Fitness Volt
  • Bodybuilding
  • Powerlifting
  • Strongman
  • Workouts
    • Training
    • Exercise Guides
    • Workout Plans
    • Celebrity Workouts
    • Training Programs
  • Nutrition
    • Supplements
    • Diet
    • Diet Plans
    • Nutrition Tips
    • Food Facts
  • More
    • CrossFit
    • News
      • Results
      • Mr. Olympia 2022
      • 2022 WSM
      • Arnold Classic
    • Fitness Calculator
    • Profiles
    • Motivation
    • Videos
    • MMA
    • Deals
  • Reviews
No Result
View All Result
Fitness Volt
  • Bodybuilding
  • Powerlifting
  • Strongman
  • Workouts
    • Training
    • Exercise Guides
    • Workout Plans
    • Celebrity Workouts
    • Training Programs
  • Nutrition
    • Supplements
    • Diet
    • Diet Plans
    • Nutrition Tips
    • Food Facts
  • More
    • CrossFit
    • News
      • Results
      • Mr. Olympia 2022
      • 2022 WSM
      • Arnold Classic
    • Fitness Calculator
    • Profiles
    • Motivation
    • Videos
    • MMA
    • Deals
  • Reviews
No Result
View All Result
Fitness Volt
No Result
View All Result
OP-EDOP-ED

If You Feel Like You’re Going To Die, You’re Doing It Wrong

Are you working hard or working smart?

Emily Beers

Written by Emily Beers

Last Updated onNovember 25, 2020

Working Hard Or Working Smart

(Image via @brookewellss & CrossFit Inc)

What’s the workout?

A new client of mine, and self-self-proclaimed cardio junkie, asked me that the other day after doing five heavy sets of five front squats, supersetted with dumbbell shoulder presses, before hitting a fifteen-minute, every minute on the minute piece of 3-5 strict pull-ups, 5-10 push-ups, and 10-20 hollow rocks.

What do you mean, ‘What’s the workout?’ I asked her.

Well my heart rate didn’t ever get very high. I’m barely breaking a sweat and I feel pretty recovered, she replied.

So you need to feel like you were hit by a bus to feel like you put in a useful workout?

Well, not hit by a bus, but yeah, I need to feel like I worked hard.

…And, coaches everywhere breathe a collective sigh.

The thing about intensity

Have you ever been in an emotionally volatile relationship, filled with ups and downs, but with a serious amount of intensity? So much so that you confuse intensity with love? 

News flash: Intensity doesn’t equal intimacy. 

What does this have to do with working out?

Many people confuse intensity with effectiveness, but just like the destructive, uber- intense relationship, intensity all the time at the gym can be destructive, especially to your long-term development.

Side Plank Exercise

Where did this intensity all the time idea come from?

The rise in popularity of high intensity, HIT workouts—be it CrossFit or Orange Theory—are at least partly to be blamed for the myth that a training session should always make you nauseous to the point of puking, for it to be effective.

This myth couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s consider a sports analogy: Think about a sport like football. A football player’s training to competition ratio is probably 15 to one, meaning for every game, they log 15 training sessions.

Seems low, but think about it. A football player might play 16 games all season, yet he trains five days a week, 50 weeks of the year (let’s assume he takes two weeks completely off at some point). This means they do 250 training sessions for every 16 games.

A sport like gymnastics is even more extreme. High-level gymnasts train 30-plus hours a week, and they compete usually less than 10 times in a season.

The point is, it’s important to understand the distinction between game day or test day, and training. This is as true for high-level athletes as it is for gym goers looking to get fit, and especially to stay fit for the long-term.

It’s during training, not during test days or game days, where the gains are made. 

If you test yourself everyday, you are:

  • More likely to get injured, because you’re never working on technique or fixing weaknesses because you’re always competing.
  • Less likely to see results, because you’re not following a well thought out, progressive training program designed for long-term development. You’re simply showing up and hitting it hard (but not smart). In other words, you’re dabbling.
Brooke Wells at CrossFit Games 2020
Photo via of CrossFit Inc.

Coach insight: I have worked with dozens of clients in my 11 years of coaching, who want every day to be the hardest workout of their lives, and who stick around after their training session and hit extra conditioning pieces to feel like they got a good workout. These clients don’t stick around. Some might last a couple years, but they eventually burn out or get injured and move on. 

Meanwhile, those who understand the distinction between training and testing and have embraced the slower path to long term success, are still with me today. Pretty much across the board. 

Also read: 5 Rowing Mistakes You’re Probably Making 

A smart training program is: individualized and progressive

1. Individualized

Sorry group fitness lovers, we’re not all created equal. For a training program to be effective, especially in the long term, it needs to take into consideration the individual’s strengths, weaknesses, goals and priorities. 

Best case scenario: You work with a coach who puts you through a thorough assessment that looks at how your move, your work capacity, your body composition, your diet, your lifestyle, your priorities and goals.

2. Progressive

Sorry dabblers, you can only make gains showing up to the gym and dabbling with random workouts for so long.

Eventually you’ll plateau, and likely burn out and get injured, if you’re dabbling with random, high-intensity workouts day-after-day.

An effective program should meet you where you’re at—both physically and mentally—and slowly and systematically move you to where you want to go, in a progressive fashion. 

Think of it like university: If you jumped into a 400-level course before taking the necessary prerequisites, you would be lost.

So why are you trying to snatch before you can put your hands over your head while keeping a neutral spine without using any weight at all?

Warning: Some days you might not feel like you’re working hard enough because 5 sets of 5 at 60 percent of your three-rep max back squat might feel fairly easy. Other days, intensity will feel non-existent as you’ll be working on, for example, seemingly tedious banded exercises to get your lats more engaged, or drills to help you maintain a hollow body position in a handstand.

If you feel like you’re not doing enough, remember, smart training, not competing, is the secret ingredient to long term results. Just ask any Olympic or professional athlete.

PRO TIP: Figure out what your real goals are and why

Another reason so many people have become dabblers who just want hard workouts is because they don’t even really know why they’re at the gym in the first place.

This comes down to not being in tune with their why, or their true intention.

Sure, people might say they want to lose weight or gain strength, but it ends there.

Sometimes even those superficial goals are misguided, or at the very least, misunderstood: I have worked with clients who, once we dig a little deeper, realize they’re chasing a goal they used to want and no longer care about. Or they’re chasing a goal they think they should want to achieve, but they aren’t willing to do what it takes to achieve it. 

As a result, their actions don’t match their goal, and they end up showing up without focus and assume if they crush themselves, they did something useful.

Tempo Training

For example, I had a client once tell me her goal was to get her first pull-up, but then she never followed through on the steps required to get the pull-up. Meanwhile, another client told me she wanted to come to the gym five days a week, but she only ever made it once a week and was constantly embarrassed and ashamed when she saw me because she felt like a failure. 

Digging a little deeper, turns out the pull-up girl only said she wanted to get a pull-up because she thought that’s what I wanted to hear, and the woman who said she wanted to come five days a week realized that was way too aggressive of a goal for her work and child-raising schedule as a single mom. Adjusting their goals helped them stay more accountable to them and achieve more success. 

As I mentioned, figuring out what you truly want out of the gym involves digging a little deeper. 

OK, why do you want to lose weight?

When I have gone down this path with clients, when we really investigate into the why, we can finally get somewhere. I have one client breakdown and admit the reason she wanted to lose weight was because her daughter didn’t trust her to babysit her young grand-daughter, because she didn’t think she could keep up with a 3-year-old.

Admitting this to me helped her realize how important this goal of getting healthy really was to her. “I want to be able to take care of my granddaughter” is a much more powerful why, than “I want to lose weight.” 

Once you know why you’re at the gym — it’s not just because you want to crush yourself with a hard workout — then you can create alignment in your life that takes into consideration your priorities and goals. 

Bottom line: It’s OK if you aren’t committed to getting a pull-up. The key is figuring out what you really want and what you’re willing to do, and then your actions have a much better chance of lining up with what you really want to achieve.

Also read: Three Common Interval Training Mistakes You Might be Making

For the latest news and updates please follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook Twitter Reddit Flipboard LinkedIn
Categories: OP-ED Training Training Exercises
Previous Post

Strongman Athlete Gabriel Pena Pulls 1,145 lbs/520kgs Deadlift Off Blocks

Next Post

Powerlifter Kristy Hawkins Finally Breaks 600lb Deadlift Barrier With Huge 606lb Pull

Emily Beers

Emily Beers

Emily Beers is a health, fitness and nutrition writer. She has also been coaching fitness at MadLab School of Fitness in Vancouver, B.C. since 2009. A former college basketball player and rower, Emily became heavily involved in CrossFit after finishing her Masters degree in journalism at the University of Western Ontario. She competed at the 2014 CrossFit Games and also worked with CrossFit Inc.'s media team for eight years. You can also find her work at Morning Chalk Up, Barbend, Precision Nutrition, Breaking Muscle and a host of other fitness and nutrition companies and media outlets.

Recommended For You

Buttery Bros Recap 2022 Crossfit Games

Buttery Bros Recap 2022 CrossFit Games On The Ground In Documentary Vlog

Buttery Bros, who are well-known for their comedy-infused fitness brand, released a documentary-style vlog recapping the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games...

2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games

Athletes Win Historic Payout at 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games

The 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games presented a sum of $2.8 million in total payouts across every division. The total prize...

Rich Froning Legacy

Rich Froning Achieves A Decade Of Dominance With 4 Individual & 6 Team CrossFit Games Titles

Every sport has at least one athlete that is considered the Greatest Of All Time due to his incredible longevity...

Tia Clair Toomey Greatest Athlete

Where Does Tia-Clair Toomey Rank in Terms of CrossFit Greatness?

The 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games awarded Tia-Clair Toomey her sixth title as the Fittest Woman on Earth, another medal to...

Justin Medeiros Wins Crossfit Games 2022

Justin Medeiros Wins 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games To Defend His Title At Only 23-Years-Old

As Justin Medeiros demonstrated last year, winning many events is not the only way to be successful in CrossFit, since...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest

At-Home Leg Workouts

At-Home Leg Workouts For A Stronger Lower Body

2022 Pacific USA Pro Results

2022 Pacific USA Pro Results and Scorecard

2022 Musclecontest Goiania Results

2022 Musclecontest Goiania Pro Results and Scorecard

Recent Reviews

Turkesterone vs. Ecdysterone

Turkesterone vs. Ecdysterone — Which is Better?

Best Cereals

Best Cereals for Muscle and Strength Gain & Taste

Best Protein Chips

8 Best Protein Chips of 2022 (Tasted and Ranked)

Fitness Volt

At FitnessVolt.com Our mission is to help our readers to achieve their fitness goals, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, we are on a mission to educate You with the latest from strength and fitness space. Read more.

Email: sm(at)fitnessvolt.com

Disclosure: FitnessVolt.com has an affiliate relationship with different brands and is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. However, our reviews are based on well research backed analysis.

Follow Us

Trending Topics

  • Mr. Olympia
  • Bodybuilding
  • Strongman
  • Powerlifting
  • CrossFit
  • At Home Workouts
  • Bodyweight Exercises
  • Best Pre-workout
  • Best Fat Burners
  • Bodybuilding Diet
  • Bicep Workouts
  • Triceps Workouts
  • Chest Exercises
  • Back Workouts
  • Leg Workouts
  • Front Squat Guide
  • Calf Workouts & Exercises
  • Forgotten Exercises
  • Jefferson Deadlift

Calculators

  • Calorie Burning Calculators
  • IF Calculator
  • TDEE Calculator
  • Calorie Calculator
  • Keto Calculator
  • RMR Calculator
  • Macronutrient Calculator
  • Creatine Calculator
  • Wilks Calculator
  • EER Calculator
  • FFMI Calculator
  • IBW Calculator
  • LBM Calculator
  • Fat Intake Calculator
  • Calories Burned Swimming
  • Calories Per Meal Calculator

  • Food Nutrition Analysis
  • Carb Cycling Calculator
  • Weight Gain Calculator
  • Weight Loss Calculator
  • Calories Burned Calculator
  • Strength Standards
  • One Rep Max Calculator
  • Body Fat Calculator
  • EER Calculator
  • Weight Loss Percentage
  • Treadmill Calorie Calculator
  • Body Surface Area Calculator
  • Running Pace Calculator
  • Bench Press Calculator
  • Protein Calculator
  • Water Intake Calculator
  • Body Type Quiz
  • Steps to Miles Calculator
  • Calorie Deficit Calculator
  • Home
  • About
  • Jobs
  • Accessibility
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Syndication
  • Sitemap
  • DMCA
  • Copyrights
  • Terms
  • Privacy

© Copyright 2010 - 2022 Fitness Volt IBC. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Bodybuilding
  • Powerlifting
  • Strongman
  • CrossFit
  • Workouts
  • Mr. Olympia
  • Exercise Guides
    • Arms
    • Back
    • Chest
    • Core
    • Legs and Glutes
    • Shoulders
  • Training
  • Nutrition
  • Reviews
  • More
    • 2022 WSM
    • Diet
    • News
    • Arnold Classic
    • Motivation
    • Videos
    • Food Facts
    • Deals
    • Fitness Calculator

© Copyright 2010 - 2022 Fitness Volt IBC. All Rights Reserved.