Not Just a Man's World

Last weekend I cracked. 

On the Saturday I finally admitted a temporary defeat and decided to completely re-write the training program from scratch.  I had two main reasons:

1. work-related things at the moment mean that it would be handy to have a bodyweight equipment-free workout that will be effective and which I can bring out whenever I need it – a completely new program like this needs a testing period of a few weeks to make sure it is effective and none of the exercises start to aggravate anything (eg. does it contain more push ups than my elbows can survive?); and
2. I couldn’t face my workouts any more.

A few weeks ago I started struggling to motivate myself to go into the gym and do my workouts.  I would do my first warm up set of squats and feel the enthusiasm drain out of me, or not even get as far as the gym before I felt my heart sink. 

I tried to fire up some fun by reintroducing Farmer’s Bars but that wasn’t enough.  I’ve been doing the same workout pattern, very successfully, for nearly five months and mentally I have just had enough of going into the gym and doing almost the same thing every week with some minor variations to assistance exercises.

On Saturday afternoon I was standing on the threshold of the gym, depressed at the thought of starting and wishing I was doing something else with my life.  It was time to change the program.

Losing the plot entirely

On Sunday I then tried to do day two of the exciting new workout.  There were brand new exercises and exercises I’d not done since 2009.  And there were pull ups.

The previous weekend I’d had a disappointing showing of 7×3 reps and 3×2 reps on my ten sets – at the time I had put this poor performance down to post holiday issues since I routinely lose a lot of lat strength while away on active holidays (a problem I need to solve).  On Sunday I set out to significantly improve yet the ten sets looked like 5×3, 1×2, 4×1 – a massive loss of strength on the previous week.

Needless to say I burst into tears, although in my defence I was suffering from PMT as well.

Is work to blame?

I am, unfortunately for my gym work, a conscientious employee.  I work hard, do my job and, if something goes wrong with the staffing on my projects, I’ll do whatever needs to be done to make sure that we still meet the deadlines.

Recently we’ve had a lot of junior staff unavailable due to training, holidays or secondments.  Suddenly a batch of urgent deadlines came up and there was nowhere for the work to go.  I don’t blame my employer for this – sometimes things just don’t work out the way you intended. 

No-one could anticipate that one project, originally with a 30 June deadline when three people were around, would have a hiatus with the deadline moving to 26 July and only one week’s notice when all staff were on holiday or sick.  No-one was to know that an annual recurring project, for which I’d diligently trained up two staff members, would come through a week late with only two days left to complete it – two days that coincided with one staff member being ill and the other having just gone on holiday. 

Getting the work-life balance wrong

Thanks to these sorts of issues, my last seven weeks have each been 50-55 hour work-weeks except for week three (holiday) and week five (ill for four days).  Once you take into account time to sleep, eat, travel and shower there isn’t much time left in the day.  On top of that, the stress levels mean that even in those few free moments my brain never really switches off. 

The impact on the rest of my life includes:

• Poor quality sleep, waking up frequently and unable to sleep for the full night;
• Missed workouts;
• Inability to recover from workouts;
• Lost enthusiasm to do anything outside work (including workouts);
• Apparent loss of strength in the gym;
• Mental exhaustion when faced with anything outside of normality or office work;
• Tension and knots in my shoulder, impairing my ability to do effective upper body workouts (as much from the hours spent sitting at my desk as from the stress);
• Cascading stress about everything else I’m not getting done at home (eg. missed/failed workouts, filthy kitchen, no clean clothes left to wear etc).

Fighting the guilt-factor

There are limited solutions to this issue since giving up work or changing to a completely stress-free job is a non-negotiable option right now.

I was amused to read a scenario from Poliquin.  In it he robustly pushes back on a woman who has missed workouts because she “doesn’t have time”.  In reality, most women feel these contradictory pressures and it can be difficult to find time for ourselves. 

I struggle to express to Chris the levels of guilt I feel when I no longer find time to wash clothes, iron shirts, wash the dishes, clean the kitchen and the myriad of other things I do.  The guilt I feel when he does some of them instead to take the pressure off me.

It’s ridiculous to feel guilty – we both know that if I don’t have some time to relax or do personal things like workouts or blog posts I end up in a downwards spiral of depression.  However, it’s a curse of guilt which seems to plague plenty of women.

Get it right!

For the conscientious woman (or man) who wants to remain in robust health, enjoy non-work activities and/or maintain progress in the gym we must consider our work-life balance.  There will be times, like those I’ve just been through, when the pressures are difficult to avoid but when that happens we ought to take action to resolve issues as quickly as possible and not let it become normality.

So far this week I’ve found two hours to try a taster session of Krav Maga and tonight I plan a long soak in the bath.  It’s a long climb back through recovery though and it’s a hard lesson that has impacted excessively on both my health and fitness during the learning process.

Related posts:

1. A day in the life
2. Increasing work capacity
3. Lessons learned: getting work capacity right!
4. Self massage for a busy life