Are you doing fitness wrong?

I’m currently sitting in my new apartment, drinking a cup of coffee, and reflecting upon my day yesterday.  As I relive the moments, and the thoughts and feelings that went through my head, it occurred to me that I may be doing fitness wrong.

Yesterday called for the Olympic Weightlifting Total – one rep max Snatch plus one rep max Clean and Jerk. How much better could a day’s programming get? No cardio and no gymnastics? I was in heaven. Until I realized I was in hell. Snatch started off fine, feeling extra smooth until about 80%. After that I had a few misses, a few lucky hits, but mostly things just started to go downhill. I put 90% on the bar and couldn’t even get under it. Doubt started to creep in. After a few “meh” attempts, I transitioned to Clean and Jerk. History would prove to repeat itself – felt smooth up until about 80%, and then found that ever so sneaky cliff and again fell right off the side. Worked up to 90% and couldn’t even get a solid clean attempt on it.

If I had to describe how I felt in one character or less, the poo emoji would definitely be the proper descriptor. So many thoughts ran through my head – I suck, why do I do this, why am I sucking so bad today, what’s wrong, I hate this, I’m done… If you are as passionate and have invested as many hours into this as I have, then I know you have experienced these same emotions before. Chalk them up to passion or chalk them up to foolishness, one thing I realized however, is they can’t be healthy.

Then it occurred to me. Am I doing this wrong? I mean, am I approaching this whole fitness thing wrong? Don’t get me wrong, I love training for something tangible and I love having goals to chase, but am I going a little too far off the deep end? While I love to test my fitness at local events, I have no aspirations of being a competitive athlete in CrossFit’s sport of fitness.  And of course, CrossFit at its core is about measuring and repeating workouts to track progress. But to what end? What is the point of fitness?

Maybe we need to take a step back and really evaluate what we are doing here. Should I be feeling such deep emotions for not performing up to my expectations? Should the thought of quitting the thing that I am most passionate about, the thing that has opened so many doors for me, run through my mind? My answer is absolutely not. While I love everything about fitness, I’ve found myself in a very unhealthy relationship .We need to step back, reset expectations, and take it for what its worth – a tool to improve my life.

I want to hear from you – do you ever have these days? Ever get so discouraged that you feel like throwing in the towel? How do you handle it? Comment below!