Some words to go with the numbers

People in the fitness profession are obsessed with numbers.  We track body weight, body fat percentage, BMI (even though we all know it’s not a good indicator), waist size, reps completed, single rep max for a variety of exercises, and the like.  This is not a bad thing because numbers make some kinds of progress easy to track.

Numbers rarely tell the whole story, though.  There is no numerical representation for how tired we feel, or how sore, or, conversely, how much more energy we have or how empowered we feel.

I am not even slightly suggesting that we throw out the numbers.  I just want to add some words as well:  perceived exertion.

Perceived exertion is on my mind because I was sick last week.  I knew I was the kind of sick that needed to go back to bed while I was doing my usual morning stint on the spin bike and it was perceptibly harder than usual.  It wasn’t that my heart rate was unusually high or that I had more pain than any other day—it was a feeling that I was pushing against something more than the resistance of the bike.  I stopped the workout, canceled my clients, and slept so I could get better faster.

Even when we aren’t sick, we need to keep perceived exertion in mind.  It helps us calibrate.  If we are mindful of how hard we are working, we know when to make things a little more challenging and when to back off a bit, even if the shift is not big enough to show in the numbers.

We are not letting ourselves off the hook when we recognize that any particular day might be a good one to take the shorter run/bike/swim or choose the smaller weights.  We are not being overconfident when we realize that we really have enough in us to tackle the hill route or increase the starting weight.  We know because we are paying attention, and there isn’t a number for that.