The Session You Don't Want to Do

Sometimes nothing is stopping you attending, you’re not injured. not ill, not overloaded. Just flat.The last thing you want to do is to train.The last couple of years I’ve felt like this on multiple occasions.

These sessions are the ones that count. Fitness is built out of the sessions in the middle. The brilliant ones are brilliant but there are not many of them, and the absolute disasters are rare too. The bulk of anyone's training history is sessions they did not fancy and did anyway.

There is a second reason and it is about the habit rather than the training. Every time you skip because you did not fancy it, the next skip becomes easier. Next thing you know you’ve skipped a fortnight.

So have the rule before the night: turn up and decide there. Do the warm-up and commit to fifteen minutes. Most times you will feel fine and finish. Sometimes you will not, and you can take the intensity down or on very rare occasions you’ll choose to stop. Both beat staying at home, because the habit stays intact.

Tell the coach you are flat. They’ll ensure your session gets adjusted, the version of the workout that leaves you better than you arrived. That is what we are there for and it is a much better use of a coach than being told to dig in.

`It’s been a tough couple of years for me, and I’m lucky to work where I train and have good people around me. I have coach Ali to thank for the many times when I’ve been low and she’s told me to just do the warm up and see how I feel. I’ve always finished the workout and always feel better for doing so. Yes, sometimes the workout has been “phoned in” and I’ve just gone through the motions. But I know that I’m a creature of habit and breaking these habits is a sure fire way to put me into a bad place.`

Flat days rarely feel flat by the end. The hardest part is often the journey through the doors of the gym.

Where the rule does not apply: if you are ill, you’re injured in a way that can’t be adapted (Which is very rare) or if you are three nights into terrible sleep and missing the morning allows for a lie in. Pushing through these scenarios repeatedly is how people end up taking a month off instead of an evening.

Never started at all and this is all theoretical? That one has a simpler answer. Fifteen free minutes with Jeremy or Beth — no obligation, and most of us hadn't trained in years when we walked in. crossfitchiltern.com.