A few days ago I had one of those crappy days at the gym. I know people say “the only bad day at the gym is the day you didn’t go” or whatever, but those people are idiots. The truth is, it is very easy to have a bad day at the gym. When you get to the gym and are incapable of locking your mind into your lifts, whether it is from exhaustion, your personal life fucking with you, work or anything else you are just wasting time and no amount of “just showing up” fixes that.

However, sometimes you find yourself in the gym, your music is on, you are moving the weight and you are just totally off in lala land not giving a fuck. In today’s post I want to talk about one way in which you can try to ameliorate this issue: Pain.

The pain that you hold is yours. There is not a single pain quite like it. Nobody else on God’s green earth can feel this pain, or have the indescribable feeling of pride you will have when you overcome it. This pain is not your curse; this pain is your privilege. –Arnold

The thing about pain is that it releases endorphins. Ever have a really shitty day and then stub your toe? There are a few seconds where you forget how pissed you are and all your focus in on the throbbing toe. How do we get our bodies to do this for us?

One trick I find is to bring the pain as hard as possible. Obviously we don’t want to hurt ourselves in a serious way, but there are other ways to bring the pain that will be beneficial. My preferred method is muscle contraction.

Step One: Put your weights down. Just stop. Put on your jam and go do your gorilla walk (Gorilla Walk) When you get back to your bench or your rack take a deep breath. Stare at yourself in the mirror. Make eye contact with your enemy staring back at you. Get angry. There is a look you can give someone that fires their amygdala and lets them know danger is coming. Walk up on yourself in the mirror as if you are walking up to someone on the street you are about to jack. Let yourself feel the fear and anger and then hit your lift.

Now, we always recommend a flex on both the top and bottom half of the lift, that is just sensible lifting. But this time be fucking serious about it. Do it hard. If you are doing a bicep curl, at the top of the motion make the hardest muscle you made since trying to give Suzie Creamcheese the tingles back in 5th grade. Once you get the hardest flex you can, hold it there. Hold it there as hard as you can and as long as you can. Let the lactic acid flow, let your muscle burn, let it feel like it will pop and then squeeze some more.

Do your whole set like this and see if you still have the shit in your head that is ruining your workout. With any luck you will not.

What do you want? What are you willing to pay for it?

Finally, as a side note, I have been playing with a new curl that I like a lot and thought I would share. I have been doing one handed barbell curls. That’s right, curl the barbell as if it were a dumbbell. I grab the weighted barbell off the barbell rack (i have been using 30 pounds) and balance it in my hand by holding it in the middle. Using my other hand I cross my body and hold my opposite oblique. Then, following full range of motion until my arm is fully outstretched on the down side and the barbell is parallel to the floor I use a controlled motion to bring it all the way to the top. I feel as if balancing the barbell on both the positive and negative portions of the rep is firing up my stabilizer muscles and giving me better definition just under my shoulder cap where my bicep starts.

Grind on fellas!