How to Love (and Actually Do) the Workout You Dread
By: Teri O Brien
Tags: Success, Challenge, Hiit Workout, Fitness, Meditation

I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens. -Woody Allen

I had to figure out a way to keep going.

For the first couple of months, thinking about doing it again filled me with a sickening sense of dread. Yet, I knew I had to not just do it again one more time, but I had to keep doing it consistently if I wanted to continue to be the person I wanted to be, in every way, surprisingly and significantly, not just physically.

“It” in that first sentence is my next High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workout.

As I mentioned in a recent article, over the last 6 months, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), done 2–3 times a week, has transformed my body into a fat-burning machine. Since April I have lost over 13 pounds, and I attribute that fat loss in large part to HIIT workouts. My six-pack has returned, along with my sculpted arms and legs. I don’t want to lose those.

As most of you know, there is no strict definition of a HIIT workout. There are a variety of protocols, all of which involve short bursts of maximum effort, measured by heart rate, followed by recovery periods, repeated for a series of cycles.

HIIT workouts are extremely challenging, but only if you are doing them correctly. During my sprints, my heart rate during the later intervals routinely gets to 170- 178 beats per minute. During the bike workouts, my quads burn like someone is holding a blowtorch against them, and when the elliptical is the torture device de jour, my arm and back muscles join my quads and hamstrings in screaming “Mommy, make it stop!” I am gasping for breath. Each increasingly frequent heartbeat feels like some sort of internal jackhammer, threatening to explode out of my chest. Do I really need to do keep torturing myself?

Screenshot from my Apple Watch during a recent HIIT workout

The Epiphany That Changed Everything

Then one day, in the middle of one of my HIIT workouts, heart pounding, muscles screaming, I had a red-faced, sweaty epiphany: I’m already 3/4 of the way finished! I had completed most of my intervals. Better yet, I hadn’t even noticed because I was no longer obsessively thinking about how many were left and thinking “please let this misery end now!”

I finally realized that that mental shift was the one thing that had made the difference. No, I had not reduced the resistance on the bike, shortened the length of the intervals, or increased my recovery periods. It came down to that one simple change. During each grueling interval, I began to completely focus on pushing myself as hard as I could by making a very deliberate mental connection with not only the muscles I was working, but the physical sensations in my entire body.

As I tried to drive those pedals through the floor and pulled up on the toe cages as hard as I could, I mentally engaged with the severe burn from the lactic acid buildup in my quads — is there any burn quite like that? — and felt my hamstrings trying to pull their weight. I did not try to avoid the discomfort by thinking about something else.

I embraced the suck.

In short, my mind was in the game. I was completely present.

When I made this mindset shift, I noticed that I was able to maintain a higher speed and intensity during the intervals, and, here’s the amazing part, even though I was working harder, it actually seemed easier!

It’s a bit of a paradox. Shouldn’t the best way to get through a painful and difficult ordeal be to try to mentally escape and disassociate from it? I used to think so. I was wrong.

Not Just Exercise: A Form of Meditation

I have always realized that exercise not only conditioned the body, but also the mind, but my recent experience with these HIIT workouts took this understanding to a higher level of abstraction.

In reality, these workouts have become a sort of (very) soaked zen meditation, which is sometimes described as “thinking about not thinking.” When I am doing them, I am completely in the moment. I am not thinking about anything else, especially what I am going to do when this insanity is mercifully over. I am focused. As a result, I am able to objectively appreciate what is going on. No, I am not going to have a stroke. Yes, I am going to catch my breath. Sure, my muscles are talking to me, but don’t they always during a workout?

Now, even though I know that these workouts will be very hard, I don’t dread or fear them. I view them as a opportunity to practice staying mentally present while shrinking my fat cells.

Notably, my new approach to these killer sessions has transformed my view in many other areas of my life. I no longer avoid tasks at work or chores at home that I fear, sometimes for reasons that I don’t completely understand. I just get my mind right and say “giddyup!”

Takeaways:

We were not built to be comfortable all the time. We are descended from a long line of creatures who survived because they were willing to struggle and face whatever obstacles nature put between them and the opportunity to find food, water and shelter. As Scott Mayer points out in this excellent piece, quoting Denzel Washington, ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. In modern times, the desire to avoiding difficulty has probably caused the human race more misery, disease and premature death than all the wars fought on the planet combined.

The thing that enabled me to come back and do a 2nd HIIT workout after the first one, and the many after that, was understanding the purpose. You can endure any how if you have a why.

When you are focused and completely present in any activity, your performance will improve dramatically. Give it a try. See what I mean?

The best way to accomplish something difficult is to focus on the process. The outcome will take care of itself.

Biggest takeaway of all