We live in a culture, where for most people, the gym is a necessary component of day to day life. Many of us do not have physically demanding jobs or hobbies that build muscle or even burn too many calories. Days look like: sleeping (probably poorly), sitting to drink coffee, sitting in the car on the way to work, sitting at work, sitting in the car on the way home, maybe a short 10 minute walk, sitting for dinner, and sitting on the couch watching tv. Hopefully you noticed a trend.
This creates a demand. A demand for some kind of physical stress/stimulus that is both engaging and effective in building muscle/burning energy.
Enter the gym. Machines, barbells, sweat, discomfort. All of the above.
Inevitably though, the gym just becomes a place where you get burnt out from and return back to the old sitting habits from before.
This blog is meant to help overcome that gym burnout. Pick one or two of these ideas, apply them to your fitness routine, and see where the results lie 3 months down the road.
How Do We Get to Burnout
This idea of getting sick and tired of going to the gym usually comes from a few places.
- Too much intensity
- Too high expectations
- Boredom
The above is not an exhaustive list, but it certainly covers the basics.
Each of the four items are also usually a different manifestation of a similar problem: ego.
Solve It: Too Much Intensity
In CrossFit, this looks like you end of lying flat on your back after every single workout or soreness that is *constantly* lasting several days.
One solution I like to apply in this case is to workout just hard enough that you could still come back tomorrow.
What does this look like? Well, it looks like usually a little bit of soreness or stiffness in the day after a workout, but not the kind of feeling that would discourage you from getting back to the gym.
Likewise, in the name off too much heart rate intensity, it also looks like still having energy throughout the day to complete your daily responsibilities. If you are leaving every workout and crashing every day, you might have an intensity problem with your workouts.
A good way to manage this sensation, without any additional tech purchases, is to consider your conversation level during and at the end of every workout. Use this chart as an example:
If you are experiencing the sensation of maximum or even vigorous in every session, then you might want to throttle back your intensity to be moderate during a few more sessions.
Solve It: Too much expecatation
Competition, aesthetics, outcomes, programming. The list surrounding expectations is long and expansive. For the purpose of this, I am going to keep the thought process a little more broad.
Expectations can be defined as a foregone conclusion that something will happen or should be the case in the future.
The expectation that you will be better than other people in the gym because you train regularly.
The expectation that you will look a certain way if you just train hard enough.
The expectation that you will lift a certain weight.
The expectation that the workouts you are given will be perfect every time.
Unfortunately, the gym doesn’t work this way.
There will always be people who are better, look better, lift heavier, and have better workouts than you, in spite of not looking like they are trying nearly as hard.
The solution to this problem can be simple. First, is awareness – to recognize the things you are chasing after and audit whether or not they truly serve you. Then, is to evaluate and adjust what it is you are looking to accomplish. This might have a competitive or aesthetic goal associated with it. That is fine. The crucial part to remember though is that the competitive or aesthetic goal should not drive you so far to feel discouraged or resentful of your training.
At the end of the day, the gym serves as a place to improve the experience of your day to day life. Approach it that way.
Solve It: Boredom
The gym is a novel idea for a lot of people just starting out on their fitness journey. Progress happens monthly, weekly, even daily at times. The exercises are new and bring a mental challenge/stimulus. The relationships and the routines are also new and break up what was feeling mundane.
The problem though, is that each of those descriptions can become mundane in their own right. Progress slows down if not stalls. Exercises become repeated or over used. Relationships and routines either fall away or lose their luster.
One of the best ways I have found to solve boredom is to take a learning approach to every day of training. I ask myself the following questions: What can I learn about myself from this training session? How can I get better at [movement]? How can I connect with someone I don’t know as well in the class that I am attending?
Though it is not a perfect solution, I have found that this approach helps me keep training novel, even though I have been doing it in some way for most of my life.
The ability to keep things new and fresh is a skill that I have had to develop, and I encourage you to try to hone yours as well.
Burnout in the Gym
The world is full of cancelled gym memberships from ranges of burnout.
It is work to solve the problem, but I promise that your future self will thank you for taking the time.
Book a call with a coach today to challenge your experience with burnout in the gym.
