The other day I went to a health fair as one of the vendors and a woman from a massage and chiropractor office came over to me and started talking to me about training.

She told me one of her massage therapists was super into Crossfit and that they got a TON of business from there. She said to me, “Oh you know how it is with all that super intense exercise….So many people get injuries, but it is worth it.”

I’m honestly not sure what I said in response because all I could think was, “UHMMM…NO…Actually I don’t because people come to me feeling crappy with maybe some aches and pains and my intention is to make them feel BETTER not WORSE.”

And I’m not meaning to bash Crossfit here because, to be honest, there are a lot of idiots out there in the fitness industry in a lot of different capacities. Heck, stupid people training themselves injury themselves. But with the popularity of Crossfit increasing, there are going to be more and more idiot trainers flocking to it. It’s that way with anything that becomes popular.

Anyway….My point is that WORKOUTS SHOULDN’T MAKE YOU FEEL WORSE!

I’m not exactly sure when or why a good workout became defined as a workout that murders you. I’m not exactly sure when or why it became cool to be injured.

But let me assure you…It isn’t.

And five years down the road, when other injuries have popped up because you didn’t properly rehab your “cool” injury, you won’t be thinking that pushing through the pain was all that darn awesome.

Workouts can be GOOD and even hard without leading to injury or making you feel like death every time after you finish.

Every workout doesn’t have to feel like a slaughter.

Actually every workout SHOULDN’T feel that way if you are truly interested in getting results.

Just because someone else, who you think you should be lifting as much as, is lifting a certain weight doesn’t mean YOU are ready to lift it.

YOU CAN’T RUSH THINGS OR COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS! Workouts are a BUILDING process. And that progress isn’t going to be a straight line up!

Heck the same is true about LIFE!

And if you don’t respect the process, you are going to get injured and workouts aren’t going to make you feel better like they should!!!

A couple of months ago, I had this new guy join my latest evening class.

One of the first exercises we did was a single leg deadlift. Because he hadn’t done the move before and hadn’t done much balance or core work recently, he had to use very light weights.

At the end of the workout, he comes up to me a little downtrodden and says, “I was doing way less weight than some of the people I know I should be doing more than.”

I said to him, “Why should you be doing more than them?” I, of course, knew he meant he should be doing more than them because they were older than him and female and he thought as a younger man he should have more strength than them. And he is, in fact, “stronger” than them in that he probably has more natural brut strength.

But when he stated what I mentioned above I said, “But they have done this before AND they have BUILT UP TO IT! Their bodies are ready to handle the load while doing the movement.”

He then said to me, “Well if I held the weight this way or did a double leg move, I could do more.”

I then said, “But this move builds up all the small muscles so that you can lift even MORE when we progress to those bigger, heavier lifts. Plus just because you can lift it, doesn’t really mean your body is ready to.”

He didn’t seem completed convinced. But he has been putting in the work and remained patient.

And guess what? The workouts have been making him feel BETTER and STRONGER every single day.

He just had to stop worrying about what other people were doing or the weight his was doing.

He had to focus on HIS GOALS.

So if your workouts aren’t making you FEEL BETTER, are they really worth it?

Are you too caught up in doing gnarly workouts instead of staying focused on what truly matters?