Yesterday I felt myself coming down with this season’s head-cold. Sure enough when I woke up this morning I felt that “dead battery” feeling. I knew this morning’s workout, which is meant to be my heavy squat and bench session, was going to be lackluster at best.
I didn’t even need a Big Tech spyware device to analyze my sleep and heart rate to tell me how I felt, can you believe it?
Sometimes the dead battery is an illusion and a few sets under the bar will juice up your nervous system.
I felt in such a way today that I didn’t even believe that would happen.
The truth shows itself by how the weight feels on your back and in your hands. Today there was no mojo to muster up. Even the warmups felt way too heavy. I did the bare minimum to check off the session and called time.
There’s no harm in throwing in a flag when you’re having a bad day. If you’re ill or coming down with something, that goes triple.
Folks get too neurotic about programs, and forget that your body is a forgiving organism that is used to chaos.
I’m a bit more pig-headed than most due to decades of body dysmorphia driving me to do things, but even I’ve learned to show myself grace when down-time is the smart move.
But there’s another angle to this with the poor souls who are always playing “one day” with workouts.
One day I’ll start. One day I’ll get back to the gym. One day I need to get back to lifting.
One day you’re going to run out of one-days.
Some of that is laziness and lack of interest. I know that too well from conversations over the years. Sad as it is, many people are invested in their misery and resist even the smallest positive move.
Some of it is a misunderstanding about just how much it takes to see a positive impact on your life and your health.
I’d rather see a client hit one solid 30-minute session with weights each week than avoid resistance training entirely because they believe they need a 5-day routine cribbed from an IFBB pro bodybuilder.
Exercise creates results with an “inverted U” curve like this:
∩
The more you do, as far as sets, reps, sessions, and so forth, the more results you can get… up to a point.
Right up there at the top is a plateau. Keeping adding more work past that and you slide down the other side into negative gains, where adding more moves you backwards.
Here’s the point:
While more can be better than a little…
… some is always better than none.
That’s why I don’t mind losing a workout here and there. It’s better to sacrifice today and be able to come back tomorrow. If I’d tried to plow through an unhappy body and blown out a muscle, that would cost me weeks or longer.
That goes for anyone who is putting off getting started, or staying the course, because of false impressions about how your training has to go.
It ain’t got to the that complicated.
Put your muscles under tension, support them with protein and a quality diet and rest in your mind and body.
Repeat.
That’s the whole formula.
Easy to say, not always easy to do. The real limitations aren’t about knowing the secret program or diet. It’s all the junk in your head that deceives you.
If you’ve got any questions about that, fire them my way and let’s see what we can do for you.
Matt Perryman