You Don’t Need to Work Hard ALL the Time

Are you working as hard as you can or as hard as you need to?

Fitness has become a collection of clichés. Gym culture is not grounded in reality. Search motivational gym quotes and you will find many like these:

“The only bad workout is the one that didn’t happen”
“You did not wake up today to be mediocre”
“Push harder than yesterday if you want a different tomorrow”

These motifs are part of the hardcore culture. The gym should not be treated as an exclusive club that only the most dedicated hardest workers should bother to come, but I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that. We should be trying to encourage more people to strength train, and that’s not done through “motivational” quotes.

Here’s the thing. You don’t need to work hard all the time. You do need days off. You can work at moderate intensities and improve. While you can probably pick a quote and live by it for a few months, eventually you are going to burn out. It is not sustainable to work harder everyday and / or show up to train when your body is ill prepared.

Simple advice:

1. Be consistent
2. Pay attention to your recovery (train hard 1-2x a week if your body is ready to do so)
3. To reiterate: Recover

Our bodies break down with strength training. The more intense a training bout the more time it takes to recover. Train to reach the MINIMUM effective volume. That means training just as hard as you need to get a result. Likely you will experience some muscle tightness the same day and moderate soreness 1-2 days following training. Pick days that you will be most recovered to train harder.

Moderate intensity strength training should make up the majority of your programming. It will enable you to return day after day and improve over time without burnout or undue injury risk.

Don’t measure the success of your workout by how sweaty you get or how sore you are. A wise coach once told me, “I could take you out back and beat you with this bat and you’d be sore, but you wouldn’t have gotten any stronger”. Stop beating yourself up!