Three questions to help with judgment

We all have days when working out seems like more trouble than it is worth.  Here are three questions to ask to figure out what to do on those days:

1.     What is the smallest amount of workout that I can do without feeling wiped out?  Maybe we don’t feel up to a whole cardio class, but a walk around the block with the dog is just enough to keep our bodies from getting stiff and bored.

2.     What part am I dreading the most?  Sometimes there is one particular exercise that we just hate.  Knowing this, we can either look for a substitute or get it over with first thing or skip it entirely if necessary.

3.     Will I feel better or worse after I work out?  If we are going to feel better, it’s probably worth it to get our behinds in gear.  If we’re going to feel worse, it might be time to declare a rest day, but we don’t get to do that too often.

Yes, we need to work out.  Yes, sometimes it is hard.  Yes, sometimes we need a break.   We need to use our good judgment to figure out if we are needing rest or a push.

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.

Fight the power...

I may be the only one in the world who calls my Apple Watch my wristy overlord.  It reminds me to stand up every hour.  It lets me know if my activity level is lower than usual for a particular time of day.  It counts my exercise minutes for me, based on my actual heart rate rather than my perceived exertion.  A couple of times a day, it even tells me to breathe mindfully.

It is not that I don’t appreciate its benign despotism.  Most of the time, I find the reminders useful (and slightly less passive aggressive than the ones I used to get from my Fitbit).

However, last week I was sick for much of the week.  I finally had to put the watch in timeout because it was not helping me to have it remind me that I wasn’t really doing much of anything in terms of activity or exercise or even standing up.  It is not useful to feel guilty as well as sick.  We both spent the rest of the week recharging our batteries.

I am probably not the only one in the world who needs to be reminded that we are the boss of ourselves.  We have tools.  When the tools start using us, we need to take a step back (whether it counts or not) and evaluate.

I do not think there is anyone who wants to be fit just to be praised by an inanimate device.  We want fitness so we can stroll the beach at sunset or chase the kids around the yard or have better sex or feel fabulous in our clothes.  Our wristy overlords don’t measure that.