Previous installments of “Feel the Burn” can be found here.
Let’s talk a little bit about when you’re not exercising. Maybe that’s today! Maybe it’s been a few weeks. Maybe forever. I, personally, am really in thrall to the idea of systems and resolutions and I’ll-get-in-there-four-days-a-week and by-May-I-should-be-doing-five-pull-ups and things like that, which is so, so detrimental to actually trying to move your body around. I have to work on it, honestly. It’s something I’m bad at.
What happens–and this may sound familiar to some of you–is that you overcommit yourself to whatever it is you’re doing (five days a week in the gym, or never ever eating sugar, or writing for two hours a day, or, I don’t know, putting in a stupid Crest Whitestrip every day for two weeks) and then, when human life interferes and you miss a few days, being unglued by it and proceeding to cease doing whatever the original thing was altogether, because you couldn’t hack it.
So what I try to do, now, which is cheesy but works, is pretend I wake up fresh and momentarily disoriented in the Cylon goo-water every morning (as Lucy Lawless, obvi), which is how seriously nerdy people interpret “one day at a time,” I guess. Having goals, but not timelines, and making those goals reasonable.
“Today, I’ll go for a walk. Here is the playlist I will listen to on my walk.”
“Today, I am going to roast that cauliflower before the little brown spots take over more of its surface area.”
“Today, while watching House of Cards, I’m going to do five Lady pushups whenever Kevin Spacey’s relationship with Kate Mara makes me uncomfortable.”
And then, of course, there is overtraining. This is a real thing, especially when people are beginning to strength train or run. I’ve tried to take up running about twenty-three times, and have realized I just occasionally enjoy leafing through Runner’s World. Each of those twenty-three times, one of these two things happen:
1. I’ve signed up for one of the Couch-to-5K programs, printed out a physical calendar, filled it out dutifully in pen, missed a single run three weeks in, and thrown it in the trash.
2. I’ve signed up for one of the Couch-to-5K programs, decided to double the whatever to get there faster, messed up my IT band, and then not run again for a year.
The latter is overtraining*. And it’s a lot easier to do than you think, especially if you’re just starting out. If you’re a happy Toast reader, and you’re not someone who is particularly active, and then you decide to start going to the gym five days a week to lift weights, taking the weekends off, you could very easily get yourself into a situation where you are overtraining. Make sure you don’t exert the same muscle groups two days in a row. Make sure you’re getting extra sleep, especially if you’re new to working out. Make sure you’re eating enough, because, as we’ve mentioned before, a real recipe for disaster is pushing your body harder than usual while suddenly feeding your body less than usual. I mean, not to get all fake-science on you, but I’m sure 100% of fake-scientists will explain that your body logically interprets that to mean that you are being pursued constantly by tigers and dumps stress everywhere.
Take some time, is what I’m saying. Overtraining will actually not make you stronger, it’ll make you feel crummy and make you more prone to injuries. The buffest guy I know works out like a beast, and then every six weeks he takes a week off from working out altogether, eats like Baron Harkonnen, and then just picks up where he left off.
Better, actually. If you’ve overtrained a bit (I didn’t overtrain, per se, but I worked out strenuously about five times a week instead of three-ish times a week this summer), and you take a break, many many people will find they have two rough workouts when they start up again, but then find they’re at a slightly higher level than they were before. There are those who report “newbie gains,” which is what people call the glorious honeymoon period of exercising before you start hitting some of the limits of your body and cease getting demonstrably better every week, as a result of taking a week to let everything calm down before climbing back on the horse.
I took two and a half weeks off, while I was in Canada with my mom, and didn’t do jack. Last time I was in Canada, I got in the car and drove half an hour to the gym most mornings to work out. It was fun, I enjoyed it. But I was a little physically done by the end of the summer, to be honest, even though it was a great experience and got me to a new personal level of fitness. I had been bulking up, consciously, trying to put on more physical muscle (deltssss), so I was eating like a truck and really pushing myself in the weight room, and my body was starting to say, hey, cool it for a little while, k? So I just…stopped. For two and a half weeks.
And for me, that’s historically been something which would derail me for MONTHS. How could I take two and a half weeks off, and just…walk into a gym? WILL PEOPLE NOT BE ABLE TO TELL THAT I DID NOTHING BUT PLAY WITH MY KID AND BLOG DURING THAT TIME?
No. After two and a half weeks, you can just start moving your body, no one cares except for you. You can start moving your body any time you want. You can start moving a body you’ve never moved before, slowly, and it doesn’t matter. I had a great workout. I went home, I filled in the little gaps I’d just created in my muscles with some protein, and I woke up feeling like a million bucks.
A new day, a new opportunity to spit out the Cylon goo and just live your life, ideally with pushups.
*There are some douche-y meatheads on the internet who will tell you that overtraining is a myth and you are just lazy and need to keep going, but you have my permission to ignore them and listen to your own body. They’re right that you need to make peace with feeling muscle soreness 24-48 hours after a workout, that’s a good kind of soreness, but if you’re feeling tired and rundown and you’re never NOT sore, remember that being fit does not mean feeling like you have mono. Take three days off, eat well and sleep, pick it back up.
Tags: feel the burn, fitness, overtraining
Ugh, I’m SO guilty of the whole “give up completely if you get more than a day behind on a workout/journaling/whatever plan” thing. :-/ I, too, did Couch to 5K for a week or two but then it rained for like 2 days in a row so I couldn’t go to the park and that was that.
I’ve been doing week 1 of couch to 5k for like, four weeks now. I kept on not checking it off or waiting too long and wanting to start over, and THEN I got my first smartphone and got the APP and couldn’t figure out how to skip workouts so I started over again. Maybe my subconscious is telling me I’m not ready to jog for more than a minute without stopping yet.
The free ZenLabs C25K app makes it hella easy to skip workouts, AND it lets you use your own music. I’m in Week 6 (had gotten to Week 7, then a tendon in my heel started fussing and I gave it a couple weeks off, so I backtracked to be safe), and the ZenLabs prompts have worked really well for me. Downside: the app doesn’t map distance. Upside: it doesn’t suck up huge chunks of your data plan.
I made a conscious–difficult!–decision not to give a damn about my pace, and I’m amazed at how long I can run as long as I don’t worry about the fact that I might be faster if I walked. I also lurk on Reddit’s (no, I know) C25K forum, and the relentless encouragement everyone offers one another there has helped keep me moving. Everyone thinks they’re the Slowest Runner Evar, and everyone’s scared first of starting and then of W5D3 (20 minutes, are you nuts?). It’s doable; you’ve got company.
I am running a half marathon in a few weeks and I am super into the “just run as slow as you have to” plan. I wish I were faster, but. I’m not.
I’ve found a sport that I love (who knew that was even a thing? Apparently it’s totally a thing! Why didn’t anyone tell me??), but I’ve reached a point where it would be beneficial to add supplemental/supportive training and that, for me, brings up a lot of unfortunate body/failure feelings which are not conducive to 1. happiness, or 2. actually exercising. It’s hard to remember that doing less can be a choice that’s informed and healthy, not just lazy.
I, too, was completely surprised to find that sports can be fun. I discovered this in a hugely nerdy way that didn’t actually involve sports; when I was a teenager I played Dance Dance Revolution at a friend’s house and had the “moving my body doesn’t have to be humiliating and horrible, IT CAN BE FUUUUUN” epiphany.
oh man DDR. The best.
“momentarily disoriented in the Cylon goo-water every morning (as Lucy Lawless, obvi)”
<3 Nicole, never change. I also think the exercise drinking-game-style is a super great idea and someone should do a post around that (“whenever Joffrey does something sadistic, do 3 squats! Whenever you’re attracted to Jaime Lannister against your will, LUNGE!”)
So… constant lunges, then.
Doing five Lady pushups every time Kevin Spacey and Kate Mara’s relationship makes me uncomfortable would DEFINITELY lead to overtraining, at least for me.
Thank you for this post, especially right now. I’m sick, and haven’t done any body-moving in about a week; I’m getting close to that disordered thinking that tells me to just give up going to the gym, I can’t do it, there’s no point in trying to be healthy if you’re worthless, etc etc.
But I won’t do that! I’ll let my little body heal and give it nourishment and water (and uh, Mike & Ike’s, in case someone is watching me right now), then when I’m back up to speed I can start over again and no one on the entire earth will shame me for it.
I came to this post because the Toast’s tweet led me to believe it was a post about House of Cards. I’m sad, and now I think I need to work out.
(More House of Cards posts, please.)
” After two and a half weeks, you can just start moving your body, no one cares except for you. You can start moving your body any time you want. You can start moving a body you’ve never moved before, slowly, and it doesn’t matter.”
I love this and so needed to read it, thanks, Nicole! My brain likes to tell me that if I’m not making gains (by whatever arbitrary measure), whatever I’m doing is pointless, and because of various life stuff right now, I’m having to be a little more zen. Now I will imagine myself as a gooey Lucy Lawless and be happy.*
*I’ve also instituted a policy of standing up and doing squats during all call-in phone meetings, which is not as fun as TV exercise games but gives you a blindingly precise sense of which of your coworkers is making pointless meetings last longer.
I like this series (series?) especially because I’m been working out (Pilates counts right, especially when your instructor is super athletic about it & introduces new exercises & equipment all the time?) & I’m genuinely liking the muscle build-up I see, & the getting-stronger thing. And yes, I once took months off— MONTHS— for….reasons… & it felt so weird & terrible to walk back into the gym. But my instructor greeted me enthusiastically, & I sheepishly was like, “heh.. haven’t been here in a while…” & she literally responded with, “That’s okay; you’re here now!” So yeah, that’s all there is to it, I guess?
Pilates totally counts as a workout, and anyone who tells you differently is a douche-y meathead.
IT COUNTS. Also “that’s okay; you’re here now” should be what gym employees have on their shirts instead of stuff like “if you’re not puking you’re not working.”
That sounds like the PlanetFitness ethos. Except as a lazy person who mostly knows my way around a gym and needs external scorn as motivation, I found all the rah-rah-ing really annoying/condescending after a while. Maybe because I’m used to coaches who hit you on the head if you do things wrong repeatedly in lessons?
I need to get into an exercise routine. I’ve gotten lazy over the past year; I sprained my ankle last summer and have since gained about 15 pounds. I need to get off at least 15, if not 30. Should I just start with home work-out videos?
You need to start by stopping those cat food parties.
What’s your policy on Me Parties? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXH3Gnvxpw0
“Your body logically interprets that to mean that you are being pursued constantly by tigers and dumps stress everywhere.”
Yes! I have tried to explain this to my friends before, but you have said it much more effectively than I have. I will be stealing your line.
I have run twice since I found out I was pregnant because I have been too tired to move. I’ve kept up the weight training, but slacked on cardio. I’m in week 13 now, so I’m going to try to stop feeling like a total failure and start running again next week.
How did you know I’ve been avoiding the gym after taking 3 weeks off to go on vacation? And that I’m literally at this moment avoiding going on my lunch break?
Also, for additional exercise games, Smart Bitches Trashy Books has a great drinking-game-style exercise routine to be done while reading romance novels. Warning, the sex-scene versions will leave you sorer than the virginal heroine the next morning.
I really like all these posts. Thank you so much for how you write about exercise, Nicole. What you say and especially how you say it is what I need to hear when it comes to working out (which is my own personal demon). Earlier this year I managed to keep up a routine of workout videos for several months before I abandoned it when I was feeling really low. I haven’t quite been able to get back into it, but changing the way I think about it might just do the trick.
Bless you, Nicole. I am definitely one of those people who will just skip class altogether if they’re going to be five minutes late. Not generally the best way to live life. And now I am going to tell myself that it’s ok that I didn’t do any morning exercises for the past two weeks while I’ve been sick and barely able to drag myself out of bed, and that does not mean that my morning exercising is DOOMED FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF EXISTENCE.
This is great.
When I first got into exercise, I was very adamant about EVERY DAY. OR ELSE. because I felt like otherwise (or like setting up a less frequent schedule) would mean I would never go at all. After a few years of struggling with compulsive exercise and hating myself the few days when I didn’t work out, I’ve settled in closer to this sort of attitude.
It’s funny – I’ve had a lot less trouble doing this with flossing. I recent decided I was going to floss every day because this “eh, I should do it sometimes maybe” attitude was leading to painful dentists appointments. Sometimes I’m really tired and I don’t, but the next day I just remember to start over again and have been pretty good about it for a few months. Whereas with exercise there was so much baggage and self-judgment and pride and shame heaped in, that it took me YEARS to get to the same regular but occasionally broken habit level.
Nicole, I love you. And I love/hate chair dips. And I HATE BURPEES.
I’m pretty sure my upstairs neighbor was doing burpees the other day. The thumping had that sort of rhythm.
Getting increasingly slower?
My dad passed away suddenly and tragically six weeks ago. What no one tells you about the grieving process is how freaking *exhausting* it is. So exhausting, in fact, that some days it’s all you can do to drag your ass out of bed and do basic stuff like feed yourself and your family, use the john and go to work.
Given all this, I’ve learned to live with non-working out down time as a fact of life. This means that every time I get to the gym or take a walk or do 20 sit-ups, I can claim victory and feel like I’m winning at life, even in the midst of all the emotional devastation.
Grief is bone-shatteringly exhausting. Any time you manage to feed yourself, clothe yourself, or take a damn shower, you are doing great. If you do some sit-ups in between, you are indisputably victorious. I’m sending thoughts of strength and peace your way.
I screwed up my arm-parts doing tricep dips and I haven’t done my workouts in a week. ;_;
If we mention cr*ssf*t by name here, will the cultists show up? They overtrain at top physical conditioning, even. It gets bad.
Personally I’m three weeks into my weight training and I feel better though I don’t necessarily look better, not yet. I still don’t quite know how to do weighted squats. My neck is being swallowed by my traps.
It varies so much depending on which box you train at. I have friends who’ve had amazing, positive Crossfit experiences. I really enjoyed doing Crossfit, personally, and didn’t feel like I was in a particularly vulnerable or dangerous place, I just prefer the flexibility of a non-Crossfit gym.
I was just starting to get a good routine going. Bodyweight workouts at home, biking really fast when I run errands, bought a class card for bellydancing…then I got a cold.
A brutal cold that knocked me flat on my ass. I baby myself so much when i have a cold, I have to. I’m a yoga teacher & that is not a job you can reasonably do while sniffly and coughing I need to get over it as soon as possible. So I stopped exercising. Completely. I have been sleeping more often than not and not doing anything that gets my heart rate up, because then I start to cough.
I hate it so much and I want it to go away and I want to join a gym and start lifting heavy things now. 🙁
</whine>
YAY. I’d been sitting on the couch for a week, basically, but today I went down to my gym with the intention of screwing around for as long as I felt like. I worked on form for a bunch of new weight training exercises, which was fun!
Then the gym was locked down because of that business at the Capitol today. So I ran some, stretched some, and did some of those Russian twists with a medicine ball. It’s fun to go to the gym without a spreadsheet of weight/rep goals for 12 different exercises!
This post is perfect. I’ve always taken rest days seriously, but after my last big running event the rest days turned into rest week and a rest rest-of-the-spring-and-summer. I signed up for a popular race in my area and thought, fuck I can’t do this I haven’t run in …. X months… but I drew up a schedule at work and stuck it on my fridge, and while it has fewer successful completed runs marked off than I’d have liked, I’m sticking with it much better than past training schedules. For the time being I’ve decided to keep signing up for events to keep myself moving (one in 2 weeks and another faster one in the end of November, ahhhh!), but I’m hoping eventually I won’t need the pressure of failing to finish or the sweet reward of whatever goodies come in the finisher’s swag bag.
Thank you so much for this. I can’t tell you how in love with this series I am, and I really needed to hear this right now. I have been working out an hour a day every day for two months… and then randomly this week, I just didn’t. I didn’t even really think about why; I just knew that I really didn’t want to. And I wasn’t sure if this was me falling off the wagon, or what.
But now I think that I just took some time to rest–to get the extra sleep I should have been giving myself all along, but wasn’t, because when was I going to fit in an hour of working out except when I would otherwise have been sleeping? And it has been nice not to feel as if I have a tapeworm for a week.
Tomorrow–back on the horse. It’s a new day. And hey, maybe I’ll be stronger!
Some people up thread posted about websites and such that have helped with motivation. Anyone care to share more? I need a lot of help in this area. Also it would be great if Nicole could write a whole post about this.
Fitocracy works well for me!
I love this. For the past few years I would go to the gym a couple times, miss a day, and quit forever, and it was only this summer that I started to realize I could get back on the horse even if I missed a day or a week or whatever, and it’s really nice to have this post to remind me. (It also helps that I decided walking counts as exercise, since I can do that literally anywhere.)
This weekend’s Wash Post Magazine cover story about Ruth Bader Ginsburg includes a little aside from her trainer that she can do 20 tramp pushups. Ruthless Bader Ginsburg, right?
This weekend's Wash Post Magazine cover story about Ruth Bader Ginsburg includes a little aside from her trainer that she can do 20 tramp pushups. Ruthless Bader Ginsburg, right?
This was so great to read today… I’ve had a trifecta of bad-for-workouts events recently: a bad cold, travel, and now a mildly sprained ankle. I’m definitely feeling upset that right when I wanted to get back into doing the hardcore stuff like my insane fake-Soul Cycle spin class, I’ve gotta take it easy. Low gear spinning, lifting, and no weird plyometrics or crazy cycling for me for the next couple weeks :/
As a new derby skater with six months in and a burgeoning serious addiction to the sport, I broke my ankle. Okay, destroyed the fucker is more accurate.
I’m non-driving, housebound, non-weight bearing for three months, have more hardware implanted than a naked dude who fell off a ladder at Home Depot, and am watching my hard-earned (and just starting to be seriously strong) muscles fade to goo. Except the ones required to crutch. Those are good.
Is there anything you all can think of I can do with one dead leg? I’m not weak yet as I was when I started derby. I can still plank for a full minute–ON ONE LEG! (Sorry. I take my pride where i can get it these days.)
But I’m stir crazy and need to do SOMETHING to move my body more without hurting myself. Any advice?