Lately, I’ve become burned out on training. Worst I’ve felt in the seventeen years I’ve been at it, actually.
Not physically. I’m healthy and uninjured (aside from the little aches and pains that are par for the course when you train hard, and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise). Performance in the gym is a solid “OK”, and I’ve recently set a number of personal bests I am very happy with.
What I’ve got right now is a “mental problem”. My motivation to train is at an all time low; and for probably the last four months, I have dreaded going to the gym and doing my runs. I’ve still got on and done them because I have a moral obligation to set an example, but I’ve hated pretty much every second.
I don’t know exactly why I feel this way, although I suspect it’s a combination of my age, the fact I have three kids five and under, and plain ol’ boredom from doing broadly the same stuff week in, week out for nearly two decades.
Excuse me, I am whining.
The good news is, like any training-related problem, “I’m bored and I hate it” also has a solution.
And that is to just mess around for a little while, albeit in a semi-structured fashion.
Specifically, what I am doing now and will probably do until at least the end of summer is:
* Lift three days weekly instead of my usual two (meaning I don’t have to pack as many exercises into my sessions to hit my whole body sufficiently over the week),
* Build those lifting sessions around the lifts I most enjoy (which for me are push presses and back squats),
* Try new and unusual things (e.g. one arm barbell deadlifts and Zercher squats),
* Fill the remainder of the workouts with LIGHT assistance work (pullups, rows, arms, abs – you the idea); with what and how much depending on my energy levels, mood, and what is tickling my pickle on any given day, and…
* Reduce essential but dull-as-dishwater steady state cardio to the absolute bare minimum (in other words, I ain’t gonna be running more than three miles in one go for the foreseeable).
I’ve trained this way before (minus the cardio because I was in my “lazy and stupid” phase) when I’ve landed in similar psychological ruts, and it very quickly got me out of them.
The catch (‘cuz there’s ALWAYS a catch)?
Like HIIT, this is one of those training methods you have to “earn the right” to undertake.
Reason I say that is, absent a firm foundation of strength and competence you’ll be unable to get much, if anything, out of the “fun” lifts that are a large part of why this way of training works… and… without knowledge and experience you’ll just end up creating wildly unbalanced routines that are full of inefficient, ineffective junk work – meaning you’ll probably just get even more frustrated through lack of progress while also putting yourself at tremendous risk of injury.
Sorry ‘bout that.
But if variety is something you are interested in, you will certainly find it inside “Phil Tyreman’s Big Book of Fitness” because it’s a collection of five of my books containing so many programmes to adapt or follow I can’t be bothered to count them.
Unlike a lot of my books, it’s also very inexpensive.
More info about the book here:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/big/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman