After about 1 out of every 10 or 15 workouts, I feel great. I feel energetic, like I could continue to keep working out, my spirits lift (in fact these times are often the only times I’d consider my mood to be “good”), I feel physically great, and I think “wow, damn, I can’t wait to go work out again”
But it only happens very occasionally. Most of the time I feel crummy after a workout. Tired, sore, hurting, bad mood.
My fitness level doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it. When I get into better shape, I feel less bad after a workout. The negative reaction - being tired, sore, etc. is reduced. But my state of fitness seems to have no effect on these random positive days. I’m as likely to have one my first or second time workout out after a long break as I am the 10th or 15th. I also had a period (long ago) in which I worked out roughly 25 hours a week at a crazy pace and yet it wasn’t because I was enjoying it, I just forced it. Even after months of that, when I was in the best shape of my life, the semi-euphoric/feel good after workout feelings were random and intermittent.
It also doesn’t seem to relate to the type of workout. I can get this feeling after swimming, lifting, or cardio workouts. I’d actually put them in that order - I’m more likely to feel good after swimming than lifting, and more after lifting than cardio. But not by a huge margin. But they’re still rare and inconsistent even with swimming. I could do the same set of laps at the same time of day with the same amount of rest, and only feel good after the workout 1/10 times.
Is there any way anyone could shed some light on this? If I could somehow control this and actually feel good after every workout, I’d go all the time and it wouldn’t be such a struggle to drag my ass to the gym.
Aha, one factor that may be relevant. I said swimming is more likely to bring it on. When I swim at the gym, there’s a heated whirlpool that I’ll go into afterwards, which may have some effect. But I’m not sure. Like I said, even with swimming, it might be more often (like 1/10 instead of 1/15) but it’s still rare and random. I don’t use the whirlpool for other workouts.
Edit: Another possible factor is that I’m on a low carb diet, which in general makes my system run better, but that wouldn’t explain why it seems to happen when it does, since I’m pretty much always on a low carb diet when I’m motivated enough to go to the gym. I don’t have enough data to compare it to how I’d feel working out on a high carb diet, except that I can’t remember ever feeling good after a workout on a high carb diet.
You’re working too hard. The clue is that as you get in better shape, you have less trouble.
However, once you reach even a moderate level of fitness, an effective workout should not leave you tired and sore.
If you’re training for competition, you may need to ramp up the effort to keep making gains and reach your potential but that is not needed for every day fitness.
I should say that even if I reel in the intensity of the workout to reduce the pain and fatigue, that just means I’ll leave feeling pretty much the same way I was before. Actually feeling good, energetic and semi-euphoric, is kind of a seperate thing entirely different from merely not feeling bad after a workout.
If you’re usually feeling crummy after a workout, then your system isn’t working right.
You need carbs to work out. Always avoid sugar and refined starches, and watch your portions, but don’t cut carbs if you want to spend quality time in the gym. Low-carb diets are for sedentary people.
That’s nonsense. I used to do a combined lifting/cardio routine on my lift days for 2 hours (set of upper lifts, sprint/bike/climb/whatever, set of lower lifts, sprint/bike/climb, repeat for 2 hours) and then on my off days I’d swim or play sports or do something along those lines for 3 hours at a time. One time I swam as long as I could just to see what my endurance could be, and I did laps for 7 hours straight with only about 7 minutes resting per hour. Eventually i had to stop because my electrolytes were so depleted that my muscles were seizing up. And I did that all eating less than 25 grams of carbs per day, practically none.
I could never achieve anything like that while eating carbs.
Anyway, that was a long, long time ago - now I’m getting back into working out after a long hiatus and I’m out of shape, but the very first time I went swimming for whatever reason I got the euphoric feeling. If I knew it’d be this way every time, I could go do it every day - but I know the next time, and the next, and 90% of the time I’m going to feel crappy afterwards. Eventually I’ll reach a stage where I don’t really feel crappy anymore, but I don’t feel especially good either. It’d be really great if I could somehow master whatever it is that brings on the post workout euphoria.
Well, I mentioned the three - swimming, lifting (whole body), and mixed cardio (biking, stairclimbing, rowing, inclined fast walking), and they tend to produce the euphoric result in about that order.
:rolleyes:If you find the secret, let us know. I pretty much force myself to workout everyday, but I hate it. I’ve been told that I’m supposed to feel great after a workout, so there must be something wrong with me. Until I figure out the answer, it’s a great lesson in discipline (which I severely lack).
I’m not an expert on this, but I’ve never exercised to the point of feeling crappy.
Unless you’re exercising to improve your physical condition, and not just maintain what you’ve got, there’s no need to push yourself. Even then… there’s hardly a good reason to rush the process! You’re probably not up against some deadline where you have to perform at level /x/ by date /y/. So my suggestion would be to slow things down and let the improvements trickle in.
Try cutting your exercise routine in half. Stop when you still feel good, at the very least.
Edit:
I think I did a poor job of explaining myself. When I work out, I stop just past the point where I’ve really hit my stride and feel like I could push further. This leaves me feeling rather euphoric.
I think my situation is similar… while I don’t exactly feel crappy after a workout, I usually just feel like “ugh, thank god that’s over with!”
Once in a great while, I’ll feel like I’m firing on all cylinders, I will (almost) enjoy the workout and I feel like I could keep going for another 2 hours.
I guess I’d just agree with a previous poster, it’s a testament to willpower that we force ourselves to go anyway. I definitely do not regularly get that euphoria that some people claim goes along with intense exercise.
I usually have a goal for each workout, and I almost always have to push myself to finish; sometimes I fail and just stop partway through (I call these my low-energy days, I don’t know why they happen).
Even on my best days, I only feel pretty good (not exhausted, for example) at the end of the workout and for the rest of the day. Usually it’s the next day when I feel good, walking to work the next morning with a spring in my step, if you will. I attribute this to a combination of recovery-with-improvement from the exercise, and a feeling of virtue for having done it.
I work out every other day, entirely cardio. Someday I’ll do weights when I have more time and energy (I’ve thought about taking up general fitness as a hobby when I retire).
Roddy
I never have felt euphoria, but have felt an occasional slight mood lift.
Oddly - this seems more likely to occur for me after strength training vs aerobic. I say oddly, because the vast majority of the depression literature seems to refer to aerobic workouts. I hate the strength training much more than the aerobic. I think walking (which is what i do most often) makes me feel better, but it is subtle - and doing a very heavy aerobic work out doesn’t make me feel any better than the walking does (some of that may be due to being outside when walking).
I also don’t feel a mood lift when eating right either.
I could count on post-workout euphoria in my twenties, if the routine was rigorous enough. I’ve done my share of drugs, but one of the best highs of my life came about while I was sitting on my couch after a particularly grueling kickboxing workout.
Those workout highs started petering out in my thirties. Now that I’m in my mid-forties I’m in the best shape of my life thanks to crossfit type workouts. But
I invariably leave those workouts feeling old and beat.
It could be lymph. Exercise can get your waste products moving through your lymph system so it can be processed and removed. So maybe some workouts are achieving that, getting all the waste products moved.
The “working too hard” angle may be on to something. I generally tend to figure if I’m going to make the effort to go out to the gym that I should keep going up until the point where I’m exhausted and before I start risking injury by overdoing it, so I’ve never really been one to quit when I’m not yet exhausted. I can experiment with it - maybe do about half of what I’d consider to be a normal workout and see where that takes me. If it works, and I feel good, I guess I could do half as much twice as often.
It seems like there are really two separate questions here.
Why do I so rarely get a “great” feeling, a mood improvement, an exercise high, after working out?
Why do I usually feel crappy, moody, tired and sore, instead?
It is not like those are the only two states to be in.
As to the first, my WAG is that the exercise high is not so common for most. The speculation for the euphoria that some experience after some forms of vigorous exercise has always focused on endogenous endorphin release but to the best of my knowledge that’s never been consistently demonstrated and is just speculation. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it myself. I am often enjoying myself more or less but I would reading a good book too. Maybe it has something to do with how our individual brain reward centers are wired? I would not be surprised if it corrrelates with family histories of some sorts of addictive tendencies actually.
To the second: Not getting a high is not the same as feeling crappy. I’d log it with careful attention to intensity level and nutritional variations. Are you getting enough complex carbs in a pre-exercise period or are you still doing low carb? (For example.)
I know part 2 - I’m in bad shape, so working out hurts. I get that part. As I get in better shape, after a normal workout I’ll feel less crappy.
But I mentioned that part to illustrate that feeling good afterwards doesn’t depend on my state of fitness. I’m no more likely to feel that way after my 100th workout in a few months than my first. It’s, as far as I can tell, more or less random.
I don’t know if it’s the “runner’s high” euphoria thing exactly. I wouldn’t say it’s nearly as intense as they tend to describe it. Just generally a noticibly lifted mood, presence of energy, and feeling that I could still go out and do plenty of physical work even if I can feel that I should be spent.
Right – that’s exactly it. It’s not so much feeling euphoric as being energetic. You get that ‘springy’ feeling of lightness to your step and movements, and feel like you could… well, do anything. The older you get, the better those moments feel
For me, it only lasts about half an hour, and then I’m back to normal.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon too, though not to the same degree (I usually feel pretty good post-workout but some days it’s really good). I take it as the counterpart to the fact that every 10th workout or so I just feel weak or less energetic. Just the normal variation of hormones and such.
Looking at my nutrition logs, I think it’s mostly about food if it can be traced to any particular circumstances. I have very boring and consistent workouts, so I think I can safely rule out changes in intensity, duration, exercise selection, etc. But my caffeine intake and carb intake can vary quite a bit.
