HOW DO EMOTIONS RELATE TO TRAINING CONSISTENCY?

“I just don’t feel like training today.”

“I’m feeling good; I don’t need to train.”

“When I’m stressed, I train too much and then burn out.”

“I’m fighting with my partner or friend; I can’t train when I’m worried/angry.”

“I’m not seeing the results I want; I don’t think this program works.”

“I had a bad week at work.”

“Time to myself feels self-indulgent.”

“When I feel stressed, I don’t train.”

“I had a shit week with food, so what’s the point in training?”

“I had a shit week with food; I need to train more.”

“I made great choices with food, maybe I’ll skip training.”

“I have so many injuries, it feels impossible to go to the gym.”

“Im just not motivated enough”

“I dont even want the result that bad anyway'“

The fitness industry call them excuses and have blamed and shamed people for ‘lack of will power’ and ‘laziness’ for decades and although things are changing this rhetoric is deeply ingrained in the way we think, feel and act around physical practice, but luckily they gave us ‘just do it’, I mean there is nothing like brute force to teach someone something.

Blaming and shaming ourselves with these ideas does not lead to practicing consistency, in anything.

Emotions are powerful, and they can pull us in all sorts of directions if we don’t practice to become aware of them, acknowledge them, seek to understand them, and move with or through them.

Training can be an amazing vehicle to practice our emotional awareness and nervous system regulation.

In some of my clients’ programs, I offer them space to write down a few words describing their emotional, mental, and physical state before they start training. This helps them build awareness of how they feel and use the session to physically attend to that state. I provide structure, but also the flexibility to adjust the session depending on how they’re feeling.

For example, if they feel deflated, they might follow the program but at a slower pace. If they feel heightened or agitated, working hard in the session can help discharge that physical energy—but we also focus on not pushing too hard, so they don’t end up sore for the next week and unable to train.

Along with these program check in and conversations over long periods of time me and my clients to become more aware of the emotions and life events that hinder consistency.

This practice helps me map the landscape of emotional terrain around training, which has been way more help then overriding the nuance with ‘Just do it’.