This is a subject that has been written about numerous times so I will keep this brief. I am not the best writer so bear with me.
Most athletes that I have encountered do not take into consideration the amount of stress they put on their body outside of the gym. The average gym rat goes to the gym, let's say 4 times a week for about 2 hours a day. That's 8 hours a week you are doing physical damage to your body. That's basically one day of work a week. That doesn't sound so bad, You may be thinking, "8 hours isn't a lot at all." True it's not but what about the rest of the week? What do you do with yourself the other 70+ hours a week? If the answer is 'sitting, resting and eating in order to recover properly for my next training session.' Read no further, I wish I could be like you. If it isn't, then you need to understand how this works.
Let's say you don't have the luxury of getting the proper rest and recovery that you need in between sessions. Let's say you have a shitty job, that you go to everyday and grind out hours on hours of work that you aren't very happy with, so each day you wake up miserable because you have to go to a dead end job that you really don't care for. You sleep only 4-6 hours a night because you train after work and become restless at night. Now every time you wake up you are already in a bad mood and as the day progresses more and more little things begin to build and build and snowball your mood into a ticking time bomb. You finally make it to the gym, your 'sanctuary' and you miss all of your lifts because you have been on tilt all day. You storm out of the gym, wanting to kill everybody and fall into a depression so deep you wish you could just crawl into a hole never to be seen again.
This is a tough situation to be apart of and I was in the same boat not too long ago. The biggest thing you have to understand is that you cannot place all this pressure on yourself. And if you fail in the gym it isn't that you cannot do the lift and you are worthless, it is more that you have been beating the shit out of yourself inside and outside of the gym and it has taken its toll on you. If you are having a bad day sometimes you are able to take it out in the gym and do some damage, but its hard to continue that momentum everyday. It is all about balance, balance your life and your recovery and you will see the gains come. Without finding that balance you will just keeping going in circles with your training and drive yourself crazy, Balance and Consistency is the name of the game.
I used to work in a restaurant 50plus hours a week, sometimes it was over 60. Whenever I could find time, I would lift, be it after work or before. And on my one off day I would go twice. I was basically working 2 full time jobs and honestly I was not even seeing results. I was tired all the time, stressed out that I wasn't making gains, stressed about work, stressed about everything. I had no life outside of the gym and never did anything just for me. I worked at the restaurant for over ten years and the people there are like family to me. It was not easy to tell my bosses and friends I had to leave to pursue other opportunities. I had to make a choice of what I wanted more and what made me happy because at the end of the day if you're not happy what's the point?
