My gym has this motivational phrase plastered along the walls ‘No Pain, No Gain’. I’m sure you’ve seen it along a wall or two as well. Along with this being a typical ‘gym-bro’ mentality it puts forth the idea that you can’t achieve your goals without some level of discomfort. The truth to that lies in the fact that what contributes to your growth often lies outside your comfort zone. However, what people often think it means is that you should push yourself, regardless of what’s manageable for you to do at the time. This happens when people carry out their training just so that they can end up feeling like jelly after every exercise and session. In terms of dieting, some level of discomfort is expected but, in no way should it be excruciating. Both of these circumstances completely disregard the body’s internal signals and can lead to issues in the future. First let’s start with why more isn’t always better.
There’s a belief in the fitness community that, in order to see progress, you should push yourself during every session throughout each exercise, or else you’re not working hard enough. It is important to push yourself, however every workout session should not leave you feeling exhausted and beaten up. You shouldn’t go to the gym 4 times a week and think that you’re going to obliterate x body part during each session. It’s unwise to do so, especially if you’ve been consistently adding more weight, sets and reps during each session. You’ll often see individuals grinding away at the gym for years but ultimately, they will hit a point of overreaching where their training volume is no longer effective and there are negative returns, i.e. they’re working hard in the gym but they’re actually seeing a negative turn in their health and physique (there’s a lot of technical jargon here so I’m not going to bore you on that but, if you’re interested in it let me know and I’ll elaborate).
It is important to manage training volume (i.e. the reps x sets) so that you are able to recover before the next session you train that body part. Although you can handle the discomfort or ‘pain’ in the moment, it doesn’t always mean you should carry through with it. Ideally, the last three reps of an exercise should be the most difficult to complete. You can even go to failure on the last few exercises of a session, however, what isn’t a good idea is going to failure during every exercise and making every session a high intensity (very heavy weights), high volume workout (high reps and lots of sets) (assuming you’re training more than twice a week). This is because it takes time for the body to recover and, in order to recover effectively, nutrition, sleep and stress all have to be managed or you risk fatigue building up over time and thus, increasing the likelihood of an injury occurring. Furthermore, since recovery is so often overlooked people forget that managing how much you’re doing each session helps you progress over the long term by managing adaptations.
However, pushing yourself is necessary. How else would you know what you could actually accomplish? This is where being intuitive helps. Even if you are following a training program it helps to listen to your body. Some days 20 lb dumbells feel like 50 lbs so it might be better to pull back and possibly go lighter during that exercise, or even during that session. On other days, your heaviest weight might feel surprisingly light and you think to yourself ‘I could totally 5-10 lbs heavier’. However, the important aspect of this is listening to your body and giving it what is required. Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, being overzealous can work against you. Therefore, it’s important to keep in mind your long-term goals versus short term gratification. You may find that going 50% heavier in one session will leave you incapacitated for the next week and eventually learn that it may not have been the smartest decision since it negatively impacts your long term training.
In terms of dieting, it sucks some times.. However, if you’re near starvation every single day it’s probably not a very sustainable diet. When dieting, you expect to feel hungry but if you have no energy to work out, your concentration is poor or your stress levels are high it probably means you should re-evaluate. None of this should be excruciating or painful. However, what it should be is challenging and motivating.
Marie
Marie Writes (A Fitness Blog) 