In the world of fitness going to extremes is rarely a good idea. When your goal is simply to feel your best, maintain a healthy weight, and enjoy life, moderation with exercise goes a long way! Certain personality types seem to be more prone to this extreme behavior, so let’s explore whether it’s a good thing!
I’ve seen this overzealous tendency most frequently in group fitness. People tend to get really really excited in these settings. Why is that? What are some of the key ingredients that make this happen?
When you have a close-knit community of like-minded people, sharing hardship, strong social bonds are formed. People like to feel they’re a part of something and they like to belong to a group. A culture is formed that celebrates suffering. Hard work is glorified and pain is expected.
When you think about it, this idea of pain and suffering is really woven deeply into the roots of American culture. It’s the old “no pain, no gain” mentality.
The dopamine rush is very real.
But the question is, is this a good thing? The answer is…probably not. But if one workout a day is good, aren’t two even better? No, it’s not. First of all, if a client of mine goes through a training session with sufficient intensity to produce results, they aren’t likely to WANT to repeat that the same day!
Secondly, it would be totally counterproductive if they did. Fitness is a balance between stimulus and recovery. If all you do is stimulate, with inadequate recovery, you don’t get favorable adaptations. Two-a-day workouts are the business mostly of professional athletes who don’t have regular jobs and whose lives revolve around proper training, nutrition, and recovery. Let’s be honest, most people don’t have those ducks in a row.
Can two-a-day workouts EVER be ok? Sure, but there are some caveats. First of all, they should probably be sufficiently different in nature so they don’t produce more fatigue on the same systems of the body. For example, if I do a 45-minute strength-based workout in the morning, maybe I could do some low-intensity cardio in the afternoon, with no ill effects.
It comes down to fatigue management, sleep, and nutrition.
So if I’m running a group fitness facility, and overzealous members want to come twice a day to do THE EXACT SAME WORKOUT, I’m likely to strongly discourage that, and have a conversation with them as to why this is not in their best interest. In fact, if we are talking about HIIT workouts, I might even discourage daily participation.
You can’t recover properly if you’re hammering your body with super hard stuff every single day.
This is not an opinion, it’s a well-established fact. So while you may get the dopamine rush and pleasant endorphins, your body is simply not able to catch up.
If it can, then it’s unlikely your effort level is where it should be! One high-intensity workout, short in duration, but with near maximum effort applied, is far far better, than two workouts where the effort is mediocre. One produces a positive adaption and the other just produces more fatigue and puts you deeper into a debt that you can’t pay.
