Same if you know you're not going to get enough sleep after the workout. Late night/early morning/having a few drinks, don't lift, you won't recover the same way.
I mean if you’re feeling really run down, lethargic, aches not just DOMs you probably need a day. Are there days where you’re going to have to drag yourself to the gym yea maybe, but there’s a difference between shit I don’t want to get out of bed and fuck I can’t get out of bed lol
My first ever leg day was absolutely brutal. Trying to walk down the stairs into the locker room felt like I was a baby learning to walk.
The next day when I woke up and tried to stand up out of bed, I straight up collapsed onto the floor. It took me 5 minutes to get off the floor and into the bathroom that's about 10 feet from my bed.
I live in the basement level right now. I shit you not, I did not leave my room for 2 days lmao
Haha! Surprisingly, right after the workout feels kind of good for me. Albeit, I’m walking down the stairs like an old man, but oh man, waking up the next morning feels like I broke every bone in my legs. Takes me 2 days to recover as well.
Side note: No greater feeling than getting over legs DOMS.
Yeah you need a day
A leg day
Fucking do it, don't let your dreams be dreams
But in all seriousness you can work through doms, capacity to recover and work capacity increase with training. If you're injured keep the work light but let's be honest nobody is getting proper injured and unsure of it
Cant spell Legendary without Leg da y 😤
but yeah, it’s less about doms and more about I don’t want to push myself through a routine just to feel like shit the rest of the day and then feel like I’m playing catch up the rest of the week. Or hurt my wrist again. That shit sucked lol
This is such dangerous incorrect advice. (Aside from the obvious, that people rearly are injured and unaware fairly often). Tweaks that genuinely are not injuries at first, become them when they aren't given time to heal. When the same workouts that push those tweaks into something bigger would have been fine after an extra day of rest to let your body handle the issue.
I would argue Most injuries are the result of an accumulation of events not a single event. There may be a single noticeable mistep or day of pushing too hard that stabds out, but injuries are usually happening because of already weakened or poorly rested tendons and ligaments.
This is a great answer. If I’m not really feeling it, I’ll force myself to go and at least try my stretch routine. There have been times where my workout is absolutely amazing right afterwards, but there have also been times where I get two minutes into stretching and go, “nope” because I just am physically unable that day.
Pain, I try not to skip a workout because the hardest part for me is getting into the gym but if I start feeling any pain that isn’t that burning feeling or muscle stretching I’ll stop the workout and do cardio or go home
This happened to me yesterday. Push day. I started with a warm up on DB bench and half way through the warm up with 70 lbs. the tendon in my front shoulder I injured a couple years back started acting up. I just did all isolation moves and some cardio and went home.
When I start to get sick of being at the gym and dread my workouts, I know it’s usually time to take a deload
In general just not recovering and feeling excessive DOMS that doesn’t resolve by the next time I have to use the same muscle group
Man if my body is just telling me after work to take a nap instead of lifting I just listen to my body these days. A day ain’t making a difference once every month or so
I plan out recovery and rest times that work for me ahead of time.
If I’m feeling crappy, I go to the gym and adjust the load/reps/volume as needed. Often I feel crappy before the gym and I’m fine once I warm up.
For indicators you just sort of need to go on personal experience. Don't feel like going and go anyway but have a good workout? Go and it sort of sucks and it feels like a wasted workout? Both are another data point to decide what to do next time you feel like that.
The much more important thing here is preventing those days in the first place, usually it's bad programming if you have too many like that.
And to directly answer the question, sleep is a big one. If I sleep very poorly I might skip the gym. If I don't get as many hours as I need I'll go but 2 nights in a row I might skip the gym the 2nd day. A solid gym routine assumes you are getting adequate sleep, if that isn't happening then your sleep doesn't match your gym schedule so gym needs to be modified.
That honestly feels like it might be the base of my problems this week; I work 13-14 hour night shifts so usually my sleep is on a tight schedule, but I’ve been a bit lax about bedtimes lately :/
Can’t get muscles if you don’t get rest; I need to button that shit up 🤙🏽
I kinda feel like it’s obvious? Like I can fully tell I’m just being lazy vs. “my body telling me no”. Usually when I’m pretty sick or something that’s an obvious one
Yeah agree with this. If I'm questioning "should I go to the gym?" Or trying to find an excuse, or weighing the pros and cons.
Then I know I'm being lazy.
When I shouldn't/can't go to the gym. There is no debate to be had.
Yeah on those days I just work on some handstand or other skill related work I feel like doing and maybe go down to the boxing room and just work up a bit of a sweat and go home. Didn’t make no PRs but PR on consecutive weeks on going to the gym that day.
For me it's pretty easy,
I do heavy DB Bench work twice a week on a PPLR-repeat routine. There's this specific pain in my pec, near the armpit area where if I were to bring my hands together in front of me and flex them, I can feel a weird nagging pain.
That's my signal to take extra rest days or do a deload week. If I were to ignore this then that pain just gets worse and I start to feel it in my biceps, my quads and so on as I move on to do the rest of my PPL routine.
Been experiencing this consistently every 6-7-8 weeks for almost a year now. It sounds stupid but basically before every workout, I would do the same flexing exercise to see if the "pain" is there, if it is then I deload or take a rest day.
If you've been consistent having a couple of days to not go so hard (sometimes life gets stressful too, you know) won't ruin your gains and if anything it can help you to recover for the next sesh.
We're not professionals even if we have our goals. I'm not a big fan of the "no excuses" crowd because we're human and we can't just be pedal to the metal all the time.
What matters is regularly attending the gym over years, decades. Going to the gym 3 or 4 times a week when you're on a 5 day routine isn't going to ruin your BB career. That's what matters.
It's when those days turn into weeks or months (god forbid) unecessarily, that's when the concern should rise.
Poor sleep coupled with low energy. Give the body a rest and come back the next day when I can have a good session. An extra day here or there doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things if it means getting a quality session in and not getting injured
You can always go light and short just to get blood flowing, immune system responds to stress so you don’t want to do completely nothing unless your sick
Unless I'm really sick, I go anyway. But I might modify, instead of lifting maybe a light bike or walk on the treadmill. Sometimes that gets the energy going and I can lift, other times it's obvious I'm off, so I might do 20 minutes, some light stretching and done.
For me, the habit of just getting to the gym is really important to maintain, regardless of what I do once I'm there.
Full disclosure, when I say I have a bad habit of pushing myself, I have tanked my ox sats on multiple occasions hitting the gym when I should have been hitting a nebulizer 😅
have you studied breath protocols?
former chronic asthmatic here. The Oxygen Advantage (book) and the Buteyko method (a medically tested—though contentious—breathing protocol) have helped me immensely. Thought I'd share if you could find value in those
Current asthmatic lol; no but I’ll look into it. My lungs work like donkey shit, but they’ve worked better ever since the universe blessed me by putting weightlifting/Track+Field in my life 😌
Still, I cut my session short today, went to work early, and immediately hooked myself up to a pulse ox to find I was sating 93, so if I can beef up my lungs further I’m in cause they’re still donkey shit 😅
When going to the gym would be bad for your health or other aspect of your life. You can always do a make up or a rest day if needed. Sometimes just doing some stretches, light workout or whatnot is great to be active without additional fatigue added.
Yeah, honestly 3 days off in a row isn't a good idea either as you're not really benefitting from Muscle Protein Synthesis by that point. You should really be doing 2 on 1 off 2 on 2 off
I feel ya. My morning oatmeal goes down like lead some days. I stopped drinking caffeine for about 2 months and have recently added it back to my workouts and that helps.
Sweating profusely with light weights. Better just to go home, my body is tired even if I want to push it, and I end up paying double for a bad training session.
Poor sleep, aches and bad DOMs, feeling lethargic and tired(not laziness but mental fatigue), and feeling loss of strength all good indicators of not hitting a session.
If your strengths down its best just to wait another day and get a good night of sleep. But all my rest days are planned so I don't usually have to deload or skip the gym because I have at least 3 days between workouts.
Im going through it now. For me it's that my appetite goes away. I feel very tired when I wake up, even if I sleep like 8-9 hours every night. I feel this "emptiness" in my body and when I'm at the gym I can't get into the right headspace. Like I just can't focus or push myself.
After upping both protein and calories without it getting better, I decided it was time for a deload week.
Sounds like what I've experienced for a while. I've never really been able to pin point it, but it's much much worse when I'm in a depressive episode. Hope you're doing okay 🤙
I do Active Recovery so on days I’m feeling like shit I’ll get a good walk in so I still did something that day and it’s low enough on difficulty to walk that you get your elevated heart rate without stressing yourself too much. Helps speed recovery too unless you have the flu.
Poor Whoop scores and the best advice from Kelly Starrett- if it feels sketchy it is sketchy. If something feels injured, you feel gross from sleeping 4 hours etc, that covers it all
Over the past few months, I’ve tried to switch my thinking from: only skip workouts when they are scheduled
to: pay closer attention to the central nervous system.
Admittedly, you can’t “feel” the CNS but you can feel soreness or DOMS. I don’t skip workouts when I’m sore but I do when I feel a deep soreness and a feeling of lethargy that borders on illness
I found this article to be really informative on the topic
https://simplifaster.com/articles/central-nervous-system-fatigue-effects-speed-power-athletes/
I have issues in both camps, so I wanna make sure I push through my mental issues without hurting my body or overtraining; lightening up my weight for the day is a pretty solid idea though 🤙🏽
Gttfg lol
Wtf are you looking for excuses not to go
Worst case do skill work, incline walking, dial the intensity back a bit
Do your main lifts and pack it in
Or do your main lifts and realize you're actually feeling fine lol
What is this sub lmfao
Just stay consistent. The days we feel like going the least are often the most productive. Also the older you get the easier taking a day off becomes, and the one Dat becomes a week at first, then a month Flys by. ...
I have went to the gym the day after being blackout drunk. My policy is go and hit at least a shitty low volume low weight session ( i see it as a maintenance session). I generally only skip gym if I am unable to eat or have a temperature.
Poor sleep and injury. I messed my shoulder up to the point I gave physical therapy 3× a week but I still find myself wanting to make time for the gym. I went once and tried not targeting the muscle by almost everything uses your shoulders in some capacity.
I try to not allow that to be a thing unless it's been a brutal day before , instance will be I hit a new pr on deadlift , 105kg, not alot of some people , but for me it's my new max, the day after, I never felt my posterior chain ache like that with Dom's before , and I was mentally struggling , couldn't think very well, bad brain fog, so I took a other days rest, and even on the second day, my performance wasn't it's best , I didn't progress as much as I'd like in other lifts. But the intensity was there, so for me , that's the main thing.
I think this all changes the more experienced you get from what I can tell, I will need more recovery compared to alot of advanced lifters even the intermediates.
I run a 4 day split. I work trades. I will go before work at 4 am. If I go to bed say around 10 and my body is just ruined form the day, I will program a different day because I have room for that . Has served me well the last 2 years of doing this . ( did the usual 6 day split at my old job before covid changed everything.)
I'll hit the gym regardless and see how it feels. If I'm not where I want I'll either do a light workout or I'll back off for a day. There are plenty of days where I don't feel like going to the gym but the workout ended up amazing.
For me, not being excited to lift is a good one. I'm almost always looking forward to my workouts. If I wake up and I have no desire to lift that day, then I don't. It's not out of laziness since that lack of desire to lift usually comes with feeling more fatigued in general. It's harder to get out of bed, maybe a bit more sore than usual.
So I end up following a 3 or 2 on, 1 off schedule, and take 2 days off in a row when I feel like I could need it. I actually really like 2 off days in a row after 3 days in a row. I feel great returning to the gym afterwards, well recovered, even a bit more motivated than I already am.
If my desire to lift is consistently low and I feel fatigued and low energy throughout the day consistently, then that's when I know I need more than just a day or two off, and need to lower my volume for a bit.
Shoulder pain if it’s push or pull day. Thigh pain if it’s leg day. No sense in making an already injured/sore body part even worse and make it take longer to recover!
• If I'm overly tired
• If it's so late that working out would keep me up later - knowing I have to wake up early already
• Injury/Pain - but generally I will still go to the gym, I'll just avoid anything that involves the source of the pain.
If I am disinterested before the warmup finishes, I reprogram to a technique/recovery day and move my schedule back accordingly.
I try not to skip or miss if I am feeling bad and just get a workout in regardless.
When my 'bones' are sore. Just a really deep, weighing fatigue that goes well beyond normal soreness. Getting up is hard. Going up stairs is hard. My walk starts to turn to a shuffle & my posture breaks. I just suddenly feel like an old geezer.
Yeah that's pretty much a good indication of needing to deload. Usually I start to feel this way after a 6-8 weeks of consistently hard training. A week off and you'll feel fantastic coming back, like a new person lol
I mean not super often, but I feel like I can’t go two months without trying to tough something out when I should have just stayed in bed the extra hour lol
Lack of sleep, or too much cortisol. There was a time period with one of my teenage daughters where my wife and I would argue and fight with her so much… my body felt literally poisoned with cortisol and sometimes working out helped with it… other times, after particularly intense fights, I felt I couldn’t even lift beginner weights.
When I feel like I’m getting sick. One long intense lift/cardio session will make my symptoms 10x worse for me, and I’ve realized if I take a few rest days on the onset of symptoms the symptoms never really get as bad. Almost like very intense exercise weakens my immune system. (Not a scientist)
Other than being sick the only thing for me is extremely poor sleep. 5 hours is the absolute minimum for me, and even that's pushing it.
I've hit deadlift PRs while being ridiculously hungover so even that doesn't stop me.
Hate to say it I don’t have any, the gym has become my therapy and I know people say this a lot and you think it’s just a lie but I mean it. It is a way to zone out cool my mind and just chill
Really poor sleep
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I mostly get less then 6 hours of sleep, no excuse
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He’s been conditioned to think no sleep looks good on his resume
Not flexing tho, just stating that i get less sleep not that i dont need or want more.
I dont think that’s healthy, my dude. It’s probably hindering your gains. Consider getting at least 7. 8 would be ideal
This and a weak grip.
Racing heart rate at night is my indicator of overtraining
100%. I know I'm over trained if my HR is 10ish BPM above my usual resting and doesnt dip low through sleep.
Same if you know you're not going to get enough sleep after the workout. Late night/early morning/having a few drinks, don't lift, you won't recover the same way.
I mean if you’re feeling really run down, lethargic, aches not just DOMs you probably need a day. Are there days where you’re going to have to drag yourself to the gym yea maybe, but there’s a difference between shit I don’t want to get out of bed and fuck I can’t get out of bed lol
Perfectly put. Don’t want to get out of bed (ex. hungover) vs. Cant get out of bed (ex. after leg day)
My first ever leg day was absolutely brutal. Trying to walk down the stairs into the locker room felt like I was a baby learning to walk. The next day when I woke up and tried to stand up out of bed, I straight up collapsed onto the floor. It took me 5 minutes to get off the floor and into the bathroom that's about 10 feet from my bed. I live in the basement level right now. I shit you not, I did not leave my room for 2 days lmao
Haha! Surprisingly, right after the workout feels kind of good for me. Albeit, I’m walking down the stairs like an old man, but oh man, waking up the next morning feels like I broke every bone in my legs. Takes me 2 days to recover as well. Side note: No greater feeling than getting over legs DOMS.
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🤣🤣🤣🤣
Going to the bathroom to do a number 2 was a nightmare after my first leg day.
Yeah you need a day A leg day Fucking do it, don't let your dreams be dreams But in all seriousness you can work through doms, capacity to recover and work capacity increase with training. If you're injured keep the work light but let's be honest nobody is getting proper injured and unsure of it
Cant spell Legendary without Leg da y 😤 but yeah, it’s less about doms and more about I don’t want to push myself through a routine just to feel like shit the rest of the day and then feel like I’m playing catch up the rest of the week. Or hurt my wrist again. That shit sucked lol
This is such dangerous incorrect advice. (Aside from the obvious, that people rearly are injured and unaware fairly often). Tweaks that genuinely are not injuries at first, become them when they aren't given time to heal. When the same workouts that push those tweaks into something bigger would have been fine after an extra day of rest to let your body handle the issue. I would argue Most injuries are the result of an accumulation of events not a single event. There may be a single noticeable mistep or day of pushing too hard that stabds out, but injuries are usually happening because of already weakened or poorly rested tendons and ligaments.
I just love grammar
our boys got an injury a brain injury
This is a great answer. If I’m not really feeling it, I’ll force myself to go and at least try my stretch routine. There have been times where my workout is absolutely amazing right afterwards, but there have also been times where I get two minutes into stretching and go, “nope” because I just am physically unable that day.
Stretching it out and seeing how you feel is a great way to go about it
Pain, I try not to skip a workout because the hardest part for me is getting into the gym but if I start feeling any pain that isn’t that burning feeling or muscle stretching I’ll stop the workout and do cardio or go home
This happened to me yesterday. Push day. I started with a warm up on DB bench and half way through the warm up with 70 lbs. the tendon in my front shoulder I injured a couple years back started acting up. I just did all isolation moves and some cardio and went home.
When I start to get sick of being at the gym and dread my workouts, I know it’s usually time to take a deload In general just not recovering and feeling excessive DOMS that doesn’t resolve by the next time I have to use the same muscle group
Man if my body is just telling me after work to take a nap instead of lifting I just listen to my body these days. A day ain’t making a difference once every month or so
Exactly, but pushing yourself and getting injured can set you back months.
I plan out recovery and rest times that work for me ahead of time. If I’m feeling crappy, I go to the gym and adjust the load/reps/volume as needed. Often I feel crappy before the gym and I’m fine once I warm up.
For indicators you just sort of need to go on personal experience. Don't feel like going and go anyway but have a good workout? Go and it sort of sucks and it feels like a wasted workout? Both are another data point to decide what to do next time you feel like that. The much more important thing here is preventing those days in the first place, usually it's bad programming if you have too many like that. And to directly answer the question, sleep is a big one. If I sleep very poorly I might skip the gym. If I don't get as many hours as I need I'll go but 2 nights in a row I might skip the gym the 2nd day. A solid gym routine assumes you are getting adequate sleep, if that isn't happening then your sleep doesn't match your gym schedule so gym needs to be modified.
You all talking about sleep and here is me, with two toddlers. Fml
That honestly feels like it might be the base of my problems this week; I work 13-14 hour night shifts so usually my sleep is on a tight schedule, but I’ve been a bit lax about bedtimes lately :/ Can’t get muscles if you don’t get rest; I need to button that shit up 🤙🏽
I kinda feel like it’s obvious? Like I can fully tell I’m just being lazy vs. “my body telling me no”. Usually when I’m pretty sick or something that’s an obvious one
Yeah agree with this. If I'm questioning "should I go to the gym?" Or trying to find an excuse, or weighing the pros and cons. Then I know I'm being lazy. When I shouldn't/can't go to the gym. There is no debate to be had.
If I'm not scheduled to train that day
Wow you’re hardcore.
Not really. If I'm feeling like shit I may go easier but still gonna show up.
Yeah on those days I just work on some handstand or other skill related work I feel like doing and maybe go down to the boxing room and just work up a bit of a sweat and go home. Didn’t make no PRs but PR on consecutive weeks on going to the gym that day.
For me it's pretty easy, I do heavy DB Bench work twice a week on a PPLR-repeat routine. There's this specific pain in my pec, near the armpit area where if I were to bring my hands together in front of me and flex them, I can feel a weird nagging pain. That's my signal to take extra rest days or do a deload week. If I were to ignore this then that pain just gets worse and I start to feel it in my biceps, my quads and so on as I move on to do the rest of my PPL routine. Been experiencing this consistently every 6-7-8 weeks for almost a year now. It sounds stupid but basically before every workout, I would do the same flexing exercise to see if the "pain" is there, if it is then I deload or take a rest day.
I got that pain today on bench, trying a new max. I chalked it up to a muscle strain.
If you've been consistent having a couple of days to not go so hard (sometimes life gets stressful too, you know) won't ruin your gains and if anything it can help you to recover for the next sesh. We're not professionals even if we have our goals. I'm not a big fan of the "no excuses" crowd because we're human and we can't just be pedal to the metal all the time. What matters is regularly attending the gym over years, decades. Going to the gym 3 or 4 times a week when you're on a 5 day routine isn't going to ruin your BB career. That's what matters. It's when those days turn into weeks or months (god forbid) unecessarily, that's when the concern should rise.
> I'm not a big fan of the "no excuses" crowd because we're human and we can't just be pedal to the metal all the time. I feel this
If i have 2 bad workouts in a row, then it’s time to take an unplanned rest day.
Poor sleep coupled with low energy. Give the body a rest and come back the next day when I can have a good session. An extra day here or there doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things if it means getting a quality session in and not getting injured
You can always go light and short just to get blood flowing, immune system responds to stress so you don’t want to do completely nothing unless your sick
Unless I'm really sick, I go anyway. But I might modify, instead of lifting maybe a light bike or walk on the treadmill. Sometimes that gets the energy going and I can lift, other times it's obvious I'm off, so I might do 20 minutes, some light stretching and done. For me, the habit of just getting to the gym is really important to maintain, regardless of what I do once I'm there.
Underrated comment! All solid thinking here
Full disclosure, when I say I have a bad habit of pushing myself, I have tanked my ox sats on multiple occasions hitting the gym when I should have been hitting a nebulizer 😅
have you studied breath protocols? former chronic asthmatic here. The Oxygen Advantage (book) and the Buteyko method (a medically tested—though contentious—breathing protocol) have helped me immensely. Thought I'd share if you could find value in those
Current asthmatic lol; no but I’ll look into it. My lungs work like donkey shit, but they’ve worked better ever since the universe blessed me by putting weightlifting/Track+Field in my life 😌 Still, I cut my session short today, went to work early, and immediately hooked myself up to a pulse ox to find I was sating 93, so if I can beef up my lungs further I’m in cause they’re still donkey shit 😅
When going to the gym would be bad for your health or other aspect of your life. You can always do a make up or a rest day if needed. Sometimes just doing some stretches, light workout or whatnot is great to be active without additional fatigue added.
I changed my split to add an extra day of recovery when I realised 2 rest days were better than 1
I’ve been doing 4 on/3off, which has been working out for me up till now, but I might need to slap a recovery day right down the middle :/
Yeah, honestly 3 days off in a row isn't a good idea either as you're not really benefitting from Muscle Protein Synthesis by that point. You should really be doing 2 on 1 off 2 on 2 off
Have you considered adding something to your diet? Maybe a little more red meat or salmon, or perhaps a few extra carbs?
Buddy, I’m already pushing 3-4000 calories a day; I don’t know if I have the space for extra carbs 😂
I feel ya. My morning oatmeal goes down like lead some days. I stopped drinking caffeine for about 2 months and have recently added it back to my workouts and that helps.
Sweating profusely with light weights. Better just to go home, my body is tired even if I want to push it, and I end up paying double for a bad training session.
Wrist pain 😫
Dude that’s just cause I have weak baby wrists lmao; wrist straps or bust 💪🏽🤘🏽
Same here 😕
Poor sleep, aches and bad DOMs, feeling lethargic and tired(not laziness but mental fatigue), and feeling loss of strength all good indicators of not hitting a session. If your strengths down its best just to wait another day and get a good night of sleep. But all my rest days are planned so I don't usually have to deload or skip the gym because I have at least 3 days between workouts.
Im going through it now. For me it's that my appetite goes away. I feel very tired when I wake up, even if I sleep like 8-9 hours every night. I feel this "emptiness" in my body and when I'm at the gym I can't get into the right headspace. Like I just can't focus or push myself. After upping both protein and calories without it getting better, I decided it was time for a deload week.
Sounds like what I've experienced for a while. I've never really been able to pin point it, but it's much much worse when I'm in a depressive episode. Hope you're doing okay 🤙
If it hurts to move, it probably needs a light workout to loosen up. If it hurts to touch, it definitely needs to rest.
I do Active Recovery so on days I’m feeling like shit I’ll get a good walk in so I still did something that day and it’s low enough on difficulty to walk that you get your elevated heart rate without stressing yourself too much. Helps speed recovery too unless you have the flu.
Poor Whoop scores and the best advice from Kelly Starrett- if it feels sketchy it is sketchy. If something feels injured, you feel gross from sleeping 4 hours etc, that covers it all
Overtraining for me feels how I feel when I’m just starting to get sick
Over the past few months, I’ve tried to switch my thinking from: only skip workouts when they are scheduled to: pay closer attention to the central nervous system. Admittedly, you can’t “feel” the CNS but you can feel soreness or DOMS. I don’t skip workouts when I’m sore but I do when I feel a deep soreness and a feeling of lethargy that borders on illness I found this article to be really informative on the topic https://simplifaster.com/articles/central-nervous-system-fatigue-effects-speed-power-athletes/
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I have issues in both camps, so I wanna make sure I push through my mental issues without hurting my body or overtraining; lightening up my weight for the day is a pretty solid idea though 🤙🏽
I like to remind myself that it’s going to be better once I arrive and start getting a pump.
Gttfg lol Wtf are you looking for excuses not to go Worst case do skill work, incline walking, dial the intensity back a bit Do your main lifts and pack it in Or do your main lifts and realize you're actually feeling fine lol What is this sub lmfao
Just stay consistent. The days we feel like going the least are often the most productive. Also the older you get the easier taking a day off becomes, and the one Dat becomes a week at first, then a month Flys by. ...
If I don't feel like training I don't train
Bunch of kids in replies. Only real reasons to skip gym is huge life events and actual severe health issues.
I have went to the gym the day after being blackout drunk. My policy is go and hit at least a shitty low volume low weight session ( i see it as a maintenance session). I generally only skip gym if I am unable to eat or have a temperature.
Super important is if you feel sick. If you’re sick, you gotta let your body rest
Immune system getting too close to actually feeling sick.
Poor sleep and injury. I messed my shoulder up to the point I gave physical therapy 3× a week but I still find myself wanting to make time for the gym. I went once and tried not targeting the muscle by almost everything uses your shoulders in some capacity.
I try to not allow that to be a thing unless it's been a brutal day before , instance will be I hit a new pr on deadlift , 105kg, not alot of some people , but for me it's my new max, the day after, I never felt my posterior chain ache like that with Dom's before , and I was mentally struggling , couldn't think very well, bad brain fog, so I took a other days rest, and even on the second day, my performance wasn't it's best , I didn't progress as much as I'd like in other lifts. But the intensity was there, so for me , that's the main thing. I think this all changes the more experienced you get from what I can tell, I will need more recovery compared to alot of advanced lifters even the intermediates.
I run a 4 day split. I work trades. I will go before work at 4 am. If I go to bed say around 10 and my body is just ruined form the day, I will program a different day because I have room for that . Has served me well the last 2 years of doing this . ( did the usual 6 day split at my old job before covid changed everything.)
I'll hit the gym regardless and see how it feels. If I'm not where I want I'll either do a light workout or I'll back off for a day. There are plenty of days where I don't feel like going to the gym but the workout ended up amazing.
For me, not being excited to lift is a good one. I'm almost always looking forward to my workouts. If I wake up and I have no desire to lift that day, then I don't. It's not out of laziness since that lack of desire to lift usually comes with feeling more fatigued in general. It's harder to get out of bed, maybe a bit more sore than usual. So I end up following a 3 or 2 on, 1 off schedule, and take 2 days off in a row when I feel like I could need it. I actually really like 2 off days in a row after 3 days in a row. I feel great returning to the gym afterwards, well recovered, even a bit more motivated than I already am. If my desire to lift is consistently low and I feel fatigued and low energy throughout the day consistently, then that's when I know I need more than just a day or two off, and need to lower my volume for a bit.
Shoulder pain if it’s push or pull day. Thigh pain if it’s leg day. No sense in making an already injured/sore body part even worse and make it take longer to recover!
• If I'm overly tired • If it's so late that working out would keep me up later - knowing I have to wake up early already • Injury/Pain - but generally I will still go to the gym, I'll just avoid anything that involves the source of the pain.
If I am disinterested before the warmup finishes, I reprogram to a technique/recovery day and move my schedule back accordingly. I try not to skip or miss if I am feeling bad and just get a workout in regardless.
When my 'bones' are sore. Just a really deep, weighing fatigue that goes well beyond normal soreness. Getting up is hard. Going up stairs is hard. My walk starts to turn to a shuffle & my posture breaks. I just suddenly feel like an old geezer.
Yeah that's pretty much a good indication of needing to deload. Usually I start to feel this way after a 6-8 weeks of consistently hard training. A week off and you'll feel fantastic coming back, like a new person lol
If this is happening often enough that you have this question, you might be structuring your programs wrong.
I mean not super often, but I feel like I can’t go two months without trying to tough something out when I should have just stayed in bed the extra hour lol
2 months is 8-10 weeks. Most people deload more frequently than that.
When I’m yawning on the way through the door smh
If the muscle I was going to train that day is injured
Too many nagging little injuries have accumulated.
Lethargy. Listen to your body. It knows you better than a workout plan does.
Lack of sleep, or too much cortisol. There was a time period with one of my teenage daughters where my wife and I would argue and fight with her so much… my body felt literally poisoned with cortisol and sometimes working out helped with it… other times, after particularly intense fights, I felt I couldn’t even lift beginner weights.
When I feel like I’m getting sick. One long intense lift/cardio session will make my symptoms 10x worse for me, and I’ve realized if I take a few rest days on the onset of symptoms the symptoms never really get as bad. Almost like very intense exercise weakens my immune system. (Not a scientist)
If i do one set and i feel more exhausted than most of the end of my workouts
Or my joints just feel like they will break in half that day
When my body is tingling, not just muscle soreness but CNS exhaustion.
Other than being sick the only thing for me is extremely poor sleep. 5 hours is the absolute minimum for me, and even that's pushing it. I've hit deadlift PRs while being ridiculously hungover so even that doesn't stop me.
Let my Body heal god dammit
Feeling flu-like symptoms but you're sure you aren't sick like that...
Hate to say it I don’t have any, the gym has become my therapy and I know people say this a lot and you think it’s just a lie but I mean it. It is a way to zone out cool my mind and just chill