In The Gym, Your Ego IS Your Enemy

The iron game is a cruel mistress. One misstep and you might very well find yourself hunched over in pain. For that reason, many people shy away from lifting heavy weights. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. When treated with respect, pulling, pushing, and carrying iron produces stunning results.

So what’s the secret to becoming the next Charles Atlas or Jillian Michaels (besides genetics) instead of another also ran plagued with injury?

Leave Your Ego in the Locker Room

Plastered across social media is the appearance model of fitness. We are constantly bombarded by messages about how to look leaner, fitter, stronger. LOOK being the operative word in that sentence. Now don’t get me wrong, all of those things are good goals to strive for. It’s the way they’re hawked that bothers me.

Men are shilled looking leaner and stronger. Women are fed a steady diet of how to make their booty more bangin’. And of course the king of all appearance pleas is the highly coveted six-pack abs.

Such approaches appeal to your vanity, to your ego. And many of us will gladly do whatever it takes to, as the saying goes…To Look Better Naked.

Unfortunately, that mentality pushes it’s way into our actual training. We ignore signals our body sends us about lifting too much weight or squeezing in one final rep in blind obedience to the NO PAIN NO GAIN philosophy.

And what happens?

We injure ourselves.

And in the process we set back our progress, and along with it our longed for single digit body fat percentage.

On the other hand, when you leave your EGO in the locker room, you take the first step towards training in a sustainable way. That is to say, you begin training in a way that achieves results and keeps you healthy, so you can continue to train as long as you wish.

The Tyranny of More

You see your EGO will whisper in your ear such things as, “You got this,” when you know perfectly well that you don’t. It will nudge you into doing one more rep or set because by doing so you’ll achieve what you’re after — a more bountiful backside, bulging biceps, and of course Adonis like abs. Plus, you get to brag to your “bros” about your badass workout later over beers.

(Of course, you wouldn’t be drinking beer, because that might interfere with your desire to look good naked.)

And what does all that chest puffing get you?

STATUS!

Our EGO is all about STATUS. And however we can bolster it the better, even if it means a torn bicep or thrown out back.

The Tyranny of More is simply this…

If X many sets and reps (or whatever) will get you what you want, then 2X (or heaven forbid 10X) will do it twice or even ten times as much or faster.

In some arenas of life, that very well may be true. In the gym, not so much. Yet our EGO loves to goad us into doing more and More and MORE! And we cave because we don’t want to look foolish or unmanly or, even, unwomanly in front of our fellow gym rats.

The funny thing is such mind games are not only the province of gym goers. The Tyranny of More has a long arm. It even reaches into the hallowed home gym.

EGO at Home

My first Home Gym injury was to my left foot. Since I never went to the doctor, I’m not really sure what the injury was exactly. It happened doing too heavy of a getup. The injury kept me from going to a full standing position for months. I could get to my left knee but no higher. Even to this day, I’m wary of injuring it again.

Since then there have been many more injuries. Some because of ignorance, but most because of EGO. I pushed to hard. Here’s a short list…Tweaked back (more than once); injured shoulder (twice); golfers elbow (both arms, not at the same time); “torn” hip flexor (that one happened on the golf course, first tee); and numerous others.

You see STATUS gets us even at home when no one is watching.

For instance, one winter’s day, my family and I were planning on going skiing. I needed to get in a quick lifting session before we left. Or at least, I thought I NEEDED to. To save time I rushed my warmup. Plus, my garage is not heated and it was a cold, cold morning. On top of that, I was attempting a personal record in the deadlift.

If you can believe it, under those conditions, I managed to get four out of five reps. However, on the fifth rep, my form collapsed and with it my back.

I felt so foolish.

I had to tell my wife and son I couldn’t go skiing with them. It was embarrassing, and not very STATUS building. What’s more, I had to spend the next six weeks nursing my tweaked back back to health.

Furthermore, I violated one of my guiding training principles, which I learned from Pavel Tsatsouline. That is to always leave at least one if not two reps in the bank. Meaning never train to failure. Failure is OK in competition. However, when training, you should never, ever, miss a rep. (Whoops, I’ve done that more than I can count.) It is far better to cut reps and sets, instead of succumbing to your EGO and injury by going for one more questionable, low quality rep. (Yes, it’s definitely easier to say than to do.)

And so, I overreached and paid the piper.

In the Gym, Your Ego IS Your Enemy

Almost everyday, I’m tempted to push more than I should. That is not to say pushing oneself is not a good idea. After all, it is how we get better and stronger. The problem is pushing for one final rep. Or for convincing yourself to add just a little more weight, when you’re already near what you know to be your upper limit. That is when we get into trouble. That is when we get injured.

My experience about EGO is it’s always lurking and ready to pounce. When we question the urge to do just one more rep or just one more set or of adding just five more pounds, our EGO pipes up and challenges us for questioning oursleves.

EGO makes us second guess our decision to quit while ahead and, I might add, uninjured. And even as you read above, having a plan is no guarantee you succumb to the EGO’s siren song.

If you’ve ever been the victim of your EGO, It’s not your fault. Your EGO is crafty. In the heat of the moment, it can be down right impossible to ignore.

Awareness is Your Best Defense

Simply having an awareness of how your EGO can sabotage your efforts to get leaner, fitter, stronger or to have a more bodacious bottom will go a long way in helping you defend against its wily ways.

If you’ve been training for a while, then you probably know when you’re reaching your limit. Extra vigilance should be the order of the day when entering such an arena. And even if you fail to resist your EGO’s influence, you’ll know better for next time.

If you’re new to the iron game, then remember this… Prudence is the better part of valor. Better to skip that last rep or set and be injury free so as to lift another day.

The journey to looking good naked is exactly that, a journey. We constantly face new, unforeseen obstacles. As we proceed the best we can do is take what we’ve learned and apply it to whatever faces us in the moment.

In that way, who we become may actually surpass how we look.

Thanks for reading,

Henry Beyer
Fitness Coach