The Best Workouts to Do on Semaglutide

Semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) is effective at reducing body weight. Clinical trial data from the STEP-1 study showed an average of 15.3kg lost over 68 weeks. But roughly 45% of that weight loss included lean mass, not just fat.

That number is why exercise matters so much on this medication. And it's why the type of exercise you choose matters more than it does in other contexts.

This post covers the specific workouts that best protect muscle, support your metabolism, and work around the fatigue and nausea that come with semaglutide treatment, particularly in the early months.

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What semaglutide does to your body during exercise

Semaglutide slows gastric emptying and suppresses appetite. Both of those effects change how your body responds to physical activity.

When you're eating significantly less, your body is running on reduced fuel. Combine that with the nausea and fatigue that are common in the first 4-8 weeks of treatment, and you've got a situation where high-intensity training becomes really hard. Not because you're unfit, but because you're under-fuelled by design.

There's also the muscle question. In the STEP-1 trial, participants who lost weight with semaglutide saw lean mass fall by an average of 6.92kg alongside fat loss. A 2025 case series published in SAGE Open Medical Case Reports found that lean soft tissue loss typically accounts for 26-40% of total weight lost during GLP-1 treatment, unless active steps are taken to prevent it.

Those active steps are: resistance training and adequate protein. Of the two, resistance training is the one most people miss.

A review by the European Association for the Study of Obesity's Physical Activity Working Group concluded that resistance training, specifically, attenuates lean body mass loss during weight loss, more effectively than aerobic exercise alone. Cardio matters. But if you only have capacity for one type of workout, strength work should take priority.

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Strength training: the workout that protects what matters most

Resistance training is the most important exercise you can do on semaglutide. That's not a fitness influencer opinion. It's what the research consistently shows.

The goal isn't to build a gym physique. It's to signal to your body that the muscle you have is worth keeping. When you're in a significant calorie deficit (which most people on semaglutide are, whether intentionally or not), your body will shed both fat and muscle unless you give it a reason not to. Loading your muscles is that reason.

You don't need to go heavy. The case series by Tinsley and Nadolsky (2025) found that patients who exercised 4-7 days per week including resistance training 3-5 days per week, at sessions as short as 15-45 minutes, had dramatically better lean mass outcomes than typical trial participants. Two of the three subjects actually gained lean mass while losing substantial body fat.

A practical starting point for beginners:

• 2-3 sessions per week, non-consecutive days (e.g. Monday, Wednesday, Friday)
• 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise
• Compound movements that work multiple muscle groups at once: squats, lunges, push-ups, rows, hip hinges

Compound movements are worth emphasising for beginners because they give you more return per minute of effort. A squat works your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and core simultaneously. A push-up covers chest, shoulders, and triceps. You don't need to cycle through twenty isolation exercises to get a complete session.

Bodyweight is enough to start. You can do a full and effective resistance session with nothing but floor space. Squats, lunges, push-ups, glute bridges, and Superman holds cover every major muscle group. Once those feel manageable, resistance bands add load without requiring a gym.

Timing matters. Sports medicine physician Dr. Peter Wenger notes that high-intensity sessions immediately after taking your medication are best avoided if you're prone to GI symptoms. Most people find that exercising when nausea is lowest, often mid-morning or early afternoon, makes sessions more manageable.

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Walking: the foundation that most people underestimate

Walking doesn't sound impressive. But for people on semaglutide, it's one of the most useful forms of exercise, especially in the early weeks.

It's low-impact, doesn't worsen nausea, can be done at whatever pace you can manage, and is easy to fit into a day without disrupting anything else. For the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity that health guidelines recommend per week, daily walking of 20-30 minutes is all it takes.

Walking also contributes to cardiovascular fitness, supports blood sugar management, and maintains joint mobility. A 2021 trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Lundgren et al.) found that combining exercise with GLP-1 treatment led to better long-term weight maintenance than either approach alone. The exercise in that study wasn't marathon training. It was consistent moderate movement.

For beginners, walking is a great entry point into the habit of moving daily. It removes the barrier of equipment, scheduling, and recovery. Once the habit is established, you can build intensity from there.

If you want to know how many calories your walks are burning, or how to set a realistic step target, the walking calculator and steps goal calculator will give you personalised numbers based on your weight and pace.

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Low-impact options for the rough days

Semaglutide treatment isn't consistent week to week. Dose increases typically land every 4 weeks, and each step up often brings a fresh round of nausea or fatigue for several days. Planning for those weeks, rather than writing off exercise entirely, makes a real difference to consistency over time.

Swimming is one of the best options when energy is low. The water supports your body weight, which reduces joint stress. You're moving major muscle groups, including your back, shoulders, arms, and legs, without the impact of running or even walking on hard surfaces. Even a slow, steady swim for 20-30 minutes counts as meaningful aerobic activity.

Yoga is worth taking seriously rather than treating as a rest day compromise. Restorative and gentle yoga actively supports the flexibility and balance that make strength training safer. Balance, in particular, becomes more important as you lose weight quickly, because your centre of gravity shifts. A yoga session also addresses posture and core stability, which protects you during any kind of loaded exercise.

Cycling (indoor or outdoor) is another strong low-impact option. Stationary cycling especially removes the coordination and balance demands of other activities, which makes it suitable on days when you're dealing with fatigue or mild dizziness. It's also one of the few aerobic exercises that provides decent resistance to the lower body, so it partially bridges the gap between pure cardio and strength work.

On days when nausea is bad, short walks are still better than nothing. Three 10-minute walks spread across a day produce the same cardiovascular benefit as one 30-minute session. The research from Mass General Brigham supports breaking exercise into shorter intervals, specifically for people dealing with the side effects of GLP-1 treatment.

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A simple weekly structure for beginners

Here's a starting-point template. It covers the key types, meets the 150-minute aerobic guideline, and keeps total training time manageable, around 3-4 hours across the week.

Day	Session	Duration
Monday	Strength training (bodyweight)	25-30 min
Tuesday	Walk	25-30 min
Wednesday	Strength training (bodyweight)	25-30 min
Thursday	Walk or rest	20-25 min
Friday	Strength training (bodyweight)	25-30 min
Saturday	Swim, cycle, or yoga	30-40 min
Sunday	Rest or short walk	Optional

This isn't rigid. The point is to move most days, prioritise strength work three times per week, and not let a single bad day derail the week. If Tuesday's walk doesn't happen, it doesn't change Wednesday.

In the first 4-6 weeks, especially if you're new to structured exercise, err on the side of shorter sessions and lower intensity. The research consistently shows that consistency over weeks beats intensity in single sessions. A 20-minute strength session you do three times a week is doing far more work than a 60-minute one you manage twice and then drop.

Once the early side effects settle, you can progress. Add reps, move to resistance bands, extend walk distances, or try a new activity. The structure above is a floor, not a ceiling.

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How Motion helps you stay consistent

The hardest part of exercising on semaglutide isn't finding the right workout. It's showing up consistently across weeks where your energy, appetite, and side effects are constantly shifting.

Motion's adaptive goals adjust to your actual activity level rather than holding you to a fixed target. If a dose increase knocks you sideways for a few days and your activity drops, your goals recalibrate accordingly. You're not penalised for a rough week, and you don't come back to an impossible target after it.

The effort-based system means that even a short walk on a bad day counts as genuine progress toward your personal goal. There's no leaderboard where you're at the bottom because someone else did twice as many steps. You're only measured against yourself.

And because motivation fluctuates even when energy does, Motion's social layer, Activity Battles and Fit Bingo challenges, keeps things interesting without requiring you to be at your best every single week. The virtual Motmot companions also respond to your activity in a way that makes even a modest session feel worthwhile.

For people rebuilding a fitness habit alongside a significant medical treatment, that kind of low-pressure, adaptable structure tends to be more useful than a rigid program.

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Starting small is not starting wrong

Nobody expects people on semaglutide to walk into a gym and train like athletes. The research doesn't ask that of you either.

Two to three strength sessions per week. Daily walks. A swim or a yoga class when the harder days arrive. That's a complete programme, and it's enough to noticeably change how much muscle you preserve, how your metabolism holds up, and how the results feel when the treatment is over.

The early weeks are the hardest. Side effects are real, energy is limited, and the gap between knowing you should exercise and actually doing it can feel enormous. But those are also the weeks when building the habit matters most.

Start with whatever you can manage. Build from there.

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