We all want to walk out of the gym feeling like we’ve accomplished something, and sometimes that something is feeling like we got our ass kicked. You know the workouts we’re talking about—the ones that tested your will, left a puddle of your sweat on the floor, and had you bargaining with yourself whether or not you’d finish. We’ll level with you—even as coaches and trainers, we crave that feeling from time to time. That’s right, even we science-minded, process-oriented folks want to feel like we got our asses handed to us by interval training, tons of kettlebell reps, or some other masochistic exercise experience. It’s some of the best stress relief that the world has to offer. Not to mention that it’s confidence building and it makes us feel stronger.
Believe it or not, we can also remember a time when we thought that if we didn’t feel like we just went through 13 rounds of a 10 round fight that we’d get “out of shape.” It’s a totally normal, human feeling. We’ve all felt like we need some kind of dramatic, super-intense training, all the time, just to make progress.
While training needs to challenge us, and push us, it doesn’t mean that we need to feel like we’re constantly getting crushed in the gym. That’s not to say, however, that we can’t achieve that feeling in a totally safe, and sane, way.
Between the feeling of getting rid of our daily tension, and the need to feel the struggle of process, there is a productive middle ground.
Sometimes it’s totally okay to get “crushed” at the gym.
How the crushing is done, however, is the important question that needs answering.
The answer lies in minimum effective dose and maintaining quality movement.
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Minimum Effective Dose
Here’s the deal. While it’s okay to get crushed at the gym, every workout can’t be crushing—we need training balance. And, quite honestly, crushing ourselves at the gym with every workout can lead us down a path toward poor results. We know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s for real. Like really real.
The body simply recognizes training as stress. Nothing more, nothing less. So if we’re constantly over-stressing our bodies with ridiculously hard, put-our-ass-in-the-trashcan workouts, then it responds with a lot of stress hormones. Keeping those stress hormones chronically high keeps us from recovering. It also keeps us in a perpetual “fight or flight” mode—and that makes it really hard to reach our goals. Especially if our main goal is to get lean. Elevated cortisol levels, our main stress hormone, make it super hard to drop fat. And that, friends and family, isn’t cool.
There’s a training “minimum effective dose” that allows us to kick ass without totally getting our ass kicked. When it comes to those “crushing” workouts, it’s usually one or two per week—depending on the person, of course. In between those workouts, we need less intense work that keeps us consistent, and builds strength, without over-stressing our bodies.
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Quality Movement
So here’s where a lot of folks get it wrong—they sacrifice quality movement to work hard. Not only is that a dangerous approach, it simply doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to move at break neck pace and put our bodies, and joints, in bad positions in the name of fat loss and stress relief. We can still get an ass-kicking workout while also focusing on moving well.
How can we do that, you ask?
We do it with well-structured workouts that use exercises that don’t put our bodies in compromising positions. And we coach—making sure that folks get their hard work in using the best form possible. The result? Consistently great workouts because the body is able to handle the work it’s being asked to do. Good positions help us stress the body in the right ways so that we can train hard and recover from our training. Good recovery is the key to great training—that’s where the magic happens. Our body responds to the stress we gave it and grows stronger and leaner. And recovering well allows us to train more often—allowing us to build momentum and consistency—the most important training variables.
Getting Crushed is Okay
Crushing workouts are okay—as long as they are well-structured, they keep folks in good positions, and they aren’t done every time we train.
“So where can I find this type of training?”
We’ve honestly tried answering that very question for our members, with no luck being able to find it in Northern Virginia. And for the past two years we’ve been talking about offering the solution in-house.
In our old facility we were limited by space, and our semi-private personal training had to take precedence.
But now, after about eight months of settling into our new, massive space, we are ready. Starting Tuesday, June 13th, we’ll be offering conditioning classes with the following schedule:
- Tuesday/Thursday morning 6:00am – 6:45am
- Tuesday/Thursday evening 6:00pm – 6:45pm
- Saturday morning 9:00am – 9:45am
If you’d like to preview the class before it officially launches, sign up for our Conditioning Class Preview, taking place Tuesday, June 6th at both 6am and 6pm. We can’t wait to see you there!
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