After reading Hard-Wired to Hate Exercise? from The Wall Street Journal, it had me thinking about past clients and how they felt, when their body was in pain from getting into shape. It's hard to really enjoy yourself like that.

 

Many people simply hate their training routines because they push to hard without knowing it, whether its the beginner on a new exercise regimen or the experienced 7 year lifter that's experiencing burnout.

Each and every one of us has the physical capacity for exertion, above average mental and physical effort. But when sedentary people push beyond their daily threshold, when they try to exercise too quickly or intensely, it results in them hating the activity even more and eventually they want to stop.

 

For sedentary people, you might reach this threshold within as little as a minute. To track this, it's all about finding your exercise sweet spot and accepting it might be a little low when you're starting out. But tracking workout duration, load, RPE, and other measures of performance will help you learn where you are and help guide you to where you want to be.

 

 

Let's also discuss HOW you interpret pain and exertion: Some people tend to read such physical cues such as a buildup of lactic acid in muscle or increases in body temperature as a sign of a good workout or progress, whereas many sedentary people just find them uncomfortable or painful, say researchers.

 

Essentially, when you feel terrible after a workout, you're less likely to stick with your new routine. Which makes sense because we instinctively do the exact opposite of what makes us feel bad. If you were once an athlete or maybe a playful kid, getting back on track can be frustrating when you recognize the actions you can no longer perform. They key is to find less intense movements or sport to participate in and build yourself up from there.

 

Above all, use the first few weeks to get into the habit of training. From there you can begin to mix things up and turn up your intensity for faster results.