How to deal with ‘bad’ training sessions

You’ve been waiting for these deadlifts all week. This block has been the best, PRs on every lift, every session, and tonight’s deadlifts are your final comp pulls of the block. The 5 kilo jumps every session has set you up perfectly to hit the almighty 100kg for reps to finish the block off with a bang. You’ve chugged your pre and your headphones are on. It’s time. Your warmups are taking a little bit more effort than you would've liked, but you’re so set on the PR that you brush it off, must've been those extra carbs you had before leaving for the gym making you bloated. No biggie. Last warmup coming up, 90 on the bar. You take it for the same number of reps as your planned topset and you struggle to finish the set. RPE 9. Topset complete. 

Now, I'd written a whole list of emotions one might feel in this situation, but I think we could all describe such a devastating feeling. We’ve all felt it. Why, when the whole block was going perfectly, when you've done everything in your power to set yourself up for the best deadlift session of your life, does the weight just refuse to cooperate. Why does a weight you've warmed up with for the last four weeks, body you and take everything you’ve got, crushing your dreams, stopping you from crushing your goals? Totally unfair. 

You slump down against the mirror, frantically messaging your coach, demanding answers as to why you’ve suddenly become the worst powerlifter in the world, why the last five weeks of hard work amounted to nothing. For five minutes your dreams are over. You storm to the bathroom in a huff, angrily reefing your singlet over your shoulders, when your phone dings. You spend the next half an hour going back and forth with your coach as they reassure you that not all is lost, and that in fact, everything is perfectly fine. 

In order to mould training around an individual, coaches need a great deal of training information. Good or ‘bad’ training sessions, good or bad training weeks, good or bad training months. They all provide us with more information which we can use to help build more productive training cycles going forward. A poor final week of a successful block, where the load just feels heavier than it’s felt in weeks previous, can tell your coach a lot. Successful adaptations made by an athlete suggest the training used to elicit said adaptations, may be useful going forward, and poor performance on week 5 of a block may suggest a number of things; did we surpass time to peak? Maybe your prep for that particular session wasn’t as fine tuned as normal, and left you underprepared for another week of heavy deadlifts.

So not only are so-called ‘bad’ training sessions helpful towards improving the quality of future training blocks, but they can also highlight inefficiencies in our preparation for training like recovery methods and nutrition, which we can then fine tune going forward. ‘Bad’ Training sessions are inevitable and can happen at any point during a training block. The fact that you mightn’t be hitting PRs, doesn’t negate the work you’re doing. Not being able to find your groove doesn’t mean your block has gone to shit, and not being happy with the way your session is going, should not discourage you. As long as you’re completing the work in the session to the best of your ability, you’re taking a step in the right direction, furthermore adding more useful tools to you and your coaches toolbox to further improve the quality of your future programming.