There’s not a lot that can put me in a bad mood but there are 2 things that can
A. Being hungry
B. Feeling like I’m having a bad session
Lets rewind to last week. I hit a personal best on deadlifts. I reached 97.5kg for 12 reps and boy was I excited. I felt strong and empowered. Fast forward to my next session, I went in assuming I’d hit those high numbers again. That didn’t happen.
I knew it wasn’t going to be the case when I was digging seriously deep at 90kg. In fact it was one of those days where even the warm up set felt tough. We are our own worse critics, I mentally told myself off. ‘You should have this’. ‘This should be easy’. ’You’re failing‘.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
*I may have been able to lift more this week but I know my form would have compromised for it. Form is everything. Protect your body and don’t compromise it just to lift heavier*
Re-evaluate your expectations
I had to be reminded we couldn’t expect to hit our personal best every session, something I knew but in that moment just couldn’t remember.
There are a number of reasons both physically and mentally why you can’t and really shouldn’t. What you eat, the quality of your sleep, the time of day, and how your body has recovered. There are so many factors that make every day different.
You should certainly still push yourself. So you’re not having the best workout? Don’t take it easy and say oh well. Push your body to what it’s capable of THAT particular day.
Sometimes you may have a run of personal bests (newbies to the gym I’m looking at you particular). You find every session you do hit a personal best; you add more weight or do more reps. It’s easy to get used to this and then feel like a failure when you suddenly can’t.
Somehow through having these ‘bad’ days, the good ones are made even better. The days you hit a surprise personal best, you feel super strong and your weights simply fly up. If every session were like this, that feeling just wouldn’t be the same; we couldn’t possibly appreciate it because it would simply be expected.
Remember how far you’ve come
Reading this back I want to add I laughed when I read… ‘I went in assuming I’d hit those high numbers again. That didn’t happen’
I was still reaching 90kg for 12 reps, something I previously couldn’t dream of. I started out with lighter weights just like everyone and really took my time to add weight, to really push myself. It’s funny how fast we forget just how far we’ve come and should remind ourselves of this when we are feeling bad about one workout.
