Here’s a thought: your rate of progress is limited by your ability to recover.
If you are driving your car and a service or warning light goes off, do you get it checked quickly? Do you ignore it? Or do you hit the series of buttons that makes it go away (until it pops up again)?
A rational person would try to learn about what’s going on by diving into a Google search, looking up the error or warning on YouTube, or sensibly calling their mechanic.
However, when it comes to dealing with our own bodies, we tend to ignore that shit as long as we can get away with it.
Over-training is very hard to do. Most people don’t understand how much effort and intensity it takes to train so hard that your body starts to feel worse – always dealing with tweaks and twinges.
Most people burn out mentally before they do physically. Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and not enough rest between strength training session is a sign of “under recovering.”
Some people exercise at a lower volume and intensity every day and they’re also not giving themselves adequate time to recover. They’re dealing with what starts out as the little shoulder, hip or knee issue that continues to get worse because they refuse to stop exercising.
As a coach, the most frustrating people are those who refuse to accept where their current strength is at. Instead of performing exercises with great technique and the level they belong, they’re adding weight or rushing to the progressions when they should be working towards mastery with the weight (or body weight) that allows them to move best.
If you’re falling into one of these scenarios, your progress will stall because you’re not recovering from the stress you’re putting your body through.
What can you do to reset your progress and feel better?
Take a whole day, or even a week off! (Aghast!!!)
Go for a walk. No one ever went for a walk and said, “I feel worse.”
Ride a stationary bike and keep your heart rate at or under zone 2. If your goals is fat-loss, it’s not your activity that is getting you to your goal – it’s your calorie deficit.
Do some soft tissue and mobility work. Same as walking, no one does soft tissue work and mobility work and feels worse after.
Spend a week revisiting what it feels like to move with your own body weight or lighter weights.
This will have a great effect mentally as well as physically.
Repeatability is part of the fitness game.
Progress isn’t always about pushing forward. It’s also about how well you rebound after you’ve hit a plateau or a setback. Being able to recover ends up becoming another area of growth.
Hit an obstacle > adapt > learn > grow.