Which is worse a bad workout or no workout?

I woke up this morning with a cold.  I had “been fighting it.” Apparently, it won.

I had several days of fun workouts planned and the weather is supposed to be beautiful which is not always the case in January.  It is very tempting to try and train through this.  Doing so might be a BAD idea.

You know, not every workout will be a personal best.  There are times when circumstances make getting in great workouts or even good workouts challenging – time, energy, lack of sleep, etc.  But if I took the day off every time things weren’t just right, I might only train once a month!  So sometimes you have to just get out and do the best you can.  In such a case, you would not have a great or even a good workout, but it would not necessarily be a BAD workout.

On the other hand, there are some times when we are better off skipping it all together and therefore having NO WORKOUT rather than a BAD workout.  If I train according to plan today, I risk making myself sicker.  Then I could miss more workouts later in the week or even next week! If I rest today, I might get over this more quickly.  At some point, I will start getting better and then I can slowly add some easy workouts until I am ready to go full bore.

One quick story about a client – he is a cyclist and DOES NOT RUN regularly.  In fact, it may have been several months since he has ridden.  He was on vacation and got antsy.  He said to me, “I needed to get in a hard workout and I didn’t have access to a bike, so I ran hard for 6.5 miles.”  Because he was not accustomed to running, he tweaked his Achilles tendon and missed several days of good cycling training once he returned from his vacation.  This did not end up so bad for him, but he could have really injured himself and been out for much longer.  He had a BAD workout.

So, in my mind he did not NEED a hard workout.  He needed to avoid a BAD workout.  Even another day of full rest would have been better than that 6.5 mile hard run.

Consistency is key.  So we need to train regularly even when we don’t feel great and know we won’t have a great workout.  But we also need to have the long view.  We need to avoid the BAD workouts that might interfere with our ability to train consistently down the road.