What Does “listen to Your Body” Really Mean?
In the fitness world, people often say that you should “listen to your body” when deciding what to do if you are not feeling well. This advice often boils down to being allowed to take a day off, which is certainly a valid option in many cases.
But “listen to your body” does not mean “take a day off if you don’t feel 100%”. This involves a relationship in which our brain pushes us to work, while our body is like a stubborn donkey – sometimes it obeys, sometimes it sits down and refuses to budge.
Our bodies are strong, beautiful and resilient, and if you really listen to your body, you may find that you are capable of more than you think. Sure, your body can tell you when to take a break, but your body can also tell you when it’s up to a challenge.
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Anyone who has trained long enough will have a story like this: I felt a little shitty, but I came to training anyway. When I started working, I really felt pretty good, and in the end I set a personal best. Seriously, if you don’t recognize yourself here, ask around. This has happened to me several times, and someday it will happen to you, if you give yourself the opportunity.
Here’s how I approach days when I feel pain, fatigue, or mild weather:
- If I have a workout planned, I will come no matter what.
- I don’t let my brain guess how my body will feel; I wait for my body to tell me.
Let’s say today is squat day, but I’ve made some bad decisions in my life. Maybe yesterday I did something that worked my quads more than I expected, and then I didn’t get enough sleep. I’m tired, lethargic, and my legs hurt when I go down the stairs.
But I still come. I know I had a lot of good workouts on the days I thought were bad, and if I don’t squat today it will ruin my schedule for the rest of the week. (If I have the opportunity to change from a tough day to an easy one, I can do it, but I’m not going to skip a workout right away.)
What then? I’m starting to warm up. I take an empty barbell and do a few squats with it. I ask myself how I feel. So far, so good? If so, I continue.
Now I could think all the time: “Wow, I probably won’t be able to get close to the numbers that I planned for today.” But I know that if I reach a weight that I really can’t handle, I will back down. So I continue.
I load the bar a little more and ask my body: how does it feel? If ok, I’ll add more. How about this?
You see where this is going. If I can do each set safely and without any significant pain, I continue. I don’t ask myself if I would like to stop, I ask myself if this is the point where I should stop. More often than not, my body says, “Yeah, it’s okay.”
The soreness tends to subside as you warm up and get the job done, so I’m not surprised if I can do a full workout according to the program. (If your workouts are programmed with RPE , your workout is even easier as they automatically scale to suit you.)
But sometimes you need a little less than what is programmed. Maybe I should be working up to 80% sets of my maximum, but when I get to 75% I can say that this is all I have in me. This is fine; I really listened to my body, and it told me what it is capable of today. In other words, believe in your strength and resilience. When you listen to your body, make sure you ask it what it can do , not just what it cannot.