Listen to Your Body when Exercising
There’s no shortage of gadgets and widgets that help you track the condition of your body. Almost everyone you meet in a gym has a heart-rate monitor and a professionally planned workout-log, at the very least. Not that they always use them, but they definitely have them…
In all this, it’s easy to forget that your body still gives you the most subtle and most important kind of feedback before, during and after your workouts. In particular, it tells how far you can push yourself.
You need to make sure that you push your limits when exercising, but you also need to make sure never to push too hard, too far. Basically, there are two types of people: Those who tend to be “lazy” and those who tend to over-do it.
If you belong to the former category, you’re mind is probably very good at coming up with excuses for why you should skip a workout or take it easy. You may have planned to do three sets, but you’re only doing one because of some reason or other.
If you’re an over-doer, on the other hand, you probably have “tough guy syndrome”. You feel like you need to be tough and that suffering is just a part of progress. You feel like you couldn’t forgive yourself for skipping a workout and you have a lot of negative self-talk that pops into your head at any sign of weakness or laziness.
In both cases, you need two things:
1. Someone to point out to you which type you belong to.
The problem is that we can’t ourselves tell which type we tend to be. You need someone who can objectively and truthfully tell you which type you are. Ask a good friend or maybe your trainer/coach about this.
2. Recognize the difference between two types of pain.
Sure, to a certain extent, pain is simply something that comes with exercise. There are two different types of pain, though: There’s the kind of pain that’s worse in your head than in your body. This is the kind of pain where you start thinking about how much more pleasant than working out almost everything else is… The kind where your muscles are burning and hurting, but still fully functional.
On the other hands, there’s what I call “deep pain”. This is the kind that goes beyond just a burning sensation and should not be ignored. This is the kind of pain where your body is truly telling you to take it down a notch and give yourself some rest.
If you’ve been exercising for a while, I have no doubt you know about both these types of pain. It’s very important to be honest with yourself and face which kind of pain you’re experiencing. Trying to be a tough-guy and not stopping because of real, “deep” pain is always a bad idea. That will almost always lead to injury (and you know how long that takes you out of training, right?). On the other hand, don’t be a wuss and stop training before you’ve reached your limits. Burning muscles are part of the deal.
What’s important is that you become conscious of what’s going on and don’t misinterpret the signals. Listen to your body and adjust your workout accordingly, and you’ll always come out stronger at the end.
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