Mind Over Matter

When I woke up this morning, I felt terrible. My head felt heavy and my throat was still sore - kept me from getting a good night's sleep! I wanted to go to the gym and do workout B of NROL4W as I had planned, but my body was saying - sleep! You need more rest! Part of me thought - you really should listen to your body and get the rest, while the other part of me was saying - get to the gym. Do your workout. You'll feel better once you've done it.

I listened to the latter part and went to the gym. My 20 minute warm-up on the cross-trainer felt tough. I had

to will myself to go through with it - the voice in my head urging - come on! You can do it! It's only 20 minutes. This is nothing! Push!! You'd think those words would really inspire me, but they didn't. I kept telling myself - it's all in your head - mind over matter ... but then that made me wonder, which part was in my head? The fatigue? Or the false motivation? Which voice do I listen to? Which feeling is real?

It was a strange situation to be in actually. I mean, I've been in situations before where I have not wanted to go to the gym but I pushed myself to go anyway ... but this time I really did want to go, it's just that I was feeling really fatigued - I don't think I've recovered from my jet lag yet or the basic exhaustion from traveling. Anyway.

After my warm-up I headed upstairs to do workout B.

Deadlifts; Shoulder presses; Lateral pulls; Lunges with weights; Swiss ball crunch - 2 sets of 15 each.

The workout wasn't too difficult. I paid extra attention to the weight I was using today and made sure that I was challenging myself without compromising my form. I definitely felt better about this workout than workout A. I'm sure I'll feel the effects of those lunges in the morning!

My biggest dilemma after finishing the weight sets was - should I do cardio or not? I know that they don't emphasize cardio in NROL4W -- but it feels strange not doing anything. Aside from that, the heavy head and slight nausea that I was feeling was really starting to get to me. I only managed to do 10 minutes on the treadmill before stepping off and calling it a day. I was disappointed that I couldn't do more, but I really was exhausted -- at least I completed Workout B, which was my basic goal for the day ... hopefully with a bit more rest and a lot of water & vitamin C I'll feel better tomorrow.