If you’re feeling fatigued before a workout there are a few things you can do to help navigate the situation.  

Step 1: Ask yourself if the fatigue is expected. If it is Saturday or Sunday, and you’re deep into a big block of work with some easier recovery sessions coming on Monday, then the fatigue should be expected and has been considered as part of the workout. It was designed to help you learn to push through the fatigue knowing you have some recovery days coming. If, however, you look at your training and wouldn’t expect to be quite so tired from it or you look at the rest of your life and see a big increase in stress from work or life then you may need to take action and adjust your workout.  

Step 2: Get yourself moving. If you don’t get started then you’ll never know if the feeling of fatigue was just a lack of motivation. Commit to getting through the warm-up and pre-main set before making any decisions. This will give your body (and mind) enough time to get the blood moving and really determine if you can do the workout. Often times, this will be enough to shake off the lethargy and you can proceed with the workout as written.

Step 3: How to scale for fatigue. If you really feel like you can’t take another stroke in the pool, another pedal on the bike, or another step on your run then it is probably time to pull the plug on the workout and get some rest.  This would be an extreme case, and you should really only come across this if you have had a big increase in life stress with compromised sleep. What is more likely is that you can continue with the workout, but you will turn it into an endurance-focused session, removing hard intervals. Just do a feel-good session.  

Listen as Matt addresses fatigue and when to push through or back off: