I Don’t Feel Like Training Today!

There are times when we all feel like not training; after all we are only human. It is best to have a regular training routine and to stick to it. Rather than breaking your routine you might like to try just doing a very light workout. So if your regular routine is to go the gym and lift weights, still go to the gym but may be do lighter weights or more aerobic type exercise, but try to kept your regular routine going. You want to try to build a habit of exercising.

One mistake people can make is to try to do too much. If you are training very hard over a period of two to three months you body will peak. Building muscle is all about stretching, straining and micro-tearing your muscles. However your muscles can only do so much work before they need a rest. Try scheduling a rest week very couple of months. After your week’s rest don’t go straight back to your previous level of exertion. Cut it back a bit maybe to about 70% of your previous exertion level and start building up again over a number of weeks. As an example if you are doing 30 push ups, have a week’s rest, then start back at maybe 20 push ups, after a week build it up to say 25 push ups, etc. Not only will you avoid burn out you will see you performance improve.

Training is not only about building our muscles and lung capacity, it is also about training our mind. We need to set goals, and sometimes this means setting ambitious goals that we will fail to meet. If we were to meet every goal we every set there would be an argument that the goals are not ambitious enough. On the other hand we need to know when to give up, “it was a big ask and I gave it my best”. The important thing is to keep a realistic perspective on what is happening. Do you not feel like training because you are little more tired today than usual or is your training routine not really of interest to you anymore. If you have set an ambitious goal sometimes you might need to back away and then have another run at it.

The term a psychologist might use is a “Narrative”. Narrative theory is probably one of the most exciting new perspectives in psychology. This perspective on behaviour is not so much about our experiences but how we interpret them. So the above example of not wanting to train on a particular day could be interpreted in a number of ways. So again how does this influence our health, wellbeing and fitness? The way we interpret things is very likely to influence the way we behave in the future. So although we need to keep a realistic view of things, we should be concentrating on achievements and things that we enjoy. I am not saying that we should live in a world where everything is sweetness and light, bad happens we should. However we are more likely to be successful when we set goals and see those goals as part of a bigger picture.