body is designed by a registered dietitian who understands that nourishment for active women is not about restriction. The 30 Day High Protein Meal Plan is specifically built to support strength training and Pilates with adequate protein and real food that fuels performance rather than fighting it. It is not a diet plan. It is a fuelling plan. Visit our Nourishment page to understand the full approach, and try a free recipe to get a taste of what eating to build actually looks and feels like.
Mistake 3
Going All-Out, Then Burning Out
It looks like this: you decide you are going to get strong. You start training five or six days a week, pushing hard every session, committing fully. It feels great for two, maybe three weeks. Then the fatigue hits. The sessions get harder to complete. Motivation drops. Something else in life demands your attention. The routine collapses. And six weeks later you are starting over from scratch, usually with the added weight of having failed again.
This cycle is extremely common and has very little to do with commitment or character. It is the predictable result of a biological system being asked to do more than it can adapt to in the time given.
Strength is not built during training. It is built during recovery. The session creates the stimulus. Sleep, nutrition, and rest days are where the muscle actually develops. A programme that does not build in adequate recovery is not a harder programme. It is a less effective one.
Sustainable strength building looks like three to four well-designed sessions per week, with rest and recovery built in as part of the plan rather than treated as a sign of weakness. It looks like progressive overload, meaning sessions that get slightly harder week by week rather than all-out from day one. And it looks like a relationship with training that can survive a busy week, a bad night's sleep, or a stressful month.
For guidance on building a sustainable training frequency, read How Often Should You Do Pilates for Real Results? And for a realistic picture of how strength builds over time with a consistent approach, read Pilates Results Timeline: What to Expect Week by Week.
How Soul Sync Body Solves This
Every programme inside the Soul Sync Body app is built with progressive structure and recovery factored in from the start. Sessions increase in intensity gradually. Rest and mobility work are incorporated as essential components rather than optional extras. The Cozy Pilates Series and dedicated recovery classes inside the app exist precisely because rest is part of the process of getting strong, not a break from it. The app is designed to build you up, not burn you out.
Mistake 4
White-Knuckling Motivation Instead of Building Structure
Motivation is a feeling. Like all feelings, it comes and goes. Relying on it as the primary driver of a strength training habit is one of the most common reasons women make excellent progress for a few weeks and then watch it unravel when life gets complicated.
The women who build real, lasting strength are not more motivated than everyone else. They have better systems. They have a programme that tells them exactly what to do next so there is no decision fatigue. They have a time in the day where training is the default rather than an active choice. They have a community or accountability structure that carries them through the sessions they would otherwise skip. And they have a realistic relationship with what consistency actually looks like, which is showing up imperfectly more often than showing up perfectly sometimes.
Structure is not the enemy of freedom. For most people it is the thing that creates it. When the decision of whether to work out has already been made, the energy that would have gone into negotiating with yourself goes into the session instead.
Read How to Stay Consistent With Pilates When Life Gets Busy: Real Strategies That Actually Work for a practical, honest guide to building the kind of structure that holds up in real life rather than ideal conditions.
How Soul Sync Body Solves This
Structured programmes inside the Soul Sync Body app remove the biggest consistency obstacle most women face: deciding what to do next. When you are following the 28 Day Beginner Pilates Challenge or the 4 Week Power Pilates Challenge, the decision is already made. You open the app and do the next session. The community inside the app adds the layer of accountability that makes showing up feel supported rather than solitary. Visit our Connection page to see how that community works, and our Movement page to find a programme that gives your training the structure it needs.
Mistake 5
Trusting Random Internet Advice Over a Certified Team
The internet is not short of fitness advice. It is short of fitness advice that is accurate, contextually appropriate, and coming from someone who actually knows what they are talking about for your specific situation.
For every well-designed programme backed by qualified expertise, there are dozens of viral workout trends, influencer routines, and conflicting claims about what women should and should not do to get strong. Some of it is harmless. Some of it actively gets in the way. And without the background to evaluate it, it is genuinely difficult to know which is which.
The cost of following the wrong advice is not always injury, though that happens. More often it is subtler: wasted months on an approach that was never going to deliver what you needed. Nutrition guidance that undermined your training without you realising it. A programme that was not designed for your body, your goals, or your starting point. Progress that never quite materialises despite genuine effort.
Getting strong deserves better than a guess sourced from a social media algorithm.
How Soul Sync Body Solves This
Soul Sync Body was founded by Sanne Vloet, and the expertise behind the app is not decorative. It is the foundation of everything inside it.
Who Is Behind Soul Sync Body
Sanne Vloet is a Victoria's Secret model who has spent her career in one of the most physically demanding industries in the world. The requirements of that career are not what most people imagine. It is not about extreme restriction or punishing training. It is about building a body that is genuinely strong, resilient, and healthy enough to perform at a high level consistently, under significant physical and mental pressure, across years.
To do that well, Sanne spent years understanding how the body actually works. She became a certified mat pilates instructor, ISSA-certified fitness trainer, and health coach. She learned, hands on and through rigorous study, what it takes to build strength sustainably as a woman in a world that often gives women confusing and contradictory advice about what their bodies should look like and how they should train.
Soul Sync Body was built from that knowledge. Not from a trend. Not from a business opportunity spotted in a market gap. From a genuine, personal understanding of what women need to feel strong, healthy, and capable in their bodies over the long term.
The nutrition inside the app is created by a registered dietitian. The programmes are built with certified expertise underpinning every session. The mindfulness content is developed with an understanding of how the nervous system, hormones, and recovery interact with training. Every element of the Soul Sync Body experience is the opposite of random internet advice. It is carefully designed, professionally grounded, and built by people who take the responsibility of guiding women's health seriously.
When you follow a Soul Sync Body programme, you are not following a viral routine put together for content. You are following a considered, expertly structured plan from a team that genuinely knows what getting strong looks like for women and cares deeply about delivering it.
Explore our Movement page to see the programmes built on that expertise, and try a free workout to experience the difference that qualified guidance makes from the very first session.
What Getting Strong Actually Looks Like When You Get It Right
When all five of these mistakes are addressed, the experience of getting strong changes completely. It stops being a cycle of effort and frustration and starts being a process of visible, cumulative, genuinely satisfying progress.
It looks like combining Pilates and strength training in a structure that uses each method to make the other more effective. Eating in a way that supports the work rather than working against it. Training with enough intensity to create adaptation but enough recovery to let it happen. Following a structure that carries you through the days when motivation is absent. And doing all of it guided by people who actually know what they are doing.
That is not an idealised version of fitness. It is what consistent, well-designed training feels like in practice. And it is available to any woman who is willing to stop fighting her body and start working with it.
What's Inside the Soul Sync Body App
Every part of the Soul Sync Body app is built to address exactly the mistakes covered in this blog. The movement, the nourishment, the mindfulness, and the community all exist because getting strong as a woman requires more than a workout plan.
Movement
300+ Pilates and strength workouts in progressive programmes designed by certified professionals and built to deliver real, sustainable strength.
✔︎ Integrated Pilates and strength programmes for complete results
✔︎ Progressive challenge built week by week, not all at once
✔︎ Beginner through to advanced so the app grows with your strength
Nourishment
Registered dietitian-designed meal plans that fuel strength rather than fighting it, including a dedicated high-protein plan for women who are training to build. Try a free recipe to see what eating to build actually looks like.
✔︎ High-protein plans designed to support muscle development
✔︎ Whole-food recipes for sustained energy and real recovery
✔︎ Nutrition guidance from a registered dietitian, not the internet
Connection
A community of women building strength together, with the accountability and support that makes structure feel possible rather than restrictive. Visit our Connection page to see what our community is like.
✔︎ Peer support that replaces white-knuckling motivation alone
✔︎ Virtual and in-person events to connect beyond the workout
✔︎ Shared accountability from women who understand the journey
Mindfulness
Recovery, stress management, and nervous system support because getting strong is not only about how hard you train. It is also about how well you rest. Try a free meditation and feel the difference that intentional recovery makes.
✔︎ Guided meditation and breathwork for stress and cortisol management
✔︎ Recovery and wind-down sessions built into the programme structure
✔︎ Wellness series for the mind-body understanding that underpins real strength
FAQ: Getting Strong as a Woman
Should women do Pilates or strength training to get strong?
Both, ideally. Pilates builds the core strength, stability, and movement quality that makes strength training safer and more effective. Strength training builds the muscle mass and metabolic capacity that Pilates alone cannot fully deliver. Combined, they are one of the most complete approaches to getting strong available to women. Read Pilates vs Strength Training: Which Is Better for Your Goals? for the full breakdown.
How much protein do women need when strength training?
General guidance for women who are training to build strength suggests aiming for around 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, spread across meals. This is significantly more than most women who are not actively strength training need, and considerably more than many women currently eat. A registered dietitian can give you personalised guidance based on your specific goals and circumstances.
Why am I not getting stronger even though I am working out?
The most common reasons are insufficient recovery between sessions, inadequate protein or overall nutrition to support muscle repair and growth, a lack of progressive overload in the training itself, and inconsistency that prevents the cumulative adaptation needed for strength gains. Addressing all four simultaneously, rather than just one, tends to produce the fastest change.
How long does it take to get noticeably stronger?
Most women begin to feel meaningfully stronger within four to six weeks of consistent, well-structured training. Visible changes in muscle definition and physical capacity typically become noticeable between six and twelve weeks. For a full guide to the results timeline, read Pilates Results Timeline: What to Expect Week by Week.
Is Soul Sync Body designed for beginners or advanced women?
Both. The programme library inside the app spans beginner through to advanced, with structured challenges designed for women who are just starting their strength journey and progressive programmes for those who are ready to push further. The app is designed to grow with you rather than outgrow you.
Who created the programmes inside Soul Sync Body?
Soul Sync Body was founded by Sanne Vloet, a certified mat pilates instructor, ISSA-certified fitness trainer, and health coach. The nutrition content is developed by a registered dietitian. Every programme inside the app is built on qualified, professional expertise rather than trends or general fitness content.
Final Thoughts: Strong Is Built, Not Stumbled Into
Getting strong as a woman is genuinely achievable. Not as a distant goal that requires perfect conditions, extreme discipline, or giving up everything you enjoy. As a real, practical outcome of training that is well-designed, nutrition that actually supports the work, recovery that is treated as essential rather than optional, structure that removes reliance on motivation, and guidance from people who know what they are doing.
Every one of those things is available inside Soul Sync Body. And every one of the five mistakes in this blog is something the app is specifically built to prevent.
The best time to start is today, with a single session that costs you nothing and shows you exactly what is possible: