Train harder! Train faster! Longer stance! Deeper stance! Go harder! Lift heavier! Do one more.
Have you heard those whilst training? I’m guessing, with a reasonable amount of personal experience and knowledge that the answer is yes. That’s fine, a good coach should be helping you to extend your boundaries or in sports terms training the overload principle.
However some days what 100% looks and feels like will vary tremendously and that’s also fine, but you need to take that into consideration when training to get the best from your body.
Today I went to the gym and planned to hit some heavy weights, tried the first exercise and it was clear it wasn’t going to work today. I needed to drop 20/30kg on bench presses, military presses, lat pulldowns and on the deadlift it was 50kg. I still trained to my limit today, just was limit was a lower than expected and planned.
Why do we need to do less? There are many reasons; fatigue, injury, recovery, menstrual cycle and puberty. We shouldn’t forget a range of psychological factors; stress; anxiety; burnout and hormonal. All of these and many more things effect how we are able to train.
If you need to do less, do so, but still try to stretch yourself to make improvements in every session you train in.
