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One of the single most frustrating parts of training is when you lose your desire to train, or you have a bad session. You begin to drive yourself insane searching for why this has happened. You hunt for something to blame it so that you can feel better. Lack of sleep, haven’t eaten enough, stress at work etc. The truth of it is, these sessions happen, and most of the time it is not just down to a single variable.

 

Once you learn to simply accept the fact that you are going to have some horrid sessions, dealing with them becomes a hell of a lot easier. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the whole “I never have a bad session, I always learn something”, but sometimes you do just have a bad bleeding session. When you’re missing less than 80% of your 1rm on a max day, that is a bad session, period. So now we have accepted that these sessions happen, how do we combat them so that we don’t burn our lifters and lose our marbles? 

 

When you train, not only is it about progression and development, but training itself releases endorphins into the system which make you feel amazing. That great feeling that you get after completing a great session, that is down to the endorphin release. So if we look at it like this, there can be 2 variables for a session. Number 1 is progression, whether that be more kilograms, or a faster time, and number 2 is to make you feel good. 

 

During the aforementioned “bad session”, you were missing percentages on your lifts, missing your paces on your runs or rows, and breaking up sets on your gymnastics that you normally wouldn’t have to. As a result, this is impacting on the “progression” variable. So what do we do? If you’re having a bad session, acknowledge it, and focus on variable number 2, feeling good.

 

Let’s look at two example “bad sessions”, a Weightlifting session and a CrossFit session. During the Weightlifting session, percentages are being missed, your lifts feel sloppy and you just can’t get firing. My advice for this, rather than putting your barbell back, move onto something that isn’t as measurable as normal. Have some fun and do something off programme. Your Snatches aren’t feeling great, so build to a tough 3RM Hang Split Snatch for the day. In theory, most lifters won’t have a clue what their 3RM Hang Split Snatch is (if you do bravo) which as a result removes the “progression” anxiety. 

 

Now let’s look a CrossFit session and apply the same thing. You’re due to retest your “Jackie” score, but you feel terrible and the start of the session has gone awfully. Instead of mentally torturing yourself by going slower on a benchmark workout, put together a normal metcon that you have never done before and hit it. Again, you have no previous scores for this workout, therefore you take out the progression variable but still get the endorphin release. 

 

Bad sessions happen whether we like it or not, but the important thing is to know that they don’t last. There is always light at the end of the tunnel so keep grinding! 

 

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”‘.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my next post “How Deep Should You Squat“.