No training session is worthless.

No training session is worthless. 

There will be times you will walk into the gym and things will just not feel right. Weight that you usually warm up with will feel twice as heavy as it should. There can be many reasons for this, you're dehydrated, under fuelled, a poor nights sleep, stressful day at work and so on. 

You then have a choice to make. In some cases, you will need to remove your head from your ass, take a little more care and attention to your warm up drills and get yourself focused. I have had some of my best and most fulfilling training sessions when I haven't felt quite right when I walked through the door of the gym, I just needed to adjust my attitude. 

However, there are then also the times where things will just not happen, and that is what I want to talk about briefly. If after a focused warm up, things still don't feel right, you need to take a step back. If you can't even get close to the weight and reps planned, then its time to rethink what you need to do for the day, and what you will get the most benefit from. If you intended to do 5x5 back squats at 80% 1RM for example, there is little point in squeezing out a few crappy sets of 1-3 reps at that weight, or dropping in weight just to get your number of reps in. Struggling your way through every set and failing reps is a fine way to demoralise yourself, drain your central nervous system without achieving anything, and is also just asking for injury. 

There are still things that can then be achieved to make the session productive. Leave the neurologically taxing strength work for another day when you feel recovered and you have the focus for it. Instead spend some time on structural work, mobility and breathing instead to still walk out of the gym feeling like you achieved something useful. 

Any session is salvageable. Be honest with yourself and listen to your body. Don't be afraid to step back and have a recovery day if things just don't feel right, adapt and overcome. At the same time, don't use it as an excuse to bail out on every session, we're talking about one off sessions here. If you're feeling weak for a prolonged period of time, then there are other factors that need to be looked at, i.e. diet. 

Sometimes though, it will just require you to have an honest look in the mirror, remove you head from your ass and get shit done.

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