Have you ever had an absolutely terrible day of training?
The answer is yes – everybody has! Have you had days where you felt stronger than ever, invincible, and possessed the lung capacity of Lance Armstrong? Once again, the answer is also yes! We have all experienced the day where we achieved a new PR (personal record) on a specific lift, workout, or 5k run.
Okay, maybe I haven’t experienced quite what it would be like to have the lung capacity of Lance Armstrong…but you get my drift.
Often times we know the reason why a workout or training day was sub-par or didn’t go as planned. But even if you don’t, just remember that there are so many different factors that go into the big equation of why you may or may not have had the best workout of your life! If you failed to get a solid eight hours of sleep, your nutrition was not dialed in, you’re stressed from work/life, or you consumed one too many brews the previous night watching the latest episode of your favorite TV show.
I could go on and on with this list of possible influences of why you had a good or bad workout session.
However, over years and years of training, I have yet to define the exact recipe as to what may or may not cause one to perform better than ever. I have had days where I walk out the door and head to the gym and feel like crap, tired, unmotivated and I PR a lift out of nowhere. On the flip side, there are days where I am beyond ready to train, motivated, focused and ready to get after it, yet somehow I fail to hit 60% on my snatch that day or feel like I am training at altitude and can’t breathe to save my life.
I wish I had some enlightening “cure-all” for how to address the inevitable inconsistency of training, but the only thing I have to offer is experience and acceptance.
Understand that you are going to have your ups and downs of training. I look at my training like a roller-coaster ride to be honest. Appreciate the days where you hit a new PR on a lift, workout or timed run. Also, recognize that you will have to persevere through some crappy days of training where you just want to give up. When this occurs, just look at how far you have progressed over time. Do not give up on your goals because you had a couple of bad training sessions!
Stay the course and your hard work will pay off with time.
In Health,
Ashley