Struggling between intuition and conditioning
The struggle to work out can be real. It took me 30 minutes the other day to get into my workout. I spent the first 30 minutes of my 60 minute class figuratively kicking and screaming. All I could think about for those first 30 minutes was all the reasons I did not want to workout. All I could think about were all the other things I’d rather be doing. I was even criticizing my instructor for the drills she had us doing, despite knowing that they were actually very useful, and she’s yet to ever disappoint me. I was just cranky.
It was my first day back after taking 4 days off and initially it did not go well. It was a mighty struggle, and I realized it was probably in part because I needed a few more days off. And that’s what my brain was screaming about. The problem was that I had decided at the beginning of my break that on Wednesday I would jump back in, and make up the class I missed the previous Saturday.
The whole time I was fighting the workout I was aware of what was going on, and watching on in amazement at the chaos my brain was able to create over something that felt so trivial. Over something that I do daily. Something that I’ve done thousands of times. And at the same time recognizing that despite my best efforts to put an end to the fight, I was powerless to do so. It was a battle between need and conditioning and, despite years of experience navigating this battle, yet again I had no way of telling who was right.
On the one side my brain, taking signals from my nervous system, was doing everything it could to say were not ready, and skirt out of the workout. On the other side was over 2 decades of programming myself to fight through pain and push through fatigue, and to finish the workout no matter the cost. The intuitive side of my brain was saying we need to stop, and my programmed brain was saying we hear you but we don’t fucking care. Stick to the plan.
In the end my conditioning won out, and I finished the 60 minute class, and even found a way to enjoy the last 30 minutes. But I’m still not sure that finishing it was the right choice. Even as I sit here a few days later I’m wondering if I would have been better off with a couple of more rest days. I’ll never know (but I know).
As much as I gave myself credit for proactively taking some time off before injury or illness set in, I think I still have work to do deciphering between intuition and conditioning. A battle that I think most of us face.
What do we actually need to do for ourselves, versus what have we been conditioned to think we need to do. I think it’s a question that touches everything in our lives, and sometimes telling the two apart is almost impossible.