How I push through feeling terrible to hit badass weights anyway
These past couple days have been a major drag on my whole system.
I can tell my nervous system is playing up big-time. Time off the gym last week plus “holiday mode” got me out of the groove. Getting back on the wagon means putting this old body of mine through a novel stress, and adaptation is always uncomfortable. But you gotta do it.
(Unless you’re a lazy couch fungus who has accepted you’re never going to change your body for the better. But I’m talking to serious people, not the hopers-and-dreamers who want to wish instead of take action.)
The workouts are no harder.
It’s what happens after and between the sessions that’s giving me the vapors.
While your body plays catch-up, you can pay a real price in physiological and mental disturbance. The same systems in your body that make you feel terrible when you’re sick with a flu switch on when you beat yourself up with workouts and calorie restriction.
That may be one of the most important things I ever discovered about exercise, and about life in general.
Feeling crappy like that is what The Experts would call “bad recovery”. They’d tell you to dial back, take it easy, rest more.
Experience and experiment taught me how to deal with it more effectively by recognizing the feelings for the illusions they are and gritting my teeth until I feel better. The feelings of beat-up-ness are not what they appear to be. They’re part of a survival mechanism that wants me to conserve energy.
I don’t play that game, body. I know your lies.
I don’t call it bad recovery because there is nothing wrong with my recovery. What is happening is a process that takes a few not-so-nice days to work itself out while physiology adjusts back to the new reality.
My job is to suck it up and endure until I push through on the other side and things go back to normal-ish.
Tea made from freshly-chopped ginger and strategic ibuprofen don’t hurt to take the edge off, either.
The Experts insist on thinking in snapshots of Right Now. They have no idea that long-term patterns exist and are far more important than reacting to Right Now.
In the gym, it’s different. The workouts are just fine. Smashing, even. In fact I’m noticing that “Mario Star” effect even while feeling run down.
If you ever played the Super Mario Brothers game, Mario can get a glowing star power-up that makes him invincible for about 30 seconds. The music turns crazy and Mario can tank all the bad guys by running right through them.
That’s almost how it feels when you turn up ragged, get 4-5 sets in, and suddenly you’re invincible.
I figure there’s an explanation for this as your nervous system wakes up and realizes it’s got to get to work. Whatever the reason, catching that second wind is a real thing. One minute you feel drained and your legs ache. Five minutes later, you’re froggy and ready to crush the weight before you.
The human body is a funny thing that often behaves in counter-intuitive ways. But it works according to its own laws, and if you understand those laws, you can get that body of yours to do surprising, even crazy things.
We’ve got energy reserves available that few of us even realize are there, much less tap into.
Even with all my experimenting I’ve only barely begun to tap into the possibilities, which are frankly mind-blowing.
Now here’s a thought experiment. Try explaining this to a normie on their first week in the gym when they get hit by the freight train of muscle soreness.
It’s no wonder I’m routinely ignored by anyone and everyone except about 12 readers. Frankly I’m surprised they gave me a license to write on the internet, with such radical ideas as “you can work harder than you think, and you’ll be rewarded for it”.
If you’re one of the 12 people reading this and you’d like my help putting the above to use to get real results, you’ll need to subscribe to my daily email list. You can do that with this link:
Matt Perryman