Why does the same exercise feel easy some days, like painful toil on others?

joowelz

How do you cope on days your body feels like its moving through mud versus air?

Anything i can do to more consistently feel able/energetic?

pridesabtch

Sometimes it my be a hydration or fueling issue. Other times your body might be trying to tell you it's ready for a rest day. I tend to push through and evaluate after. For me it was usually fueling/hydration. I'd work a long day and not get in much water then try to go ride or lift. Legs would feel like lead. If it was time for a rest day I could tell because my recovery time would be longer after the ride.

Just my experience. Good luck!

spiriteagle99

Food, hydration and sleep can be factors affecting your workouts. So is stress. Some days you just have to deal with the consequences of having a busy life. If I have been sitting for a long time, it takes a long time for my body to loosen up. On those days I try to do a longer walking warmup before starting my run. Then again, if I work out hard one day, the next I will likely have a lot less energy. If I have had too many hard workouts during a week, my mind will fight me on starting another. If I just plan to do something easy, then I can usually get over the block, but not always. I still do the workout, but it may be a slog.

And then there are some days that are difficult for no obvious reason, they just are.

cwolfman13

joowelz wrote: »

How do you cope on days your body feels like its moving through mud versus air?

Anything i can do to more consistently feel able/energetic?

There are about a million variables here. Sleep quality, nutrition, appropriate calories, appropriate rest and recovery days, hydration, etc. Sometimes it's just a bad day...everyone has them. Most of my exercise is some variety of cycling and somedays I just don't have legs...it happens...so I just go easy.

What is your current fitness level and exercise experience. Common mistakes fitness novices make include:

• Working beyond one's current fitness level...people have a tendency to want to go from zero to all of the exercise overnight. Fitness is something that is built up over time.
• Engaging in or attempting to engage in strenuous/rigorous effort exercise every training bout. Ideally you would want to engage in various levels of intensity throughout the week to keep yourself fresh and recovered.
• Neglecting rest/recovery days. Your need for rest and recovery days is highly dependent on your current fitness level and the exercise you are doing and the intensity in which you are doing it. If you're engaging in a lot of strenuous efforts, you are going to need more recovery days. A rest/recovery day can mean doing nothing at all or doing exercise that is of low intensity like going for a walk, doing some yoga, engaging in some light recreational activity like a family bike ride, etc.

IAmTheGlue

idk about you, but for me, it’s my diet and sleep. I’m a hydrohomie… guzzling water all day long. If I don’t, I feel like crap so I feel like I’m well hydrated, most of the time.

But, I’m muddling through today as well. But, my husband couldn’t sleep last night at all, so I could not sleep either. He’s up and down, up and down… and my nutrition is off. I was absolutely ravenous at 10 am when I usually eat at 11 so I paid attention to my body to give it the actual fuel it needs.

But also…. Do you legitimately need rest? I truly struggle with allowing myself to not only sit down, but to truly rest.

NorthCascades

joowelz wrote: »

How do you cope on days your body feels like its moving through mud versus air?

Anything i can do to more consistently feel able/energetic?

This happens when I've built up too much cumulative fatigue. Yesterday I wasn't able to get my heart rate up very high despite charging up hills, which is a sign of overtraining. Today I've just been juggling kittens.

claireychn074

I think juggling kittens sounds like a perfect rest day activity!

I’m frequently surprised by my body. I can be tired, out of sorts and not well nourished and yet somehow have a brilliant session. Other days I feel great, have slept and eaten well and am hungry to work out hard. Then I just bomb, can’t lift well, things feel extra heavy 🤷‍♂️ So I try to just roll with it, lift heavy and fast when I’m able and dial it back when I’m sluggish. I also find my cycle affects my ability to lift and I do try to factor that in.

MikePfirrman

I had a day like that yesterday. During the Summers, I do a 30 minute row in my garage. I live in Tucson. As in Arizona. It was 102 today but I plant next to an Evaporate Cooler. Helps a ton but still only gets the heat down to around 94.

Now, I'm fairly used to this stuff. But yesterday, during my Steady State day, it was a total slog. Just dreadful. Today was same temp, same row and I was 2 seconds faster on pace and my HR stayed down better the entire time.

Could have been a couple of things (but you'll just have days like that) for me. My cat kept getting me up the night before the day I had issues. She was auditioning for the Meow Mix cat commercial telling me all night that something in her world wasn't right (she's a diva and I'm her human). The other possibility (also likely) is that yesterday was after my brutally hard day on Tuesdays. My Tuesdays and Fridays are, by far, my hardest workout days. My HR always is higher and it always feels hardish to maintain pace on Wed (I take Saturday off every week so it's only really Wed it seems to happen most often).

If you're new to exercise, ask yourself if you're doing too much first. Taking your HR first thing in the AM, even before getting out of bed, is a good indicator if you're working out too hard. Once you get a pattern of where your "resting HR" is, if it's elevated one morning, likely means you're working out too hard and need to back off for a bit.

As you get in better shape, these days should be less and less. I'm a firm believer in "polarized training" -- I do cardio six days a week. Two hard and four that aren't supposed to be -- I'm also terrible at discipline. The easy days should be kept very easy if you have hard days. Until you do cardio consistently for around a year, you shouldn't really have that many (or any) hard days. If you only do cardio 3 times a week, it doesn't hurt to make those HIIT type sessions. But if you do more, you need to control around 2/3 of your days to lighter days.

Consistency is key. I never ever thought I'd be a cardio buff, but I can't do without it now. Or weights for that matter. Feeling tired means you're working. When you stop feeling tired or dragging, it means you need to challenge yourself more.

westrich20940

Anytime I notice this it has almost 100% of the time been a hydration and/or fueling issue.

I can run 8 miles and feel like it's easy and I'm cruising. I can do the exact same route 8 mile run and feel like I'm dying. In those situations I look back at the past few days and think about whether I ate enough and was hydrated well....usually I will find I wasn't. I'll also add that the temperature and humidity also significantly effect energy levels during an outdoor workout, at least.

nossmf

Looking just at a weight-lifting workout, I keep a log of every workout. Among other reasons, this serves as a starting point for the next time I do the same workout. Within this log I have a goal weight and reps, with a range on either side. If I'm on point, I can hit the listed weights/reps.

If I'm feeling blah, I allow myself to knock off up to 10% of weight or 20% of the reps (5 becomes 4, 10 becomes 8, etc). This way I'm still working, just not as hard if I'm not feeling it.

Days where I'm feeling like a beast I can go up 5% weight; it takes going up in three consecutive workouts for me to raise the central goal weight permanently. This way I know I'm actually ready for that higher weight, rather than go up after a single workout and struggle the next.

kshama2001

For me this is due to lack of sleep. I wouldn't dream of doing the same level of activity on a sleep-deprived day as a full energy day.

allaboutthecake

I get like this on super hot humid days when cycling. Feel like I got legs of lead. Beginning of ride, I take a one-half extra-strength Excedrin pill (so I don't load up the kidneys on just 1 ingredient), and add a flavor to my water bottle. then mid-ride I'll hit up a cold can of V-8 juice...something about all that salt & vitamins. if I can't get to a V-8, I'll get a Simply Orange bottle of OJ. That usually does the trick. If its a super longer ride, I'll take the other half of the Excedrin, but usually its just the first half that helps.