March 31: Fatigue

After he uttered my least favorite workout phrase, I promised (warned?) my trainer David that I'd be writing about him today.  David leads the Women On Weights class.  He figures out how much we should be lifting for any given exercise, and tells us how many reps in each set.  I always do my best to give as many as he asks for, even if it means he has to assist when my muscles shake at the end.

What's my least favorite phrase?  "Go to fatigue."  I don't like fatigue.  Fatigue is what I feel an hour after lifting, when my temperature drops and I need to bundle myself in extra layers of clothes.  Fatigue is how I feel at the end of the day when I'm too tired to get myself into bed. 

Fatigue means I've given all I had to give, and I'm afraid that if I invest all my strength into one lift, I won't have anything left for the next exercise.  A devout student of Biggest Loser workouts, I've seen that fatigue can mean puking during cardio.  I don't puke.

Fatigue to me is boundless – I feel like I'm thrown into the middle of an ocean, left to myself to find the shore.  It's a scary place that I need to come to be.  If David says to do 12 or 15, I'm good: even if it means I can barely get through the last several, I've got an end in sight.  Fatigue?  I don't know how to lift to that.

This morning I told David that I hate it when he says to go to fatigue, and bless his heart, without batting an eye he told me to do as many reps as I could on the last set.  And you know what? That helped completely.  In my head I set with a number of reps to shoot for.  Then as I approached that goal, I selected a higher number, and then a higher number.  When my body was telling my brain that it was nearly done, I didn't select a higher number.  I have no wish to injure myself.

Once again I find that I need to work towards positives (getting strong, how many reps, eating healthy) rather than negatives (losing weight, till fatigue, diet).  So much of this process is a mind game.  Luckily the game belongs to each of us, so we can make the rules and fiddle with them, so long as they continue to move us toward our goal.

Doing as many as I could today wasn't any less of a workout than is going to fatigue.  I'm still freezing now, bundled in sweats & slippers; my muscles feel tired; I have a sense of accomplishment; and I'm excited to do it again.  Fatigued – yes; beaten down – no.  J 

~Karin