When to Push Yourself vs. When to Rest: Discipline, Motivation & Avoiding Burnout

In this episode, we’re breaking down how to know when to push yourself, when to give yourself grace, and when you’re using rest as an excuse to avoid doing the hard thing. We’ll talk about fitness motivation, discipline, burnout, recovery, consistency, and how to adjust your expectations during stressful seasons without falling into an all-or-nothing mindset. If you’re a high-achieving woman who struggles to tell the difference between listening to your body and letting yourself off the hook, this episode will help you build a healthier mindset around training, rest, and staying consistent with your fitness goals.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Maturing in your fitness journey is realizing that rest is also productive. Welcome back to the Embodiment Lab. My name is Addy. And in today's episode, I actually want to talk about something that has come up over and over and over again in client check-ins just this week and last week alone. And this is something that my clients struggle with pretty regularly. And I haven't actually, I don't think, talked about it, but it's definitely something that I talk about inside my program and with my clients on a basically weekly basis. And that is basically giving yourself grace, how to know when to take it easy versus when you're being a bitch, right? I work with a lot of very high achieving women who they don't need to be told majority of the time, hey, we need to pick it up. We're slacking. My clients come in and they kick ass. They hit the ground running. They check every box. They do everything that I tell them to do, sometimes even more, which is amazing. So, so good. These women usually have backgrounds as like athletes, being very successful, you know, and they're used to the drive, they're used to the push, they're used to exhaustion. They're used to pushing themselves. They know how to. They're not a stranger to work ethic and working really, really hard. And that's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it's gotten them so far in their lives and in their fitness journeys. However, sometimes that becomes the bottleneck. Sometimes that becomes the point where it is actually hindering us from being able to push ourselves past a certain point in our fitness journey, helping us to break out of a plateau, helping us to drive more progress and continue to see more progress. So we're going to talk about where that line is today because there's definitely a fine line. And we want to make sure that we're not, you know, walking on it like a little type rope. But we're actually very clear as to okay, when does my body actually need rest? And when do I actually need to give myself grace? And when do I realistically need to push myself? A really common thing that I see in my clients and in different women that I talk to is them constantly feeling like they need to be in motion always. And if they are not at the gym, they feel like they are falling behind. Or if they miss a workout, they feel like they're failing, or they feel like they're wasting their time, or they just feel like they constantly need to be doing something. Sometimes they feel that what they're doing is not enough. And so that makes them think that they need to push more. When some of my clients are dealing with maybe exhaustion from crazy work lives, busy social schedules moving across several states, dealing with injury, dealing with illness, dealing with just dealing with normal things that we deal with as humans. A lot of the times people will think that, you know, even though they're sick, that, oh, I'll just go to the gym anyways. Even like if it's not contagious, right? Like dealing with whatever whatever situation is going on health-wise. Sometimes people are like, oh, I'll just push past that. I'll just push because you're used to pushing. And a lot of the times that means that we're not able to actually feel decent during your workout. This is putting more stress on your body when your body really just needs time to recover, whether it's from that injury, whether it's from the illness, from even just like exhaustion, burnout, stress, anxiety, just life. Sometimes your body genuinely needs time and space. And you need to be okay with giving yourself that time and space, giving yourself grace, letting it be okay to rest, even if it's not necessarily planned. There's also on the flip side of that, we don't want to use every single feeling and emotion to determine whether or not we show up that day. So where is that line? When do you genuinely need rest? And when are you just uncomfortable and looking for permission to not do the thing? You don't need to choose between relentlessly pushing yourself and giving yourself endless grace, especially when that grace is just helping you to stay in the point of suffering or not feeling happy with yourself. That grace is not a vote for you to continue to stay in a place where you're unhappy with your body, but that grace needs to be used to help you determine whether or not your body genuinely needs a break. You need to learn how to adjust your effort to the season that you're in without fully abandoning yourself. This should never be a matter of do I show up for myself or do I not for today? A very, very common thing that I hear is that if you feel that you can't give it your full 100% effort, then it's not worth it at all. And again, this is determined by okay, like is your body genuinely fighting something right now? Does your body genuinely need time to recover? Or are you just feeling a little bit stretched, a little bit tired? Maybe you're a little stressed, you're a little anxious, maybe you are experiencing some pre-period symptoms. I know that will hit me like a ton of bricks every single month. But I want you to understand that there's a spectrum of how much effort you are able to put in every single week. That doesn't mean that the only time that you see progress in your fitness journey is if you are showing up 100%. There's a spectrum. We'll just go by like 10. So, like 10, 20, 30%, all the way up to like 80, 90, 100%. In a perfect world, you're putting in 100% effort. But I need you to know that there is about 80% effort that you need to put in in order to actually drive results. 80%. So there's some wiggle room. There's some room for a cheat meal or two throughout the week. There's some room for lower effort workouts here and there, periodically, there's some room, just a little bit of wiggle room, right? But that doesn't mean that it's 80 to 100% or nothing. Because if you have a week where you don't feel that you can give 80 to 100%, that doesn't mean that you decide that you're gonna give 0%. What does your effort, your body, your brain, what does showing up look like on that week? Maybe it's 50 to 60 percent. If that is what you can handle, then we show up at 50 to 60%. We need to we need to actually figure out what that 50 to 60 percent looks like. Let's say, for example, your week, you show up five times a week to the gym and you hit your macros and your calories seven days out of seven days, maybe, and like that's your 100%, and you're getting in 10,000 steps and you're recovering two days out of the seven, right? Maybe that's your 100%. And this is just a very generic example, not like actual protocols. Let's just say that your 50% effort that you can contribute to this week is let's say two workouts, a couple walks, and instead of hitting 10,000 steps, we're hitting about like a couple days, maybe like four days, we're hitting the 10,000 steps, but then three days we're hitting about 6,000 steps. And that's about what your 50% looks like. Then let's show up with that 50%. Because what you have to realize is that you're not going backwards, you're not losing progress, you're not a failure unless you stop the thing entirely. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force. So, can we keep the object in motion, even if that means that the object is not moving up? I'm thinking of like gravity or the actual physical object. This is an example. I'm literally like an analogy, I'm literally pulling out of my butt right now. But I'm kind of thinking, you know, the Olympic sport, the I think it's like the shuffle thing, where it's like you have the little ball kind of thing on, I think it's ice. I think. I don't know anything about this, but you like send it down the ice, and then you have like the other two people with the little brooms that are like sweeping back and forth to like control how it moves. I don't know why that's what my brain is thinking of. If you got what sport in the Olympics that I'm talking about from that very awful explanation, good job. But that's kind of what I'm thinking of is if giving it 100% effort is like the guy sending the disc, the ball, the whatever that's called, down the ice, if it's even ice, I don't know. If that's 100%, like that force leaving his hand. And let's just say, for example, even though this is not how the sport works, but let's just say that week after week of giving 100%, the hand is continuing to push the thing down the court, the ice, the whatever it is. And maybe the week where you feel a little bit of an injury coming on, or you feel a little bit of an illness coming on, or maybe work is just a little bit extra crazy this particular week and you feel exhausted. Maybe your effort is about that 50% or 60%. Can we just let that thing just coast on the ice? Just coast. You saying that because you can't give 100% effort, so you're going to give 0% effort is the same as somebody taking one of the sticks, the little broom. And instead of like doing a little thing in front of the little ball, like where they're shuffling, you're just taking that stick and stopping the ball. That's what you're doing when you say, Oh, I'll just give 0%. You want to keep that object in motion. You want to keep your momentum going. You want to keep moving in the right direction, even if it means that you're not giving it full speed ahead. That was such a wonky explanation. But hopefully, my brain, um, hopefully you can see what was happening in my brain. But basically, like, why on earth would you just like fully stop when you can just maybe coast and just maintain what you can? Because maintaining is also a good thing. Not every single week in your fitness journey is going to look like full speed ahead. And that's okay. That's actually very normal because that's kind of just how life goes. It ebbs, it flows, it coasts, but we don't want to go backwards. And the only way that we would go backwards is if we stop. Adapting, adjusting the plan, doing all these things. That's not stopping, that's adapting. That's continuing. Whoa, English? That's hard. That's continuing to keep the object in motion. So consistency is actually your ability to keep showing up when 100% isn't available. That is where long-term results are built, because that is when you are actually building longevity, sustainability, all of these things. And that is what helps you to actually maintain the habits that you're doing for the rest of your life. So when you have whatever situation where you are trying to determine, hey, whether you should give yourself grace or whether you're being a bitch, determine what your capacity is on that specific day and show up at that capacity. So if you wake up and your capacity is 40%, how can you show up 100% of that 40%? And that doesn't mean that your commitment changed. That just meant that you are adapting to what you can give. If you're sick, your capacity is legitimately lower. You slept four hours, your capacity is lower. You're going through something emotionally devastating. Again, lower. Your job is unusually demanding that week. Lower. You simply don't feel like training because you're tired after work. That, my friend, might just be discomfort. That is not necessarily a situation where you need to give yourself grace. That's when you're being, to say it so nicely and with so much love in the world, that's when you're being a little bit of a bitch, right? So the goal isn't how do I force myself to operate at 100% every day? It's given what I actually have available today, what does showing up actually look like for today? So here's a couple of things to think about to determine whether you need grace or if you're avoiding discomfort. One, is there an actual reason that my capacity is lower? Or is it just a feeling? Do I just not feel like doing it? Because not wanting to do something is not necessarily a reason not to. There's a difference between my body genuinely needs recovery and my couch sounds a lot better than squats right now. Trust me, there's a lot of days that I'm like, man, I would love to just go rot on the couch and not go to the gym. But you know what? I crack my Alani open, I dress in the cutest little gym fit ever. I put a podcast in my ears, and I shut my brain off and I do it anyways. Question two, if I started, would I probably feel better? Sometimes you know the answer is yes. You don't need motivation, you need action. You need to start moving. Question three, am I modifying the plan or abandoning the plan? Ooh, this is huge. Maybe today it's we're not doing all five of our exercises or all three of our sets. Maybe it's like, hey, let's do two sets of four exercises. Maybe instead of 10k steps, it's let's do like six to eight. Can we modify it a little bit? Maybe instead of cooking an elaborate dinner, we just throw together some rotisserie chicken and microwave rice or a sandwich. Shit, there are so many times that I'm like, I'm just gonna make a sandwich because that's all I have effort. That's all the energy that I have for today is just a sandwich. That has happened plenty of times. And hey, it is okay. That is an adjustment. Adjustments are great. Rather than just saying, fuck it, I'll try again next week. That is abandonment and that will keep you stuck. Question four, is this an isolated day or is this a pattern? One missed workout because you needed rest isn't the issue. But if you've needed rest for every Monday for the last six weeks, something else is going on. Grace should help you continue moving forward, but it shouldn't become a loophole that keeps you stuck. It shouldn't keep you in the cycle of, oh, I need grace. Oh, I need rest. Oh, it's okay. I'll try again later. Because if you just keep trying again later, we are never actually doing anything productive. And we need to stop that shit. Another thing to think about and something to keep in mind is you need to stop making every workout decision based on the outcome. We're not going into the gym saying, is this the workout that's gonna change my entire life? No. First of all, not one singular workout is going to change your life. It is the accumulation of all of them. They're like itty bitty little little bricks on an entire building. We are laying brick by brick. And if you put so much into one workout and we say, oh, I don't want to do that one workout if it's not going to be my best foot forward, then you're just making it so much harder for yourself to actually show up. Can we just get there? Can we just move our bodies? Can we just get some blood flowing? Can we just lift some weights? It's not that big of a deal. There shouldn't be so much pressure on one singular workout because it doesn't come down to one workout. It comes down to what you repeat and what you do frequently and often. So a really big thing that you need to take away from this episode is that grace needs to be paired with honesty. Learning to give yourself grace when there is something genuinely going on, but then also being honest about am I avoiding something? Because I've actually I did a little coaching intensive last week. And one of the biggest takeaways I had from it was that human beings make decisions from one of two places, either to move toward a desire, toward a goal, or away from discomfort. And when you look at, okay, am I doing something to avoid the discomfort? That is a really big flag as to whether or not you need to be brutally honest with yourself and show up, anyways. So this isn't about lowering your standards. You just need to stop believing that the only two options are meeting your standards perfectly or not at all. There is a happy medium, and we need to learn how to oscillate between both of them, right in the middle, the happy medium. Because sometimes discipline looks like doing the full workout when you don't feel like it. But also, sometimes discipline means adapting the plan and we're doing 30 minutes instead of 60. Sometimes discipline also looks like going to fucking bed because we also need to know when our body needs rest. And maturity is knowing which one you actually need and asking instead, what can I reasonably do with what I have available today? That question will help you determine whether you need to give yourself grace or whether you're just being a little bit of a bitch. Again, said with so much love. But that is going to be it for today's episode. I hope this was helpful. I hope this gave you some insight. And I will chat with you in the next one. Bye.