We all know that exercise is important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Exercise improves cardiovascular health, helps manage weight, and strengthens your joints, muscles, and bones. While exercise does a great job to boost your energy levels, it’s inevitable that you will head into the gym unmotivated and nothing you seem to do will work. A poor workout may be due to overexertion, fatigue, stress or a variety of other personal and life issues. Luckily there are some simple steps you can take to help reduce or eliminate the symptoms leading up to a poor workout.
Don’t skip recovery days
Skipping recovery days is normal at any level of fitness. That’s because of two things: we want to see results and we are impatient. So, whether you are heading to the gym for the first time in your life to lose a few extra pounds, or you’re a professional athlete, it’s likely you occasionally, if not frequently, skip recovery days.
This is bad because recovery days give your body the time to repair and strengthen itself. Training regularly without appropriate rest can actually lead to the weakening of muscle tissue, injury, and a lack of motivation resulting in a bad workout(s).
Sleep 7+ hours every day
Nearly 1/3rd of American adults don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep each day. Sleep deprivation can lead to an inability to focus, lack of motivation, memory loss, and a slew of other negative mental and physical health problems. In addition, sleep is the time your body recovers and repairs damage as is created when muscle tissues tear during a workout.
Without proper repair during sleep your body and your workouts will suffer from a lack of motivation and a higher level of physical strain that your stressed body may have difficulty recovering from.
Change up your workouts
One of the biggest reasons why our workouts begin to decline over time is because we lose the motivation to keep going or due to boredom. Most people have specific exercises and workouts they enjoy more than any other. However, if you are a leg person, just focusing on legs may help you mentally feel stronger, but it is likely that you are overworking that area and underworking another.
Changing up your workout can help keep your mental fitness high as people tend to have more energy and focus when they are less familiar with an activity rather than an activity they perform daily – even one they love. To improve your workout, it is important to have variety in your workouts from rotating your strength training through different muscle groups each workout, to choosing a different form of cardio – yes, that means getting off the treadmill and ellipticals.
We all struggle through a bad workout once in a while, but when it becomes commonplace or you are just feeling a bit off, there are simple steps you can do to keep your workouts going strong. Recovery days, sleep, and a variety of strength and cardio training will ensure you keep in top shape and your body and mind stay in the game.
