Do You Always Need to be Making Progress in the Gym? When to Push and When to Maintain
When it comes to building size and strength in the gym, we’re beholden to the laws of progressive overload. In lay terms, if you want to change your body, you have to give it a reason to change. In the case of brawn, this means applying a stimulus (training), and your body, clever thing that it is, adapts to that stimulus by growing bigger muscles or making you more efficient at using the ones you already have. That’s the overload part.
The bad news is that once we’ve adapted to that particular stimulus, it probably isn’t going to cut the mustard next time around, so we have to up the ante if we want to keep seeing changes. This is where the ‘progressive’ part comes in. There are a few ways to approach this, but the most obvious are: more reps, bigger weights and longer distances. All on repeat.
Paying attention to these variables will quickly eke out incremental gains, and if you’re seeing progress in the notebook, progress in the mirror won’t be far behind.
The issue is, I do think something often gets smuggled in with this way of thinking that if left unchecked, can actually hamper our wellbeing. It’s the notion that forward momentum must always be maintained. When it comes to working out, we can start to believe that we must be getting bigger and stronger – or running faster and further – at all times, or else what’s the point?
All of us get into fitness to improve our quality of life; I don’t think there’s any arguing that. But if you’re not careful, measuring your biceps and waistline can begin to take precedence over your felt sense of wellbeing.
This bait and switch, left unaddressed, can lead us to pursue surrogate objectives at all costs, sometimes at the expense of our original intention to simply make our lives a little nicer. Even if we’re smashing our goals into smithereens, if our lives as a whole aren’t improving – or worse, we’re making undue sacrifices in the pursuit of a bigger squat or deadlift – then every PB can become a pyrrhic victory.
To ground this in a very British metaphor: we can get so wrapped up in making and improving the world’s best teapot that we forget all we wanted was a nice cuppa.
This phenomenon isn’t restricted to our workouts. We all do things every day, ostensibly in the pursuit of achieving a better life somewhere off in the future, that make the life we have right now a more difficult experience than it otherwise needs to be.
It’s easy to forget that there’s a difference between doing as much as possible for progress and doing as much as necessary for a contented, healthy life. It’s okay to say, ‘I’m happy with this. It’s giving me what I need, and that’s enough.’ Bench-press max, body fat, bank balance, career status – whatever it may be.
The science seems to bear this out, too. A recent meta-analysis of over 30 years of evidence looked at the effect of intrinsic versus extrinsic aspirations on wellbeing and concluded that intrinsic motivations (growth, relationships, community and health) were linked with positive wellbeing, whereas more external-based goals were found to be ‘universally detrimental, linking negatively to wellbeing'.
A lot of this boils down to how you relate to progress. You may get your kicks from incremental gym gains – and that’s great. But don’t assume the relationship between your strength in the gym and your happiness and health will always trend upwards in a linear fashion.
How to make sure you're not prioritising gains over the good life
Everyday Wins
Instead of linking your happiness to the weight on the bar (or scales), look for other victories, such as how much easier everyday tasks feel, or the energy you have when you eat mindfully.
Mood Monitoring
Use a journal (no one has to know) to keep track of your wellbeing across the week and look for trends in training and nutrition. Is agonising over a faster min/km goal costing you in ‘smiles per hour’?
Play Time
Enjoy your training and pay attention to how an unstructured approach makes you feel. Try new moves while still pushing yourself and note how you don’t lose your gains overnight.
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