I thought this topic was very fitting to blog about since I legitimately just experienced this yesterday! For me, I hate bad workouts (I mean who doesn't though, right?) not because of feeling like I failed or didn't do spectacularly, but because one of my biggest pet peeves is feeling as though my time has been wasted. I'm the type of person that always needs to feel as though I'm being productive, getting things done, and always getting one step closer to my goals. True story: I live by my checklist.
So, when I have a bad workout it just feels like a waste of time, and that really gets under my skin. Take yesterday for example. It was supposed to be leg day number 2 so hams and glutes. I was really pumped to get to the gym because leg day forever has my heart, and the fact that I get to work legs twice a week just makes me happy haha! So that was the first problem because one of my favorite lifts to do didn't go nearly as well as planned.
I have no clue what it was but everything just felt like dead weight in my hands. It started out okay with some warm-up sets and I was able to do some isolated work on the leg press. Then, I got to deadlifts and it just nose-dived from there. For those of you who don't know, I deadlift twice per week-- once on Mondays and once on Thursdays and I have them split up differently according to my goals. Mondays I focus more on hypertrophy so I usually do about 80% of my max for most of my working sets (about 4-5) with higher reps (8-12) then crank it up for about 1-2 sets of working with 90% of my max deadlift. Thursdays are more strength focused so I work with 90-100% of my max for each working set and reps are kept way lower (1-3 per set).
Well, yesterday was strength but I usually start up with a warm-up set of 80% of my max just to get things moving. I was working with 135lbs, which felt nice and smooth on Monday, and what was supposed to be my warm-up set suddenly felt like a working set. I couldn't get more than 5 reps when I was able to get 12 solid reps on Monday. Everything just felt off for some reason, and I wasn't feeling strong at all. I decided not to add any more weight on (good call, Sam) but continued with a second set of 135, and it was still a struggle to get out 5 reps. I was super frustrated with myself at this point because deadlifts are my all-time favorite lift. I look forward to them every single week, and have been making great progress in the past couple weeks.
I pushed on for another couple of sets before I decided that it was a no-go for deadlifts that day. The funny thing is I was so frustrated and disappointed with how my workout was going when one of the regulars appeared at the gym. He's elderly and needs a cane most of the time for walking, but he shows up every single day. I absolutely love his positive attitude and it cracks me up because he's seriously in awe of my lifting haha! As soon as he saw me he shouts "there's my rockstar weightlifter!" and proceeds to point me out to everyone around him telling them how I'm always killing it at the gym. He's simply adorable, and always has a kind word for me. I joked around and told him I'm going to hire him as my personal cheerleader because he never fails to show up right when I need some words of sense knocked into me. It always puts my situation into perspective because here I am beating myself up for lifting 135lbs when he's not able to lift anymore because of health problems. We've talked before and he tells me how much he misses it, and it makes me incredibly grateful for the health I do have.
I finished up another few sets of exercises but only made it about 3/4 of my workout before I decided it was time to just throw in the towel. My back was acting kind of funky, and I didn't want to risk injuring myself so I went home to drown my frustration in a giant bowl of oats.
As I was eating, I sat myself down and gave myself some tough love. I reminded myself that it wasn't the end of the world, it wasn't a waste of time, and if I was feeling up for it I could maybe do some deadlifts on Saturday. I focused on the positives of what I was able to do that day instead of what I couldn't, and went on about the rest of my day. When Amanda got home she talked me into going for a run with her (by promising that Layla could come haha!) so even though I didn't have the best lift, I was able to end my workout on a positive note with a good run.
Ironically, I woke up this morning and my hammies and glutes were S-O-R-E haha! Which clearly means even a crappy feeling workout did me some good. In the end, I'm glad that I didn't push myself to the extreme of finishing my workout to the point of potential injury (something I totally would have done in the past) or that I didn't sit there for awhile feeling sorry for myself.
Not every lift is going to be glamorous where you feel on top of the world, setting PRs, or that you could take on wrestling a grizzly bear. There will be ones that aren't necessarily the best but they aren't a waste of time either. In the end, it's simply not worth sweating the small stuff like a bad workout when there are so many more important things to focus on in this life. This wasn't my first bad workout and it won't be my last, but I'm learning to be okay with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment