Whether it’s struggling to eat your five-a-day (let alone 30 plants a week), facing an endless battle to clock up an arbitrary 10,000 steps a day or failing to squeeze in two strength classes a week on top of all the pilates/running/resting we’re supposed to be doing, there’s a near-constant pressure to always be doing more.

Jennifer Muir, who, at the tender age of 23, was crowned The Fittest Woman In The UK, knows a thing or two about dealing with fitness pressure. “Instead of the title being this amazing achievement, it felt like there was all this pressure and I had to immediately throw myself back into training so I could retain the title,” she tells Strong Women.

Muir, who is also a WIT athlete, nabbed the title after competing at the 2023 European CrossFit semi-finals – placing highest among the UK female athletes. 

A former triathlete, Muir only started CrossFit training in 2020 and found herself thrust into the brutal world of competitive fitness with a bang. Safe to say, she’s learned a lot on her short journey to the top – so who better to ask for advice on fitness, staying mentally well and the misinformation we could all do with ignoring?

You might have mates who ‘never miss a Monday’ or follow influencers who train upwards of four times a week with strict programmes in place in order to get results. However, Muir says that this can often lead to an ‘all-or-nothing’ mindset which tends to end in failure. Forcing yourself to stick to an immovable routine inevitably results in being unable to meet the strict expectations you’ve set yourself, she says. “A 15 minute workout is much better than doing nothing.

“It’s absolutely not necessary to train for two or three hours a day if you’re not a professional,” Muir adds, explaining that you can probably get the benefits you’re looking for in a much shorter space of time than that, while also prioritising time for rest and recovery alongside your normal life.

CrossFit is a performance-focused sport and, as such, no one cares what you look like. That anti-aesthetic stance goes for top-level athletes like Muir right down to people who roll up to their local box once or twice a week. While you might always be working towards a certain performance goal in sport, others like swimming or marathon running do require certain physical attributes to go far. 

But because of the multi-disciplinary elements of CrossFit, there’s really no standard body type for competitive athletes. “When I got to the CrossFit semi-finals, I felt like I didn’t look anything like the other female athletes in the field,” Muir says. “But one of the things I love about CrossFit is there’s no assumptions around your physique and you don’t have to look a certain way to be good at something.”

“I’m probably one of the heavier athletes, and you wouldn’t think that I’d win the endurance event, but that was the one that I did win,” Muir continues.

“When people are trying to change their lifestyle, they’ll often embark on a new gym routine, change their nutrition and massively increase their step count all in one go,” Muir says. And with so much smart fitness technology, the list doesn’t end there. There’s sleep, gut health, hydration – an almost endless list of things to think about when it comes to improving your health and fitness.

Even as a professional athlete, Muir says the most effective approach for her has been to avoid overcomplicating her health. Instead, she’s busy taking an intuitive approach to what makes her feel good – focusing on the things she knows that works.

This is particularly important if you’re just starting out a the gym when you might be feeling overwhelmed by all of the advice available to you. Muir suggests starting with one thing and only adding in other elements once you’re feeling confident in the way you train. 

That might mean, for example, committing to a twice-weekly hypertrophy programme, where you’re doing upper body one day (working between eight and 12 reps) and lower body the next. Once you’re used to turning up and doing that, add on protein tracking or a weekly cardio shake-out. 

As a professional athlete, nutrition is massively important for Muir. She says her focus has always been on fuelling her sessions rather than trying to restrict her diet. “My focus has never, ever been on counting calories,” she says, explaining that she doesn’t track her meals. Instead, her focus is on making sure the food she eats gives her enough energy for the movement she’s doing that day.

“Don’t feel like you need to count your calories just because you’re going to the gym,” Muir adds. Instead, she recommends thinking about whether you’ve eaten enough to get an effective workout in. “If you rush into a workout under-fuelled, you’re not going to get away with that. You need to feel energetic for your workout.”

You might be worried that taking one or two weeks off is going to negatively impact your progress, particularly if your focus is strength training. But Muir says that after competing in the CrossFit semi-finals, she took two full weeks off training, and noticed that her performance had improved when she returned to the gym.

“It was the best thing I could have done mentally and physically – your body absolutely needs to rest,” she says. This includes regular rest days each week, as well as longer periods.

“I think it’s extremely important that you take complete rest days away from the gym. Don’t even go in to do some stretching. Go and enjoy some time with your friends, go for a walk or have a nap,” Muir recommends. “Then, when you go into the gym the next day, you’ll have a much better mindset and you’ll be ready to go back to training.”

Images: WIT