Friday, November 18, 2011

Of knowing when to call it a day

So I was happily setting up my barbell for another routine lifting session. Then I started warming up. This time though, it felt weird. Something was off. I couldn't get the rhythm going. Nevermind... I thought. I'll start to get it going once I move on to my work sets.

That didn't happen.

Even after the thurd set I felt weak. Something is just not right. I checked my training journal. Hmmm... It is almost my fourth continuous week of training. That pretty much explained it. It was time to lay off the more intense lifting.

So I took 4 days off from training and started again today. I felt great. The warmups are more explosive. And my worksets went really well. I increased my weights again today. It is not much. It is just a 1kg increment from my previous 8RM but it is still an increment.

What I am trying to get at is that there are times you should push yourself. It is just your mind getting in your way. And there are times your body is trying to tell you to give it a rest.

How do you know when to forge on and when to not risk frying your CNS? Beats me. You'll know when you have a bit of experience under your belt. But a training log does help. You can basically tell when it's time to take a short break by how long have you been training consistently.

Most people will need to take a break after training for 4 to 8 weeks. For me, it seems like I need more frequent short breaks. Not sure why that is, though.

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