Daily Activities That Can Negatively Impact Your Training

You're a lifter/ gym goer and you have to help a friend move house or you just bought some new furniture for yourself and you're worried about how it will affect your training. In reality, you know it might be tiring at the time and it won't affect your training but you also don't want to injure yourself as that can really have a big impact on not just training but on a day to day life. We are not just talking about moving furniture here, we are talking about living life and doing things that may hinder your training, but you also want to be a functioning human being so you do it anyway. There are ways to mitigate risk and also different ways to adapt training in a way that you are being efficient in the way you overload the body.

Let’s list a few things that could be detrimental to your training but not enough to be obvious on the surface:

Moving Heavy Objects
Furniture, fridge, pallets, food, boxes, timber, glass. Any tradie or labourer likely sees these things as a normal act, or someone moving house just sees this as necessary, which it is. But just because you didn't load up a barbell, there is still load that the body is lifting and load that is potentially fatiguing the body on top of your normal training.

Someone who does this day to day, like a labourer would not notice much change as this is constant and they have adapted to training with this fatigue. So no change is really required. For someone who is moving house for a weekend and normally sit down for the majority of the day at a desk, they are definitely increasing the amount of work normally placed on the body which could potentially fatigue them more than normal. This should be taken into account when training and maybe volume should be reduced slightly to allow for the increased fatigue. If it’s just for one week then this will have little to no effect on results- so move furniture, this is ok.

The major thing to focus on when lifting heavy/ awkward objects outside training/ the gym is to ensure you are properly braced when moving things around. Injury is likely the biggest thing that will affect your training over anything else. Fatigue can generally be managed, a big injury may require a massive drop in load while training and a complete shift into rehab. This can and likely will cause regression and more importantly cost you time where you could be getting results. If something doesn't feel right when lifting a heavy object then find a better position or brace properly.

Eating Out and Events
It’s inevitable that you will find yourself attending an event just when you said you’re going to really focus on your training and nutrition so that you get your desired results in the gym. The party/event/ gathering is important to your friends so you feel inclined to go.

Generally, as long as you get enough sleep and don’t blow overboard with drinking alcohol you can find a nice balance between social life and training. You definitely cant go out every night and expect to have perfect training, at the same time you can fit in a nice social life. This is especially easy if you’re just wanting to maintain healthy body composition and increase your strength over time.  The higher level athlete you are, the less room for error you have with this as a 5% drop in training due to eating out can potentially have massive negative side effects to a heavy lift or heavy session.

Take home is this: Plan your events right and you should have no issues with training. Drinking the night before a heavy squat session with 2 hours of sleep and little to no water is going to cause you to have a bad session vs going out with friends, eating a meal that is balanced with carbs and protein with some fats, going home with enough time to get 8 hours of sleep, ensuring that you are hydrated and have a great session.

There are many things that come up in our day to day lives that could potentially (and for good reason) affect our training and it essentially up to us to adapt training to the circumstances we are faced with. Whether it be reducing training due to fatigue bought on outside the gym or changing training days to suit any event that is coming up with your friends that you can't miss. You should still be able to live your life while training for goals in the gym and as long as things aren't taken to the extreme, then we should find that there is little to no effect on training if it is managed well. Extreme lifestyles outside the gym will of course have negative side effects on your performance in the gym, but if you are committed and it is important to you, you would have set up your lifestyle to allow for progression in your training and quality sessions for long term results.