Repeated Mistakes

Yesterday was my first session back in the gym after two weeks off, due to the holiday season and being ill. The building is a converted warehouse, so there's no heating and it's very cold in the winter, so even if you warm up, taking long rests in between sets can cause your temperature to drop quite quickly. Between that, still not being over my illness, and diving straight back into my programme after a fortnight's break, I should have been cogniscent of having a much higher injury risk than normal.

There are no prizes for guessing what I did next. After 3 of 5 of my sets of squats, I felt my right hamstring become incredibly tight, and considered whether or not to continue. I knew it was the sensible thing to stop and doing something else, but for whatever reason I didn't, and proceeded to do my last two sets while trying to load my right leg as little as possible - hardly ideal for squatting. I massively compensated using my back and today it's inflamed and very painful; walking is difficult and I had to skip the gym. I saw this coming, so why did still I make the decision I did?

Obviously it was calculated risk - injury wasn't a certainty. But I have been injured in this exact scenario before, so it was highly probable. My decision making process broke down, and there are several reasons for that:

• ego - not finishing would be 'weak' mentally, and in this case physically;
• desire for improvement - I am not content with where I am presently in my training, and I know I need to do the sets to get to where I want to be. I can't afford to make excuses, or I will not progess;
• guilt - I'd just taken two weeks off, I need to make up for lost time;
• expectation - I'd already set my expectations to do the whole session that evening, I did not want to fall short;
• laziness (of a kind) - making a conscious effort to change your plan takes effort, and a lot of times it is easier to simply stick with the way things are and deal with any potential consequences later.

Of course, this is a relatively minor example of a bad decision. But, life is a series of decisions, and this one was something of a trap - furthermore, a trap I think we all fall victim to. Humans repeat their own poor decisions with such frequency that the meme flavour of the month is very much dedicated to it (and a personal favourite of mine too).