In my experience, "No pain, no gain" is a myth. I don't need to "feel the burn" to make progress. There is a time and a place for that but not all the time, especially in the beginning.
I have found that I do better on a consistent daily schedule as opposed to a split-schedule where I am only doing resistance training a few days per week. My body responds better to daily exercise. It's the old Newton's law of physics stating that " a body in motion, stays in motion."
The tricky part about a daily schedule is balancing the recovery portion of it. The body needs time to rest and recuperate. In the past, I would train every day but I pushed myself to failure on every set. If I didn't push myself to the limit, I felt like I wasn't working hard enough. I used maximum intensity every working set, every day. The result was always the same. I would make progress but then I would feel burnout and if I didn't back off, I would get hurt. The challenge now that my body is a little older and has some mileage on it, I needed to find the right balance or training and recuperation.
To accomplish this, I have changed my mindset. When I was younger, I viewed life as a sprint. I needed to get where I was going, with maximum effort as fast as I can. I wasn't able to comprehend that life would get more complicated as I got older, where there would be more commitments, and more distractions. Forget the fact that my body was going to get older. I figured that my elastic teenage body would always be my body, and that I would live forever.
As I have gotten older, and life has gotten more complex, I know now that my mindset has to be different. I have to view life as a marathon. I don't have to put in maximum effort every set. I favor a slower, more consistent progression. I rarely go to failure on a set. I stop as soon as I feel like I am going to struggle or I am going to have to compromise my form. This goes against a lot of common training philosophies out there, and that's okay because it's how my body responds best. Everyone is different. I have found something that consistently works for me and that I enjoy. I see progress on a regular basis, yet I don't feel like I am grinding myself into the ground. My change in mindset has allowed me to train every day, and I genuinely look forward to each training session. Even if my energy is a little lower for the day, or I am distracted because life is happening, I have found that I can still give it a solid consistent effort. I am able to work through any little digs and dents that I have had, and I have energy for other things in my day.
That is not to say that every few weeks I don't tap into my primal side and go nuts. I really love to push myself beyond what I think that I am capable of. However, those workouts are a topic for another day. However, those sessions are not a regular occasion. Even though, I love testing my limitations and challenging my mental and physical will, I always remind myself that "Slow and steady wins the race." Daily, consistent training is better for me in the long run.
Arnold Schwarzenegger talked about always ending his workouts still being "hungry," meaning that he always felt like he could have done more at the end of each session. This philosophy really hit home for me, and it has allowed me to discipline myself, to use restraint, so that I can training daily.
What works for someone may not work for someone else. Every one responds differently to training methods. What's most important for me was to find something that works for me, which is in line with my goals, that I enjoy and can do consistently.
Consistent, daily training has greatly improved the quality of my life as well as my ability to function and handle anything that comes my way. It has improved my daily mindset and focus. I feel good about what I accomplish every day, and my energy level is solid to where it carries over into every other aspect of my daily life. For me, that is point of it all.
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