Category: Fitness

Some workouts, or training sessions as I like to call them, Flat. Out. Suck.

If you’ve ever exercised for any period of time in your life, then you know this to be a fact. Sometimes they get bad enough that you cut the session short and call it a day. Maybe it was because you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Maybe you were a bit under the weather from a cold. Or maybe it was self-induced from a night out with friends. Whatever the reason, it was rough, brutal even.

I actually have a rule for this type of session. And I try to pass the rule along to my clients as well. The scenario goes a little something like this….

1. Going for a run or to go lift (or whatever you do) is the LAST thing you want to do.
2. Lace up and get your butt out there anyways (unless you’re truly really sick or injured or something).
3. Do at least 5 minutes of your workout.
4. If after 5 minutes it is clearly not going to work, then go home.

So why do I have this rule and why the hell haven’t I told you what a punch clock workout is yet? Just hold on a second, I’m getting to that.

So first, why do I have this rule? It’s pretty simple, really. For starters, it keeps you in the HABIT. Just the act of lacing up and heading out is a success because you didn’t break the cycle. I can’t tell you how important this is. I’ve witnessed far too many clients or acquaintances not feel like working out one day and then the next thing you know, 3 months has passed and they’ve fallen out of the habit. You see, I was actually corrected by my girlfriend, Megan when I did one of my Talk Back Tuesday segments on Facebook. I had mentioned that whoever said it takes 3 weeks to build a habit is full of shit. And I stand by that. But here’s where I was wrong and she was right (sounds familiar). I then stated that it takes upwards of 6 months or a year or something to that extent. She corrected me and said, “no, changing a habit is a life long thing. It never really ends”. I’m paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of it. And yep, nail on the head. Couldn’t have said it better myself… because I didn’t, but anyways…

This goes for nutrition as well. I’ve seen so many people eat what they considered to be a “bad” meal or have a weekend binge only to think that they’ve blown the diet. They then go the next week, 2 weeks, or months and beyond eating poorly. Now, did that one meal or poor weekend of eating ruin their diet? No, of course not. Did it help them get closer to their goal? No, but one or two “off” meals won’t really derail you either. The habit that was broken here was not hopping back up on the horse. You need to have amnesia in these situations. You ate it. It was delicious. Don’t feel guilty. Just hop back on and move forward. It’s as easy as that. And yet I still see people falling into the “I’ve blown it” trap. The habit should be to go right back to eating well most of the time. We all have those meals, it’s natural. But the successful ones forget it and move on.

“Okay cool Alec, thanks for the sage advice. Now what the frack is a punch clock workout?!”

I’m glad you asked! The punch clock workout is a term I picked up from Mike Robertson. In essence, it simply means grinding through a training session that totally sucks. You aren’t feeling it that day, but you want to get the workout in. You aren’t able to put full effort into it for whatever reason, but maybe you’ve missed a few sessions lately or you’ll be going on vacation soon. Whatever the reason, you just grit your teeth and bear it. So this obviously comes from the workers who aren’t particularly found of their jobs and more or less go through the motions. Just get through the 9-5. And to be clear this isn’t just for jobs that require your to literally punch in and out, but it seemed to come off the tongue better than “the office assistant who can’t stand his boss, but drudgingly comes in and does the work anyways” workout.

So that’s kind of how I came up with my rule. I was training back in 2011 for the Muncie Half Ironman and was getting some really crappy sessions in. But I figured out that if I had at least put on the shoes and gotten a half mile or so out, that I could grit my way through it. If however, I could tell this was NOT gonna happen, then I’d turn around and head home. But I had to keep the habit, or the cycle, going. And what I found was that I could count on one hand the times I stopped and came home. And this was during a 12 week training cycle that had me doing up to 10-12 training sessions a week. So I didn’t miss very many. And I’d argue strongly that if I had felt like crap and DIDN’T lace up, that I would have needed more hands to count my missed sessions.

So that’s the post this week. Sorry I left you hanging until the end there on the punch clock thing. Hope you picked up a thing or two. Let me know in the comments section if you have any tricks you’ve come up with to keep consistent with either diet, exercise, or both.

Til next week!

Over training. It’s a bit like the Loch Ness Monster, paranormal activity, or Big Foot. We’ve all heard about it before. There are theories as to whether or not it exists. But like the majority of the population’s take on ‘Ole Nessy, I just don’t think it exists.

I’ll pause here for a second as I hear jimmies being rustled.

Okay, look it probably does exist when you look at your extremely high level, pro and Olympic athletes, but I’m not referring to them. I’m talking about regular Joe’s like you and me. A basic physio 101 course is enough to put it to rest, really. We can adapt like you wouldn’t believe to the external stressors that are put on our bodies. Think about it this way. Let’s say you decide to quit your job and become a garbage man. Now, these days a lot of the trucks are fully automated and you don’t have to physically haul the bags in like the old days, so for the sake of this scenario the year is 1996. Anywho, you finish up your first day on the job. The next morning you wake up and….. Whoa! Holy shit you’re sore! Muscles that you didn’t know existed are screaming at you. But guess what, you’ve got to get your ass out of bed anyways and get to work. Can’t call in to the boss on the second day because you’re sore. You just get back to it and suck it up. And you’re probably sore most mornings for about a week or so, but then you adapt and it becomes no big deal.

So if you look at the “total volume” of weight being moved around by the garbage man over the course of the day, some experts would say that he needs at least 24-48 hours of rest in between his shifts or else he’ll run the risk of over training. Really? He’s performing the same move over and over and over for hours on end and he’s just fine. We go to the gym 3-4 times a week or maybe go out and run 3-4 times per week (really just insert whatever it is you do here) and yet if we don’t take time off in between we’ll wind up injured and over trained. I’m just not buying it, man. This, however, is NOT to say that performance may decrease and burnout will likely increase, but I’m saying that you won’t necessarily be over trained assuming your diet is on point and you are getting 7-9 hours or more) of restful sleep at night.

So yes, I understand that exercise merely provides the stimulus for which our bodies can adapt and improve from. But what is the cutoff? How much is too much? And does that change as we continue to become more and more trained? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but I just am having a hard time buying into the whole over training thing.

So this brings me to “de-load” days. The idea behind these is that you build up reps, sets, weights, miles, etc. over a period of time (e.g. 3 weeks) and then you cut way back on those reps, sets, weights, miles, etc. for a week before returning back to the building stage. The idea of this is to give the body ample rest and to prevent over training. And I’m not necessarily knocking it in practice because I certainly believe that it can be highly beneficial. My problem with it is the way we just plug them in to programs. I’ve found that life is really good at providing it’s own stimulus for a de-load week. You get sick. You travel. You’re just not on your A game. Whatever the reason, it’s my personal belief to not predetermine your de-load weeks or rest days. And another aspect of it to consider is that let’s say you are heading into a de-load week and are told to decrease your load by 30%. BUT… you feel freaking awesome! I say screw the program and kill that session. Again, there will be days when you aren’t on a de-load and you feel like pure doo doo butter and will have a crappy session with weights closely resembling that -30% anyways.

So in summary, does over training exist? Yes and no I think. Should it be at least considered? Absolutely. Should de-load weeks be predetermined ahead of time? I think 99% of the time the answer is no. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but for us average folk, I say no.