The Reason For Weak Days At The Gym

What’s with weak days at the gym?

You know, one day you’re working out and you feel like you can lift all the weight in the gym and then the next time you work out that same muscle group, you can barely lift a thing. The weight you used the workout before feels heavy as fuck and you can’t do as many reps.

Yeah, exactly, you can relate!

So what’s going on?

Why does your strength level go from one extreme to another in a matter of days sometimes?

Well, first of all, it’s not necessarily your strength level that fluctuates. Instead, it’s your energy level that changes, which then impacts your ability to perform at or near your max.

There are a lot of potential reasons for the fluctuation in energy from one workout to another. The first of many possible causes is not hydrating properly the day of or before a particular workout. To this point, multiple studies have found that dehydration by as little as 2.5 percent of body weight prior to the start of high-intensity exercise can reduce exercise performance by as much as 45 percent.¹ Something else that countless studies have found is that not getting a long enough duration of sleep and/or too poor quality of it can have a negative impact on performance, though not in terms of physical capabilities, such as strength. Instead, sleep deprivation can lessen how quick it takes to become fatigued from exercise, in addition to making it feel harder.

Another factor that may cause a variance in exercise performance is nutrition. As you know, calories from food provide energy. Because of this, when you go into a workout without eating enough food, your workout may suffer because your body doesn’t have the literal energy it needs. Apart from overall food intake, there’s also the specific matter of carbs to consider. When you fail to provide the body with an adequate amount of carbs, there’s little energy in the form of glucose for the body to store in the liver and muscles as glycogen for its future energy needs. Then as a result of the body’s stored energy source being depleted rather than replenished, you may experience a significant decrease in performance. Not eating enough carbs in particular can impact energy but so too can failure to eat enough of the right type in particular. On this front, a difference in performance can be owed to foods with simple carbs, which happen to raise energy levels quickly but come with a steep drop in energy as blood sugar plummets.²

Whether by themselves or in combination, feeling weaker during some workouts and stronger on others might have to do with food, water, and sleep, among many other possibilities, such as mood, stress, hormones, motivation, and even who you’re working out with and the time of day.³

Whatever the cause, having weak days is perfectly normal and it’s not something to freak out about because not all of the things that can impact your energy levels are going to be perfect from workout to workout. You are, after all, human. The idea, though, is to try and minimize the factors that can cause an occasional dip in energy so the fatigue doesn’t prolong itself across multiple workouts, which can then fuck up your progress on account of you not being able to consistently put forth a respectable effort.

Glossary: calories, exercise, glucose, gym, hormones, intensity, motivation, muscle, muscle group, reps, work out, workout

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

The Reason For Weak Days At The Gym

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