Workout Awareness

Awareness is a powerful tool for when we go through workouts at the Sweat Shop, and yesterday’s workout (the every 6:00 for 30:00 workout) was an excellent one to build that awareness. What’s important about building awareness is that it allows you to coach yourself while your mid-workout instead of always relying on being told what to do. It’s also a good way to really understand how you “feel”. What I mean by understanding “how you feel” during a workout is knowing that you can keep up a certain pace or need to slow down. When our heart rate starts to increase during workouts, sometimes it’s natural to feel uncomfortable or freak out a little bit, but it’s helpful to use your awareness to know you can keep going or hold back a little bit! So if you were fortunate enough to do yesterday’s workout, think back on how it went. I’ll use my experience as an example…

What I learned from doing yesterday’s workout was throughout all 5 rounds my runs were surprisingly consistent, roughly 1:37 – 1:42. More importantly, I know for future runs how that pace will FEEL like in the middle of a workout instead of just going out there and running with no reference. In the future, I can tell myself to either holdback or push myself a little more because I now have information on my own running pace. At this point, I can usually tell before I finish a 403m run if it’s going to be 2:00 or 1:30. Again, it’s important to FEEL pace instead of just trying to get the same time every interval. The same thing goes for all of the other movements that were in yesterday’s workout, surprisingly all my movements took almost the same exact time each round! So now I know what to expect and how to feel for any certain number of reps in a workout.

Next time you venture off into a workout, try and really pay close attention to how you’re feeling when you’re doing 10 wall balls, 5 pull ups, 20 burpees, etc. And not just saying “oh that felt like sh***” but was it sustainable or not? Even though my heart rate was up, was it still manageable? Now you’ll know how you should really be feeling after each movement. In the end, becoming more aware of how you’re feeling is a great way to help maximize your workouts!